#SundayColumn #NGOs #Humour #MajorsCorner #ClubLife August 31st 2014

I had an unusual splitting headache last week at the club (the home of homes) after listening to several members go on about this and that, but nothing really meaty to get one’s teeth into. Of course when one gets a headache at this time of life, one cannot help but think it might be the onset of a stroke.
With my luck it won’t be fatal and I shall be left a cabbage, spouting gibberish with my wife’s awful cats crawling all over me. I give anyone permission to garrotte me with a Senior Reading Room curtain cord if he sees me in the throes of the aforementioned predicament. Better dead than avoided at the club, what?
The pounding in my head abated somewhat when I clamped eyes on my friend George Smallpiece, a man of substance and wit. However he sat down with a grim visage next to my green wingback. He obviously had something on his mind.
“NGOs,” he said loudly. “Non-governmental organizations,” he elaborated as if I did not know what the initials meant.
“Yes, I know what they are, George” I said, rubbing my temples, which had resumed throbbing.
He apologized hurriedly. Did I know that people who run the bally things jokingly call them “Nothing Going On”? In other words. many don’t send much money to the subjects they purport to support. I shot a skeptical eyebrow high upon my brow at that, as my wife of some 50 years and I support several such worthy causes.
“You see, their costs eat up most of their funds, so that there is not much left in the drawer to send,” he insisted.
The room swam before my eyes. How could this be? George loosened his belt a bit so he could lean in close to me, “Expenses are often above 80 per cent,” he breathed. “What!” I exclaimed.
George said he had more than a few friends “on the Game,” as he put it, and they claimed that after travel, huge advertising fees, office expenses, conventions, enormous executive salaries, pensions and first class travel, oh and pins, everyone wanted a pin for the lapel, they were lucky if there were any funds remaining at all. The fact that there is a lack of government oversight, makes everything splendid as far as the NGOs are concerned.
I suddenly remembered a shocking article in the Vancouver Sun a few months ago, which reported that a third of a billion dollars was being given every year to 300 or so NGOs to look after the downtown east side of Vancouver, a 16-block area. Madness surely. And it is still a truly dreadful place. The question the newspaper asked was: Where did the money go?
The one-armed Colonel joined us to pass along something he had just heard on this very subject: That civil servants loved to be seen at NGO conventions because it gave the impression that government was somehow involved and not just spraying money to bloody dictators.
Incredibly these civil servants were even sometimes paid to speak at these functions, with all expenses included. The Colonel said he was reliably informed that it helps if somehow the NGOs can work in the United Nations at these get-togethers in warmer climes, especially in winter.
One bright group that purported to send underwear to the Third World enlarged the first two letters of “underwear” so that it became “UN-derwear.” No one could make out what it represented but if the UN was involved, “Count us in,” went the thinking. The chap who thought of that is now a god amongst the NGO movers and shakers.
We ordered medicinal martinis all round as the subject had exhausted us. In fact we were so spent we asked for club sticky buns as well.
In the end George said from now on he would only give to the Sally Ann as he could see what they did.
Perhaps ask what the expense ratio is if any NGO phones you for a donation. Not all are like this, but I am afraid a great deal are.
Nothing Going On.
Copyright Major’s Corner 2014
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