Up to 50 Oxfams: Balancing global brand and local legitimacy
The need to strike a balance between wielding brand power and being sensitive to local contexts is not new. How is Oxfam International, which is planning to expand into dozens of new countries, navigating this balancing act?
By Anna Patton // 01 September 2014Oxfam is seeking to expand into dozens of new countries, as part of its vision to become more representative of the poor and powerless on whose behalf it works. Yet insiders at the international nongovernmental organization acknowledge that inviting local groups to join can cause tensions. Decision-making and financing arrangements, meanwhile, will need to change to manage growth and allow for the likely struggle to fundraise in developing countries. A confederation of 17 autonomous organizations working in 94 countries, Oxfam is expected to add up to eight new affiliates from the “global south” by 2020. Subsequent expansion in later years, though, could see 30, 40 or even 50 members of the global “family,” said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International. “We are looking at creating affiliates out of all the countries where we’re working. That’s our aim; that’s our vision,” she told Devex in an exclusive interview. That vision is being realized in Brazil and South Africa: Oxfam Brazil is expected to become an observer member next year, setting it on course to become a full affiliate, while what is to become the first African Oxfam appointed its founding executive director, Sipho Mthathi, in June. In parallel, the INGO’s presence in its country of origin seems to be declining. Oxfam Great Britain, the largest of the confederation’s affiliates, cut 125 U.K.-based jobs last year, while the international secretariat is preparing to relocate its Oxford base to an as yet undecided location. Bangkok and Nairobi are currently under consideration — and Istanbul is now also on the shortlist, Byanyima revealed. The brand: Barriers and benefits The creation of a new Oxfam affiliate usually involves inviting an existing, locally established organization into the confederation. In the case of Brazil, Chris Eijkemans, who first joined Oxfam in the mid-1990s and is currently country director of Oxfam in Cambodia, said some organizations were interested, “but others told us: ‘If you do, you are not doing any favors if you take away our strongest civil society organizations here and transform them into an Oxfam.’” Byanyima recognized this potential tension, saying creating a new affiliate “requires that we engage sensitively, that we don’t use our global brand to squeeze out others.” The need to strike a balance between wielding brand power and being sensitive to local contexts is not new. Oxfam teams on the ground are already “grappling with that all the time,” said Oxfam International’s Matt Grainger. In media relations or advocacy work, for example, Oxfam shouldn’t be the one speaking loudest. Instead it should work with locally rooted movements “so that Oxfam can use its weight to open up space for them too — especially when local civil society groups might find it difficult to [lobby]” due to repressive laws or a weak profile, for instance. The brand is particularly strong in the U.K., where according to Oxfam at least 90 percent of the public have heard of them, thanks in large part to its nearly 700 shops around the country whose sales of secondhand and fair-trade products help fund its overseas work. Whether future affiliates — in Turkey and Indonesia, for example, both on the long list of potential host countries — can recreate that brand power remains to be seen. But might the name also be an obstacle? “If an organization becomes an Oxfam affiliate, traditional donors become reluctant to provide funding,” Eijkemans said. “They think the new affiliate should receive it from the other affiliates.” But, Byanyima pointed out, joining the confederation still has major advantages. First, new affiliates will be able “to connect with others and bring new solutions, new ideas, expertise to solve problems,” she said. Southern organizations should benefit from current plans to build Oxfam as a “knowledge organization,” meaning that Kenyan staff, for example, could learn what their counterparts in Guatemala are doing on land grabs and immediately apply that experience in their own country. Secondly, she said, “the brand can sometimes access spaces that national organizations [cannot] ... If I want to have a meeting with the executive director of the [International Monetary Fund] or the president of the World Bank, I can meet them. We come with a very strong reputation — that is something that a national organization bearing our name also carries in the national context.” Thirdly, being part of an international organization can mitigate some of the risk of engaging where governments do not give enough space to civil society. This happens not only in “undemocratic” countries, Byanyima pointed out, but also in Canada, where NGOs have to defend their charitable status, or in Australia, where Oxfam is lobbying the government hard to get access to the G-20 process. “Sometimes a global organization is able to assert itself [in such contexts] because of the partnerships it has globally,” Byanyima explained, adding that big organizations had a duty “to help lead the fight to protect civil society space,” ideally within partnerships. Managing complexity Could Oxfam get too big? Byanyima does not think so — but as the INGO grows, practical changes will be needed. And there can be tension when deciding what’s best done together and what should be done nationally. “That is always a bit of a difficult decision,” she said. But, she added, “We are learning how to trust each other and delegate to each other. We will be rethinking our whole governance system so that we can have a few affiliates taking decisions on behalf of the many affiliates.” A representative from Oxfam International added that the confederation is aiming for an approach where decisions would be taken by staff “on a functional expertise basis, rather than an affiliate representational basis — but with clear scopes, mandates and accountabilities, which would mean that they make decisions on behalf of all, respected by all and are accountable for those.” The confederation will also shift its approach from the current model, where each affiliate resources itself, to one that’s more about pooling resources. “We are now going to move away from 17 fairly well-funded organizations mostly from the [“global north,”] to very many small organizations from the [global] south, who might not be very well-financed,” Byanyima said. “They’ll be struggling to raise money from constituencies that are not very wealthy.” The idea then, is to create a “common foundation of services” available to all, where the wealthier