Interview - Monica Mutuku

Persuading people to help build an endowment fund that will support civil society capacity-building is never an easy task. In a country with extremes of poverty and immediate need like Kenya, it must be even more difficult. After four years of running grantmaking programmes, the Kenya Community Development Foundation (KCDF) is trying to do just this. Caroline Hartnell asked Director Monica Mutuku how she gets over these difficulties.

Selling the idea of an endowment

The first point Monica Mutuku makes is that giving is very much part of the Kenyan way of life. 'In Kenya schools and health centres are often paid for by the community.' But, she says, 'it's much more difficult if you say, "This money is for investing, for doing something five, ten years down the line." Not unnaturally, the first question people raise is "How can you justify collecting money to put away when there is so much that needs to be done today?" There are families in northern Kenya who are actually starving. These are valid questions.'

How does Mutuku answer these questions? One of the answers she uses relates to asset building. 'I think it is all about building assets, which is important for getting out of poverty. At the personal level people see that to save, to invest for the future, is to move themselves up to a more secure level.'

Her other argument is about independence: Kenya can’t go on for ever depending on people from outside for its development resources. 'Until we begin to build our own resources, we cannot begin to strengthen our own arguments for asking others to help us.'

According to Mutuku, this is beginning to make some sense to people. 'I am finding that very rich Kenyans like the idea of building a fund in their own name for something they care about.' The Law Society of Kenya, for example, likes the idea of building a scholarship fund for students from disadvantaged families. 'Professional Kenyans are beginning to appreciate that they do need to do something about Kenyans who need this kind of support. Poverty has been increasing in Kenya and affording an education is becoming a big issue.'

The grantmaking programme

But, Mutuku insists, it's no good just talking about asset building and focusing on what an endowment will enable us to do tomorrow. 'If we are to have any credibility, we also need to show what we are doing now.'

This is where KCDF's grantmaking programme comes in. 'You show people the sorts of thing you are doing already, and explain that if they give us money for the future, we will be able to go on doing them without relying on international donors. That's the argument we are putting.' The KCDF 'package' for potential donors thus includes the profiles of organizations they are supporting and a map of Kenya to show where they operate.

Selling the idea of capacity-building

But isn't asking people to contribute to an endowment fund that will support long-term capacity-building harder even than asking them to help build a fund that will support work with street children or educational scholarships?

Mutuku agrees that capacity-building is not always easy to sell but KCDF has found that, depending on how they illustrate what they are saying, the idea can make sense to people. 'The best way I have found is to ask Kenyans to take a look back at 30 years of independence. We were able to do very well the first 15 or 20 years. At one point we had almost 100 per cent primary school enrolment, and the average Kenyan had a five-kilometre walk to a health facility which had paid staff and drugs. But a lot of these things have become run down because of poor management.' This is where she brings in capacity-building.

'The argument I try to put is that we probably didn’t address sufficiently the issue of capacities. We didn’t invest in people, or attitudes – or maybe in civil society. How can people be more in control of their lives? How can they police their government? We have watched things deteriorating and have not been able to stop it.'

At this point, says Mutuku, 'I find it is easier to demonstrate graphically that it is important that we invest in our capacities as people, that we invest in having strong institutions within the civil society sector.'

Starting to put their case

KCDF clearly has a complex case to put over, both for the endowment and for capacity-building. How are they doing this? Who are they talking to? It seems that it is too early to answer this question. So far the emphasis has been on doing presentations about why the capacity-building programme is needed. It is only this year that they have really begun to talk about the endowment.

Initially these presentations were largely for international donors. Now they are talking more to Kenyan professional associations and charitable organizations like the Rotary Clubs. The approach has to be systematic and phased. 'We are putting together several lists. Our A-list is the people we are going to be talking to this year.' This consists largely of wealthy individuals. 'The idea is to get to talk to them on a one-to-one basis and offer them a variety of menus – you can build a fund in your family name, you can tell us what you want us to do with the interest, and so on.'

The issue of ethics and corruption arises here. 'We are trying to build this list around people we feel are credible, who are not associated with corruption scandals like Goldenberg (Goldenberg was a company that managed to claim a lot of money from the government for exporting gold. A lot of people made a lot of money out of it.)

KCDF also sees the corporate sector as part of the picture. Some presentations have included companies. They have also been doing some research to see whether local companies have a policy on community involvement, whether they have a community affairs manager.

KCDF is also identifying communities where they know that people have been making a lot of effort to raise money for their own development. They hope that they can offer them a service to help build community funds, that they can interest them in looking at what they want to be doing ten years down the line.

What happens if individuals, or maybe companies, don’t want to contribute to an endowment – it's too long term – but would like to give KCDF funds for a grantmaking programme for a particular purpose? 'No problem,' says Mutuku. 'We would be flexible. The KCDF package includes profiles of the organizations we are supporting, a booklet on the grantmaking programme itself and information about endowment. People can look at it and see where they feel their interest lies.'

Mutuku is very positive about the new Centre for Promotion of Philanthropy and Social Responsibility. 'A climate of giving needs to be created. The whole issue of awareness-building – the work the Centre is going to be doing, from what I understand – is something with which we will be able to link up very well.' KCDF is particularly interested in the possibility of the new centre working on incentives for giving, like tax reliefs. 'It's the sort of thing that one organization cannot do. You need strength in numbers to do advocacy well. It's good that civil society is beginning to emerge with its own agenda like tax reliefs and other ways of encouraging people to give. It's going to be very useful, I think.'

Monica Mutuku has worked over 30 years in the development field. She has been Director of KCDF since 1997. Before that she worked with UNICEF for ten years, and prior to that she worked for 20 years with the City Council of Nairobi, of which 11 were as Assistant Director of the Housing Development Department.

Kenya Community Development Foundation

Established in 1997, KCDF has two goals: grantmaking for capacity-building and mobilizing permanent resources for community development.

KCDF supports programmes that build people's capacity rather than sectoral projects such as water, health and education. To date KCDF has provided nearly 30 million shillings to communities and organizations all over Kenya.

KCDF plans to mobilize money for an endowment by inviting both local and international donors to build and/or support different types of permanent fund:

• donor advised funds, where the donor advises KCDF on what to support each year;
• field of interest funds, where donors decide up-front the field/area they wish to support;
• community funds, created by communities wishing to create sustainable investment for their current and future development;
• agency funds, created by NGOs and CBOs for their own sustainability;
• unrestricted funds, crucial for generating the Foundation's core costs.

With the exception of agency funds and unrestricted funds, the Foundation offers a match of one to one for all funds started over the next year or two up to a total of US$650,000.

For more information about KCDF, please contact Monica Mutuku at kcdf@nbnet.co.ke