Interventions bring, or transfer, resources into a context. These can be money, food, medicine, personnel, vehicles, jobs, buildings, teachers, training, etc. Resources are the programmatic tools we use to attempt to make change.
Resources always have impacts. This is their point. Organizations do not bring resources into a context to avoid impact.
Organizations often track the impacts of their resource transfers only on people’s physical conditions or wellbeing. But it is impossible to transfer resources into any context without, at the same time, affecting the social dynamics. Understanding and shaping these social impacts is critical for improving the effectiveness of any intervention. This is the point of Do No Harm.
There are five common patterns of Resource Transfers.
A Distribution Effect occurs when people perceive that an organization has a bias in favor for or against a specific group through the way they distribute resources.
A Legitimization Effect occurs where an organization is perceived to be using its resources to support a political or governing authority.
Market Effects are the result of changes in the local incentive structures and patterns of opportunity caused by the introduction of new resources. The new resources noticeably affect incomes, wages, profits, and prices so that people’s perception of economic winners and losers changes.
A Substitution Effect occurs when an organization takes over for local capacity, reducing or replacing local efforts.
Theft occurs when people simply take resources from an organization.
All five of these will take place in any intervention. They are not necessarily dangerous. Indeed, often some of these effects are intended.
For example, an intervention may intend to have Market Effects: we want to change the wages, prices, and profits of certain types of work so as to support better livelihoods. However, even intended changes can exacerbate Dividers or reduce Connectors.
Through use, users have found that two of these impact areas, Distribution Effects and Legitimization Effects, occur far more often in ways that have direct impacts on Dividers and Connectors than the others.
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See the chart to the right “Five Patterns of Resource Transfer”
Related Topics
Using Resource Transfers
Messages through the RAFT
