What Real Foreign Aid Reform Means

U.S. foreign assistance has helped drive some of the greatest human progress in the last 50 years. The impact of America’s generosity and leadership can be measured in millions of lives saved and transformed. For example, the Marshall Plan rebuilt Europe’s economy after World War II, and the Green Revolution in agriculture helped put Asia on a path to long-term growth in the 1960s and ’70s. The Campaign for Child Survival raised immunization rates from 15 percent to nearly 80 percent in the 1980s, and efforts to increase access to HIV/AIDS drugs in Africa helped millions of people over the last decade.

Led by President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the current administration has strengthened America’s commitment to development by calling it a “moral, strategic, and economic imperative,” building on the campaign pledge Obama made to ensure that “development is established and endures as a key pillar of U.S. foreign policy.”

But the rhetorical rubber meets the road when we look at the current system we use to deliver foreign aid. The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (FAA), written during the Cold War era, is outdated and does not address the challenges of the modern world. Nearly 500 pages long, it includes hundreds of overlapping and uncoordinated goals, provisions, and directives. The programs it authorizes are executed by at least 12 departments, 25 different agencies, and almost 60 government offices.

According to Oxfam America field research, this lack of strategic order and coordination has real on-the-ground consequences:

In Afghanistan, where a “civilian surge” is under way, two separate U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) contractors recently discovered by chance that they were doing virtually the same project in the same town.

In Bangladesh, the United States collects several times the amount in tariffs that it provides in assistance, essentially taxing the very trade U.S. leaders tout as a solution to poverty.

In Cambodia, government officials typically find it easier to get information on aid resources from the Chinese government than from the U.S. government.

The people we are trying to help, and the generous U.S. taxpayers who support our efforts to improve their lives, cannot afford this inefficiency when budgets are tight and effective development is such a critical element of our foreign policy and national security. The time has come for the president to lead the way in reforming U.S. foreign assistance:

First, the president should use his “New Approach to Advancing Development” paper, released at the recent G8 summit in Muskoka, Canada, as a basis for creating America’s first-ever Global Development Strategy. The paper makes a strong case for reorienting and strengthening U.S. development efforts, but it does not answer crucial questions: Is achieving broad-based development a distinct goal of U.S. global engagement, or is it merely a tool to serve diplomatic or defense objectives? And will USAID experts in the field have the authority to implement foreign aid programs, or will diplomats and soldiers? A new strategy must resolve these issues.

Second, the president should signal publicly that he is ready to work with Congress on foreign aid reform, particularly by overhauling the FAA. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA) has already released a working draft of a new FAA, and last year, 126 representatives and 23 senators from both sides of the aisle supported foreign assistance reform legislation.

At stake is America’s ability to effectively address the global challenges of the 21st century. And the timing is important. In just two months, the eyes of the world will be on the Millennium Development Goals Summit, where committed nations must pledge new energy and resolve in the fight against global poverty. By showing leadership on foreign assistance reform, President Obama will attach actions to his words on development — and hopefully lead others to commit to more effectively empowering the world’s poorest people to realize a brighter future.

Forty days after President Obama pledged to issue a new development policy “in the near future” – and with no word yet on when it will be released – MFAN, joined by more than 200 partner organizations and individuals, has published an Open Letter urging the President to show much-needed leadership to reform foreign assistance and strengthen America’s commitment to global development.  The letter, published in today’s issue of Politico, urges President Obama to:

• Create America’s first-ever Global Development Strategy – which is referenced in the leaked Presidential Study Directive draft, “A New Way Forward on Global Development”; and
• Partner with Congress to rewrite the outdated Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, a working draft of which House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman recently released.

We applaud the steps taken by the Obama Administration thus far to elevate development as a pillar of U.S. foreign policy, which will help us do a better job of reducing poverty and spurring economic growth worldwide.  But these efforts, including initiatives such as Feed the Future and the Global Health Initiative, will not reach their full potential unless our country has an overarching Global Development Strategy.

“The volume and variety of signatories – from NGOs, think tanks, and corporations to former U.S. government officials and private-sector leaders – indicates the widespread support and urgent need for the President to take definitive action toward reforming our foreign assistance system,” said Co-Chair George Ingram.  “We must have a Global Development Strategy to clearly state what we are trying to achieve, how different actors within the U.S. government will contribute to that mission, and who will be in charge of – and accountable for – achieving results.  Likewise, the Cold War-era Foreign Assistance Act no longer provides a realistic and understandable framework for the U.S. foreign assistance system, and the President must be engaged with Congress in a collaborative effort to rewrite the legislation.  The stakes – for U.S. national interests and for the health, prosperity, and stability of the developing world – are too high for continued inaction.”

The Open Letter is the centerpiece of our Reform Within Reach campaign, which is also focused on sharing development success stories and educating the American public about the important role U.S. development efforts play in our national security.  Individuals can still sign on to our Open Letter by clicking here.

