Social Sector Malaysia: When Charities Take Market Approach

From what I read and conversations I had with charities, the larger ones usually provide welfare along with some skill, job or business training programs to help the socially underprivileged. This approach is generally thought to be more sustainable but the evidence is less so.

Charities usually hold themselves accountable to providing grants and training opportunities that the socially underprivileged wouldn't have otherwise. Such assistance is important but there is a big gap in tracking their actual goals in creating and sustaining jobs and businesses for the underprivileged. It is always difficult to know if more lasting and meaningful results have been achieved.

Common reasons that I heard are no resources to track, immediate assumptions that the underprivileged are better off with assistance, no demands from funders, etc, there is still a long way to go before we see charities improve to align their market attempts to actual goals. No doubt that such tracking will be more complex but it is necessary to gradually move toward that direction.