It's Not What You Know but . . .

I was taught early in my "business" career the importance of having good professional help.

"Never skimp on professional fees," I was told. "An excellent lawyer and/or accountant is worth his or her weight in gold" said another. Blah, blah, blah . .  .

Who is this Man?* (answer below)

It isn't so easy to put into practice. Who in their right mind feels good about forking over $400 or $500 bucks . . . AN HOUR???

I learned to pay it and usually -- not always, but most of the time -- the advice I received paid dividends.

Back to present day Nicaragua.

What a nightmare.

BECA is now moving on to lawyer #6.I can't for the life of me find a decent, dependable lawyer here in Nicaragua.

This leads me to the premise of this blog.

I DON'T KNOW ANYBODY *#$&#(&$#!

It's one of the challenges I face working on BECA.

Back home, you pick up the phone. You phone a friend or family member. Someone whose opinion you trust. You get a reference. Boom, you're in business.

I can't do that here. There is no one to phone.

I'll tell you one thing. It makes me appreciate like CRAZY what our ancestors went through when they immigrated at the turn of the century.

Cripes they couldn't even speak the language.


Hmmm.

I guess that kinda applies to me too.

*About that picture. Do a Google image search for "lawyer nightmare." He's a lawyer whose pic comes up right near the top. Poor unsuspecting guy probably wrote an article at some point on some kind of complicated legal case he had. Too funny!

He Shoots, He Scores (High in Poverty)

I've talked about this poverty thing before.

To me it remains a four letter word. But no matter how much I dislike it, the concept remains very relevant for the work we try to do here in Nicaragua.

Here's an example.

BECA is about giving opportunities Nicaraguan high school grads. But not all of them. We want to lend a hand only to those that want to go to school, but can't afford it.

That's the easy part.

The hard part is . . . how can you tell how poor someone is?

Here is what we used to do. Go visit the scholarship applicant at home, eyeball the situation, and make a subjective call. "Yeah, this looks like a pretty rough situation. Juan deserves a shot."

I remember arguing with one of my Latin American workmates. I saw a newspaper in a house we were visiting. BINGO! That was enough for me. "This family doesn't need any scholarships . . they can afford to buy the newspaper!"

Not very scientific, and, ultimately, unacceptable.

So this year we are trying out something new. A score card. You can check out the English version here (pdf).

Last weekend we visited 21 families. And we kept score. The initial results were encouraging. Well, not encouraging of course . . . but, you know, I think this scorecard concept has potential.

Now the question is . . .

What to do with all these numbers?

[sigh]

Why are We Staring?

Why are we staring all day at our computer?
 
Is it because we’re working?

       or 

Is it because we’re trying to figure out what to work on?
 
They’re not the same thing.

Hat tip: Sasha Dichter's Blog

The (non)Giving Season

If you are wondering how the donation season went around here at BECA.org, don't ask.

It sucked.
  
Donations were down at least 50% from holiday season 2009.

The conventional wisdom in the U.S. non-profit universe is that 90% of your donations come in the last two weeks in December. I guess it's a tax deduction thing.

Anyway, if that really is the case, then we are in for a very long year. [gulp]

Not sure why the December fundraising went so poorly.

I thought we had all our bases covered.

We produced a nifty video campaign.

We reached out to all our newsletter subcribers.

We reached out to our previous sponsors.

We bugged our Facebook fans.

I phoned my Mom. (No panic there, she stepped up. Always does.) :)

Maybe we'll send out a poll to find out why people weren't interested in chipping in.

It could be that the peer-to-peer sponsorship model doesn't have any legs and is not sustainable in the longer term. This is a possibility.

Nevertheless, none of this is in the least bit disheartening to me personally. The program here in Nicaragua is going good and we still plan to expand to two more cities.

If it means changing gears and eventually coming up with a different sustainable funding mechanism, so be it.

Rest assured. There is no way in the world I'm giving up that easy.

Besides, I'm having way too much fun.

For those of you who did chip in, thanks a lot. Thanks for believing in what we are doing. Every buck or two really goes a long way here.