I am stunned by the controversy that has opened up between NGOs in the social sector and cooperation NGOs on account of the distribution of public subsidies. I am not boring you with the details, which you can find here, but the whole problem stems from a readjustment of the percentages assigned to each sector, and from an exotic interpretation of the criterion of “social interest” that, according to some, excludes cooperation and environment.
Save me Cucufato from frivolizing about a matter on which the lives of many people literally depend. But, seen from outside, this debate is reminiscent of that of the Popular Front of Judea, in Brian's Life . Spanish NGOs fighting in public for the misery they manage to scratch every year from the administrations, instead of confronting society and its rulers with the limitations of a perfectly adolescent model of philanthropy and a culture of commitment to the public that reflects the world from four decades ago.
The paradox of the Spanish non-governmental sector is that six out of every 10 euros in its budgets come from public funds, according to the most recent data. Spaniards are buried in 59th place on the World Giving Index, which measures the financial and personal commitment of societies in philanthropic activities. Far behind almost any of the countries in our environment and light years from our potential.
We love to tell each other, but we are a company that has declined its responsibility in completing, propping up and supervising administrations in the management of matters of public interest. Starting by guaranteeing universal social rights that are being ignored by those same administrations inside and outside our country.
With the one that we already have and the one that is upon us with the covid-19, do the NGOs really believe that the priority is to elbow each other for the misery that this and the previous governments have decided to grant them? Wouldn't it be worth joining forces and promoting a social earthquake that mobilizes private donors? That claims to the governments real fiscal incentives and not these hectic deductions imposed by the finance ministries? That he manages to pass the blessed Patronage Law? What takes companies out of their philanthropic abulia? What stimulates the collaborative creativity that has revolutionized the financing of sectors such as global health?
Something else: I am deeply alarmed by the context of galloping polarization that we are experiencing. And I am sure that putting your shoulder to the common good can become a very powerful social glue. A binder of collective generosity and encounter, beyond each one's ideological or religious gateway. NGOs are much more than the service provider to which they have been reduced by this child dependence on public powers. Let's see if they show it in one go.