Why Don’t Domestic and International Charities Collaborate to Fight Poverty?

“As someone with an interest in both the domestic and international dimensions of poverty, I’m struck by the sometimes limited crossover and dialogue between people working on the issue here and those working abroad,” writes Tony Pipa, a consultant to nonprofit groups, on the PhilanTopic blog.

He says it’s painful to hear politicians say there’s no comparison and to watch the leaders of international charities agree.

Mr. Pipa says he’s worried about the growth of “a sort of development protectionism,” where pressure builds to send money to local, rather than international, causes. At the same time, the nonprofit consultant says he’s bothered by a “moral high-handedness” on the part of some people who work in international development. They may sometimes suggest that living in a refugee camp or on less than a dollar a day is fundamentally different than being poor in the United States, and that people who give abroad make a much bigger impact.

“Whatever grains of truth are contained in the attitudes on either side,” he says, they distract from an important conversation: What people fighting poverty abroad and in the United States learn from each other?

Groups that prepare for disasters in the United States, for example, could benefit from talking to charities that helped ready Bangladesh for natural disasters. That country lost 138,000 people in a cyclone in 1991, but just 10,000 in a similar disaster two years ago.

Donors who want to assist people abroad, meanwhile, could learn a lot from the Jacobs Family Foundation. Its efforts to improve the Diamond neighborhoods of San Diego have given its residents ownership stakes in community-development projects.

Mr. Pipa notes that last week’s Global Philanthropy Forum, focused on both the domestic and international implications of five transnational issues. (See The Chronicle’s coverage of the forum in our conference notebook.)

“Perhaps the next step would be for GPF and the Neighborhood Funders Group — the affinity group of foundations working to improve economic conditions in U.S. communities — to cosponsor a conference on solutions to poverty,” he writes.

What do you think of Mr. Pipa’s message?