The first time I worked in a NGO, it was a Gates mission. We had a very small budget, under $100k. The mission was part of the Millenium Village Project, and t

The first time I worked in a NGO, it was a Gates mission. We had a very small budget, under $100k. The mission was part of the Millenium Village Project, and the various entities adhering to MVP were managing our money. The Gates foundation never checked how it was used. And 37% of this budget stayed in new york, as a management fee. 14% of this budget stayed at the local MVP antenna, again as a management fee. What were they managing you ask ? Well, one thing was our budget: if we ever had to order something, we needed to go through them, "to avoid inappropriate spendings". Once, I ordered a printer, knowing exactly the price of the device. It arrived alright, but the bill stated twice the price it should have cost. The NGO in the street next to us had a worse story. We managed to perform our mission. They didn't. Yet they consummed $ 2 millions doing so. For the 3 years I have been active in Africa, every time I went on a mission, no matter the degree of success, a marvelous report with shiny graphs was sent to our backers stating how great we did on the field. According to them, I saved so many children overpopulation is probably kinda my fault now. We never heard once from the Gates foundation. Like you said, they sprayed and prayed. One time, we had a gig from MS themself. We were supposed to do a conference over a few days in Senegal with their money. One MS guy came the first hour, distributed a few t-shirts, then leaved forever. We decided "fuck that", and proceded to give a training on Linux based products for the rest of the conf. That's how ridiculous all that is.