organizations contribute more and the poorer less. That might include a shared human resources service or common IT or audit systems, for example. For Byanyima, this is not only about cost-efficiencies, but also “a way of sharing power. Once you have all those common services, then you really can talk about fighting poverty together without having money creating a lot of unevenness among members.” And the dozens of new affiliates will also require new country-level leaders — drawn perhaps from existing Oxfam staff or from partner organizations or CSOs that will become future Oxfams. “We have to have national leaders who are strong, who are visible, who have strong communication skills,” Byanyima said, adding that her organization would be “investing heavily” in building those leaders. Following power ... Both Oxfam’s expansion and the relocation of its secretariat from Oxford are part of a long-term strategy to see the organization more rooted among its own constituencies. “We are building an organization that is more horizontal and that has many members from the south — so that we are truly global and more legitimate, more accountable,” Byanyima explained. In its campaign on land acquisition, for instance, Oxfam is well-placed to push for change at the international level on World Bank lending criteria or corporate behavior, Grainger said. But doing the research that informs that advocacy needs a local presence, while to influence local decision makers and companies, he said “you need to be part of a very solid local civil society.” Decisions have not yet been made either on when Oxfam International will move or on what that will mean for its roughly 50 Oxford-based staff members, while the final choice of location will depend on a number of practical factors, including cost-effectiveness, mobility and freedom of civil society. While it’s unclear how many of its current staff would be relocated or local staff would be hired, Oxfam may well look to the experience of ActionAid, which moved its international secretariat from the U.K. to Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2003. Oxfam International, responsible for coordination and advocacy, will retain multiple bases — it currently has offices in New York, Washington, D.C., Brussels, Brasilia and Addis Ababa, as well as in Oxford — and, Byanyima said, the organization will probably also have “some presence” in Asia. This means that alongside existing Oxfams in India, Hong Kong and Japan, plus the new affiliates expected in South and East Asia by 2020, a new Oxfam International office in the region could be opening soon. While existing Oxfam International bases keep close tabs on the likes of the United Nations, the World Bank or the European Union, “extending our presence in Asia will be driven by an agreed need to advocate for policy change in similar institutions,” an Oxfam International representative said. This thinking stems from what Byanyima called the current “paralysis” among decades-old institutions like the United Nations. The centers of power today, she argued, are to be found in emerging economies like Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and Mexico or groupings like the G-20. “We need to follow power where power has shifted ... We must be able to locate ourselves in ways that make us relevant and influential,” she said. … and following the money The global map of poverty and inequality has also shifted. While two decades ago, 93 percent of poor people lived in low-income countries, today nearly a billion people, almost three-quarters of the world’s poor, live in middle-income countries. But these regions are also sources of finance. From 2013, Oxfam’s strategy has been to reduce dependency on European donors and “enter and expand profitably in high-growth markets.” While details are not yet available, Devex has learned that Oxfam International is currently developing a new global fundraising strategy that will include specific targets for developing and emerging country donors. With each affiliate responsible for its own fundraising, the bulk of Oxfam’s overall funding today comes from institutions and individual citizens in developed countries, and a major part of the new strategy, Byanyima explained, will be to build a movement of supporters in the emerging middle classes in the global south — not just for raising money but even more for building social consciousness. “It’s about engaging publics to come and campaign with us, to speak up, to act, to go into [an Oxfam] shop and volunteer, and also to give us money,” she said. “This is a job that is going to engage us deeply in the years to come,” she added, emphasizing that its strong support base in Europe has been built up over some 70 years. For Eijkemans, integrating southern voices means the “direction of Oxfam is changing without any doubt,” with the organization more able to take into account their perspective of key issues like climate change. And the relocation of Oxfam International, he said, was symbolically important. “One thing we have to change is the perception that Oxfam is a northern-based organization,” Eijkemans said. With the move away from Oxford “the entire atmosphere in the organization will change dramatically.” Check out more insights and analysis provided to hundreds of Executive Members worldwide, and subscribe to the Development Insider to receive the latest news, trends and policies that influence your organization.
Oxfam is seeking to expand into dozens of new countries, as part of its vision to become more representative of the poor and powerless on whose behalf it works. Yet insiders at the international nongovernmental organization acknowledge that inviting local groups to join can cause tensions. Decision-making and financing arrangements, meanwhile, will need to change to manage growth and allow for the likely struggle to fundraise in developing countries.
A confederation of 17 autonomous organizations working in 94 countries, Oxfam is expected to add up to eight new affiliates from the “global south” by 2020. Subsequent expansion in later years, though, could see 30, 40 or even 50 members of the global “family,” said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International.
“We are looking at creating affiliates out of all the countries where we’re working. That’s our aim; that’s our vision,” she told Devex in an exclusive interview.
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Anna Patton is a U.K.-based freelance journalist, an associate editor at Pioneers Post, and an accredited trainer in solutions journalism. She previously worked with development NGOs and EU/government institutions in Berlin, Brussels, and Dar es Salaam, and has led media projects with grassroots communities in Uganda and Kenya. Anna is a fellow of On Purpose, a social change leadership program.