To the MFAN Community, Throughout my career I have worked with a number of individuals who I would call leaders in the true sense of the word. To lead is to “guide on a way, especially by going in advance.” The international affairs community is fortunate to be led by some impressive individuals willing to … Continue reading A Note on Aid Reform: Leadership
Development initiatives must cut across all groups of society for full impact. According to some estimates, women represent 70 percent of the world’s poor. What can a focus on women’s economic empowerment do for the world? Experts say the female economy represents an emerging market more than twice the size of India and China combined. … Continue reading 5 ways the new U.S. Development Finance Corporation can embrace women’s economic empowerment
Thank you for your interest in MFAN. The application period is now closed. Sign up for our mailing list to stay in touch. The MFAN Executive Director is a leader with a vision and passion for more effective U.S. foreign assistance and with strong skills in alliance building, fundraising, management, and policy to spearhead that … Continue reading MFAN is hiring an Executive Director!
Friends, At our core, MFAN is committed to three principles: transparency of U.S. foreign aid, accountability of our assistance programs, and the local ownership needed to achieve meaningful results. As 2019 gets well underway, MFAN is looking at a number of opportunities to put these principles to practice and increase development effectiveness: The new U.S. … Continue reading A Note on Aid Reform: Applying the Fundamentals
Happy New Year everyone, I’m excited to write you for the first time as MFAN’s interim Executive Director. After 30+ years at the Congressional Research Service and a decade consulting for various MFAN members, I’m eager to work directly on MFAN’s aid reform issues. As you may know, MFAN has been going through some changes, … Continue reading A Note on Aid Reform: A New Year Agenda as the Government Returns to Work
The Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network advocates for more effective and accountable U.S. foreign assistance that will deliver greater results for people in need and U.S. taxpayers. A chaotic budget environment beleaguered with cuts, delays, and rescissions does not enable effective aid nor efficient use of American taxpayer dollars. To shed light on the issues with this … Continue reading Budget Instability and Development Effectiveness
Dear Colleagues, On Tuesday, Tessie and I (Les was in far-off places) had the pleasure of joining leaders from the aid community, MCC, USAID, and OPIC to honor ten dedicated members of Congress on Capitol Hill. It was a pleasure to be joined by former MFAN Co-Chair and current Honorary Co-Chair, former Representative Jim Kolbe, … Continue reading A Year in Review, A Decade of Reform
As MFAN celebrates 10 years of aid reforms, we thank our congressional allies, our administration partners, and the MFAN community for articulating the value of foreign assistance and advancing reforms to achieve even greater impact. On December 4, 2018 we had the pleasure of joining leaders from the aid community, MCC, USAID, and OPIC to honor … Continue reading Champions of Aid Reform: A Decade of Aid Effectiveness and the Future of U.S. Assistance
In a rare example of agreement from Capitol Hill to the White House to the development community, the Better Utilization of Investments Leading to Development Act (BUILD Act), P.L. 115-254, was signed into law on October 5, 2018. This legislation creates the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC). The new agency not only combines the … Continue reading Setting the Gold Standard for Transparency: The Opportunity for the New U.S. Development Finance Agency
Transparency and access to data is an important part of aid effectiveness. Aside from providing people with the right to access information, the aim of aid transparency is threefold: to better coordinate aid, enable more accountability, and allow for in-country actors to know what is happening in their own communities, thus giving them more ownership … Continue reading Transparency of the Future: A High-Quality, Highly Usable U.S. Foreign Aid Dashboard
