Everybody Wants to Save the World
But when you start a charity overseas, good intentions often go awry
Inc., 12/07
There was a nasty surprise waiting for Troy Wiseman in Zambia. The founder of InvestLinc, an investment and wealth-management company, flew into that African nation in the summer of 2005. On the agenda: taking Zambia’s first lady on a tour of several institutions financed by his charity, World Orphans. Unfortunately, the orphanages seemed not to exist. Nor could Wiseman locate the supervising pastor, to whom he had wired almost $70,000 over the past year. After half a dozen phone calls failed to clear things up, Wiseman made his apologies to the president’s wife and headed anxiously back to Chicago.
The Zambia debacle was especially troublesome because World Orphans had recently begun soliciting outside donations. What if this wasn’t an isolated situation? Wiseman wondered. How could he pitch his organization to donors if it was beset by fraud? So he hired a veteran philanthropist, Paul Myhill, who visited 53 of the charity’s 400 sponsored orphanages and compiled a detailed report. It painted a grim portrait. Many of the orphanages were poorly maintained or were being used as old-age homes. Some had never been built. Wiseman estimates about half the projects Myhill visited did not fit the mission statement. About 20 turned out to be outright frauds.
Many entrepreneurs reach a point in their lives when, having tackled the problems of customers, employees, and industries, they are tempted to take on the world’s ills. Inspired by the likes of Bill Gates and George Soros, some launch philanthropies aimed at providing aid to developing nations. They assume that the skills responsible for their for-profit successes will translate easily into the nonprofit realm.