OK, so how much should charity bosses be paid? Plus your chance to vote

August 9, 2013
There’s a big fuss going on in the UK right now about CEO pay scales in the big NGOs. With some misgivings, I weighed in with a piece on the Guardian website yesterday. Unfortunately, my weakness for a good one liner was spotted by the sub, who take a throwaway ‘you pay peanuts, you get monkeys’ comment and made it
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Why are NGOs and Academics collaborating more?

August 8, 2013
August is a good month for getting people to step back and take stock – those who are not on holiday have fewer meetings, and so are more relaxed and available for shooting the breeze. And so I found myself at the London International Development Centre this week in one of those periodic soul searchings about how to get NGOs
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Whatever happened to the Academic Spring? (Or the irony of hiding papers on transparency and accountability behind a paywall)

August 7, 2013
Is the Academic Spring running out of steam, like its Arab namesake? Last year, there was lots of talk of opening up access to academic papers. Both DFID and the Wellcome Trust took some welcome steps to push the recipients of their research grants to open access.  Following the death of Aaron Swartz, who killed himself because he was being
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Panels of the Poor: What would poor people do if they were in charge of the post-2015 process?

August 6, 2013
Many of the attempts to introduce an element of consultation/participation into the post-2015 discussion have been pretty perfunctory ‘clicktivism’. So thanks to Liz Stuart, another Exfamer-gone-to-Save-the-Kids, for sending me something a bit more substantial: 5 day in-depth participatory discussions with small (10-14 people) ‘ground level panels’ in Egypt, Brazil, Uganda and India, culminating in a communiqué to compare with that
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How will development be financed? The eclipse of aid, and what it means for post-2015

August 5, 2013
Thanks to Alex Evans for recommending ‘Who Foots the Bill’, a report from the ODI’s Romilly Greenhill and Annalisa Prizzon on trends in development finance. It was published at the end of last year, but somehow I missed it – probably because it is pegged to funding the post-2015 goals, a timesuck discussion I have tried to avoid (without much
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Development Impact Bonds and Impact Investing – genuine Impact, or snake oil?

August 2, 2013
The private finance people in development baffle me. They speak a different language; great swirling clouds of jargon, the fuzziest of fuzzwords, all laced with a level of macho market can-do talk that makes me deeply suspicious. Baffled but sceptical – not a good place to be. And there’s a lot going on at the moment – new ideas, a
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Pakistan’s Lady Health Workers – empowerment + healthcare

August 1, 2013
Just finished the paper for the UN on where/how governments have managed to empower poor and excluded groups and individuals. Thanks to everyone who suggested links when I blogged the outline back in June. I’ll do a summary when it’s out, but thought I’d share a few of the dozens of case studies dug up by my brilliant research assistant
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Campaigning on Hot v Cold Issues – what’s the difference?

July 31, 2013
I recently began an interesting conversation with our new campaigns and policy czar, Ben Phillips, who then asked me to pick the FP2P collective brain-hive for further ideas. Here goes. The issue is ‘cold’ v ‘hot’ campaigning. Over the next couple of years, we will be doing a lot of campaigning on climate change and inequality. Inequality is flavour of
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Are the wheels coming off the BRICS juggernaut?

July 30, 2013
Nouriel Roubini (aka Doctor Doom) and the Economist cover story on the same topic? It must be serious. The issue is whether the glitter is coming off the BRICS growth surge. First the Economist: ‘China will be lucky if it manages to hit its official target of 7.5% growth in 2013, a far cry from the double-digit rates that the
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Today’s grimfographic: how many people die a violent death, where and how?

July 29, 2013
From Action on Armed Violence using data from the Geneva Declaration’s Global Burden of Armed Violence report (whose link seems to be down at the moment). Key points to note: Only one in 8 violent deaths occur in the ‘conflict settings’ so beloved of news coverage. Most of the rest are ‘intentional homicides’ committed in gun and drug-plagued (but supposedly
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Off to WOMAD, any recommendations on who to see?

July 25, 2013
It’s the British summer, torrential rain is forecast, so  it’s time to grab the wet wipes and head for a festival. Off to WOMAD (World of Music, Art and Dance, 21st year) today – here’s the line-up. All recommendations welcome (best to tweet me on @fp2p, but should be able to read comments too, even on a blackberry). Back next week.
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What Brits say v what they mean: FP2P all time no. 1 hit

July 24, 2013
What with the summer torpor and being stuck at home finishing a paper, the usual flow of conversations and new reading has dried up a bit. Not only that, but I just realized this blog had passed its fifth anniversary without me even noticing. Tsk. So what better way to plug the occasional gap celebrate than a glance back at
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