Fraser Institute Study on NGOS (fwd)

Date: Mon, 20 Apr 1998 14:38:34 -0300 (ADT)
From: Mark Butler <ar427@chebucto.ns.ca>
To: sust-mar@chebucto.ns.ca
Precedence: bulk
Return-Path: <sust-mar-mml-owner@chebucto.ns.ca>

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ATTENTION   ATTENTION

Attention all non-profit service agencies' staff and board
members and friends.....The Fraser Institute is launching a new
initiative aimed at undermining the non-profit sector and
attacking the relationship between government and non-profits.

The Fraser Institute, the neo-liberal, corporate-funded "think-
tank" based in Vancouver, has hooked up with the Donner Canada
Foundation, a well-funded foundation which finances many right-
wing causes in Canada, in a project aimed at gathering
information to be used in its promotion of free market solutions
to social policy issues.  

WARNING: DO NOT CO-OPERATE WITH THIS PROJECT AND IF YOU HAVE ANY
RELATIONSHIP OR INFLUENCE WITH NON-PROFIT AGENCIES IMMEDIATELY
ALERT THEM TO THE DANGERS OF CO-OPERATING WITH THIS PROJECT.

The project, funded by and named for the Donner Foundation,
offers six $5000 prizes purporting to award "best practices" by
non-profit agencies and a $25,000 award for the agency "which
best illustrates the principles of excellence." These cash awards
in effect offer to pay non-profits for their co-operation in
their own demise. Both the Donner and the Fraser Institute are
well-funded right-wing bodies promoting exclusive market
solutions to public policy issues. The Fraser Institute's
explicit mandate is to reduce the social role of government to
its barest minimum. Its motto is "Public problems, private
solutions." In its fund-raising materials it boasts about being
able to promote the interests of corporations in ways that
corporations can not. Institute head Michael Walker once admitted
that he and a fellow researcher in the U.S. engaged in an
"informal contest" to see who could find the best evidence
proving that women fare better in the workforce than men. 

The Fraser constantly attacks public medicare and public
education as dismal failures, attacks official poverty statistics
as wild exaggerations of real poverty levels. Its research is
often questionable such as a "study" on hospital waiting lists
based solely on the "impressions" of self-selecting doctor
specialists (no random sample was used) who had a vested interest
in creating anxiety about waiting lists. 

In a leaked five year plan the Fraser indicated it intends to
double its budget through canvassing 25 large multinational
corporations. Under the heading "Social Affairs Unit" the plan
indicates a major new focus on social services and welfare and
states: "A key aspect...will be to explore the possibilities of
systematically replacing government programs in these areas with
private alternatives." It also specifically states that it would
undertake efforts to undermine the Vanier Institute whose studies
have influenced past governments' social policy. One objective of
the plan is to get Statscan to adopt the Fraser definition of
poverty.

The Donner Foundation funds the Fraser Institute's relentless
attack on the government debt in which it promotes massive cuts
to social spending as the only solution. It financed the
establishment an east-coast clone of the Fraser Institute
(Atlantic Institute for Market Studies); the neo-liberal "Next
City" magazine, various charter school advocacy groups (promoting
privately-run, publicly-funded schools); it provides funding to
universities to be distributed to professors supporting their
ideology; it gave the University of Victoria $450,000 to
establish a Centre for Municipal Studies to examine lowering tax
revenues and "market options in delivering public services." It
has also funded a group of Canadian professors defending
University  of Western Ontario professor Phillipe Rushton, whose
writings claim blacks are less intelligent and have smaller
brains than whites.

The "contest" application, sent out by the Fraser Institute and
with a contact name Jason Clemens at the Fraser Institute, names
some of the judges for the contest. They include Donner Chair
Allan Gotlieb, one of the most vigorous proponents of free trade,
Sally Pipes, Executive Director of the conservative Pacific
Research Centre and Patrick Luciani, Executive Director of the
Donner.

While the cover letter written by the Fraser Institute describing
the contest says the study will only use "aggregate statistics"
detailed reports on each agency's "performance" will be produced.
Nothing on the Donner application form makes any promise about
how the data for individual agencies will be used.

The questions which must be answered to "win" the context are
loaded with neo-liberal traps which can be used to attack the
social agencies which co-operate. Several questions seek
information on performance indicators a neo-liberal application
of private sector outcomes monitoring which are now finding their
way into government administrations. Their effect has been
pernicious. It is a new kind of Taylorism; a time/motion study
approach used to judge social services and intended on proving
that private sector providers are "more efficient" and should
therefore replace government and non-profit providers.

Other questions ask whether or not the agency "restricts the
receipt of services on the basis of need?"; "Does you agency
measure the frequency of usage by clients?"; It asks what
percentage of board members are also employed as staff members
and how many time the board met in 1996.

There are many questions relating to funding and how much
government funding an agency receives. These questions, in
conjunction with questions about what services government
provides that are similar to the agency, suggest an attack on
"overlapping" and therefore inefficient services. The application
form requires that the agency provide extremely detailed
financial information from its audited report to all fund-raising
activities and sources of funding.




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