Monday, September 20, 2010

View through Obfuscation

Shmuel Rosner ponders whether the NIF has learned anything from the public pressure on it these past months, and is not convinced. Yet he expects the pressure to continue, and recommends the NIF-folks take this into account.
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11 comments:

Carrie said...

Yaacov,
Are there any reports in the Israeli media showing that donations to the NIF are down by any significant numbers? I understand the organization is not the most transparent but I assume many mainstream Israelis were angered by the NIF's support of extremely anti-Israel elements and stopped their donations.

Thanks,
Carrie

September 21, 2010 at 4:45 PM
Abtalyon said...

Carrie,
You are mistaken. NIF publishes its financial statements every year. It couldn't be more open. Don't take my word for it, click on the link and see for yourself.

http://www.nif.org/about/financial-information/

Hearsay is a poor substitute for finding out the facts first-hand.

Abtalyon.

September 21, 2010 at 9:37 PM
Yaacov said...

Carrie -

Most of the funding of the NIF comes from abroad, not from Israelis.

Abtalyon - OK, I checked. My starting point was a foundation I'm vaguely affiliated with, about which I know how much money they've given the NIF. I used your link,and sought the information there. Sorry, it's not there in any way I can find it. So much for transparency.

September 21, 2010 at 11:46 PM
Abtalyon said...

Yaakov Lozowick:

If you didn't find what you were looking for on their website, how about contacting them by E-mail and asking for an explanation? If you still get no satisfaction, then you are justified in commenting on a lack of transparency.

September 22, 2010 at 2:59 PM
Yaacov said...

Abtalyon,

You're missing the point. In this particular case, I know the answer in advance (from the direction of the donor). My experiment was to see if the claim of transparency is credible: can an ordinary citizen see through the materials offered online by the NIF who their donors are, how much they give, and for which programs. The answer seems to be, no, none of that information is easily accessible (if at all). I used the link you suggested. Now you're changing the rules, and saying that , well, the link isn't much good but if I ask the NIF directly perhaps they'll tell me. And perhaps they won't. In any case, your new position effectively admits that there's no transparency - or actually, my testing of your proposition demonstrates that.

September 22, 2010 at 3:18 PM
Anonymous said...

Abtalyon

I asked that lady from NIF who commented on this blog a while ago after she had claimed total transparency about their connection to Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Israel. Her answer was to the effect that she couldn't know everything.

Silke

September 22, 2010 at 11:10 PM
Abtalyon said...

Yaacov;
The 2008 donor list appears on the financial info page. No other years are listed. Could it be that the donor you know gave money earlier or later than 2008? Exact amounts donated are not listed, only ranges, e.g. $100000 or more, $50000-$99999, much like other charities. I would imagine that few donors specify where their donation must be spent and the bulk of the money is allocated as the NIF sees fit. Funding guidelines are listed in the web-site. All recipients of aid and the sums involved are listed.

http://www.nif.org/about/financial-information/2008-donors.html

September 24, 2010 at 4:12 PM
Abtalyon said...

Silke:
Heinrich-Boll-Stiftung supports Shatil, itself an initiative of NIF.

http://www.boell.org.il/

September 24, 2010 at 4:21 PM
Anonymous said...

Abtalyon

thanks!
I didn't ask the NIF-lady out of the blue, I had checked beforehand that there was something she should have known, provided her claim of total transparency was totally true.

As my personal "investigations" of the contributions of German state agencies have left me with the distinct feeling of encountering a field where the strategy of choice is to hide in plain sight such discrepancies between theory and praxis make me feel uneasy.

On a more general note:
if somebody tells me he/she is the lily-white queen of propriety than I expect him/her to prove true to her word and not to tell me that well in this case there is a little un-white spot. If that happens I entitle myself to suspect him/her of being a wee bit of a hypocrite.

Silke

September 24, 2010 at 4:55 PM
Abtalyon said...

Silke:
It seems to me that your complaint concerns how detailed "transparency" of a charity's transactions needs to be. Perhaps you should check NIF and any other charity against agreed criteria for audit and transparency such as at the link below.

http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=1093

I still believe that the rush to judgment, indicated in the comments above, has not been justified.

September 25, 2010 at 3:21 PM
Anonymous said...

Abtalyon
I will not check because I think I am smart enough to recognize an evasive answer when I get one i.e. had the NIF-official answered like you did right now, I might have been willing to pursue the matter further or give her the benefit of the doubt. But when somebody claims first "total" and then says she can't be bothered, that's it for me

i.e. my judgment is passed, now it is up to them to reestablish trust and correct the impression they made. It is emphatically not up to me to spend time looking for mitigating explanations of their official statements.

all that applies of course only if the organisation should be run by responsible adults.

Silke

September 25, 2010 at 4:20 PM

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