Panelists in the briefing highlighted the crucial role that science and innovation play in foreign aid, with a focus on past successes and future opportunities in global health research. The event, “Innovation to catalyze development:  Leveraging research in US foreign assistance,” was moderated by Susan Dentzer, Editor-in-Chief of Health Affairs, and included Mr. Kalil; Dr. Jeffrey Sturchio, MFAN Principal and President and CEO of the Global Health Council; Dr. Maura O’Neill, Senior Counselor to the Administrator and Chief Innovation Officer at USAID; and Dr. Corey Casper, Director of the Uganda Program on Cancer and Infectious Diseases (UPCID) at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

In order to maximize the US investment in science and technology and deliver effective assistance, panelists stressed a whole-of-government approach to foreign aid. It is “essential” that the United States has a “coordinated, multidisciplinary” approach to international development, Dr. Casper said. For example, panelists highlighted a study conducted among nearly 900 women at two sites in South Africa that showed a notable reduction in the risk of HIV infection associated with an experimental HIV prevention gel, called a microbicide. The research benefited enormously from interagency partnership—the study was supported, in large part, by USAID, as well as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—and demonstrates the type of success possible when US agencies collaborate effectively.

Jeff Sturchio specifically argued that the US needs a global development strategy that is whole-of-government, coherent, and responsive to local needs.  Such a strategy should also be built on transparency and accountability and partnership with civil society, donors, and other governments.  Sturchio then put forward the notion of a whole-of-society approach, which the other panelists picked up on throughout the remainder of the discussion.

Panelists also highlighted that several US officials are prioritizing science and innovation as a pillar of US development efforts. For example, Mr. Kalil explained how the Obama administration has made science and innovation priorities for United States’ global development policy, recently deploying the first three US science envoys throughout the Muslim world to foster scientific exchange. He further highlighted the new leadership from non-development agencies, such as NIH Director Francis Collins’ prioritization of research to meet global health challenges.

In addition, Dr. O’Neill emphasized that USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah has made innovation a priority for the agency. Earlier this year, Shah highlighted science and technology as one of USAID’s four core pillars, noting that the agency will find “new ways to leverage science and technology to develop and deliver those tools and innovations that we believe can lead to exponential growth and transformational change.”

In order to keep pace in a changing world, panelists argued that US policymakers must capitalize upon the country’s strong history of advancing science, research, and innovation to benefit the developing world.  As Congress and the Administration reform the United States’ approach to global development, policymakers should incorporate US agencies’ scientific prowess as a key component of a new development strategy.

Check back for a video of the event in the coming week and see additional resources below:

• GHTC fact sheet on research in foreign assistance
• Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network website
• GHTC feature story on microbicide trial
• GHTC recent news bulletin on USAID science conference
• GHTC announcement on Obama Administration’s prioritization of science in diplomacy
• The role of innovation in foreign assistance reform

“This is a major step toward building a 21st-century approach and apparatus for promoting development, which President Obama’s first National Security Strategy (NSS) called a “moral, strategic, and economic imperative” for the U.S. It is also a long overdue step, as U.S. foreign assistance legislation has not been overhauled since President Kennedy signed the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961.”

“A fourth noteworthy strength of the draft bill is that it sets clear goals to guide the U.S. approach to development and the allocation of development assistance funds. Without doubt, these goals and principles will be subject to debate and modification, but the draft does a huge service by outlining a set of thoughtful concepts for discussion. Having a set of agreed upon principles to guide our assistance programs would provide a level of understanding and transparency that has long been missing from U.S. assistance programs.”

“Let’s be clear. This is a working draft that will be subject to considerable discussion and modification. There are questions about various provisions. Why create a new, separate funding pot “development support funds” and will that really ease the current funding allocation morass? Is it smart to require an MCC-type 100% upfront funding of projects? How can the important provision on monitoring and evaluation be formulated in a way that does not detract from the innovation and risk taking that the draft seeks to promote? Some will want the draft to go into more detail on specific provisions; the administration and others are likely to prefer less detail.”

MFAN Principal, GMF Senior Transatlantic Fellow and former U.S. Representative Jim Kolbe kicked off the session with remarks about how the U.S. has lacked a real development strategy since the Marshall Plan, which helped to rebuild Europe following World War II.  With recent renewed attention to U.S. development policy – the ongoing Presidential Study Directive on development (PSD), the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman’s rewrite of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, and President Obama’s recent statement at the G8 Summit on “A New Approach to Advancing Development” – Kolbe said it’s critical that these studies and drafts lead to a unified outcomes-based approach.

In a brief presentation on the paper, Kunder said the U.S. must ask itself, “What would success look like?”  He said the U.S. government currently lacks a coherent vision of the role of development in U.S. foreign policy.  He also added that there is no real quantitative basis for funding requests made for aid programs, nor does a strong monitoring-and-evaluation system currently exist to measure progress and results.  By defining the so-called endgame, a U.S. development strategy should:

• Have a clear mission
• Be able to measure impact
• Create a systematic focus on development (as opposed to one based on security or emergency assistance)
• Provide for greater flexibility and partnership on the ground
• Set nations on a sustainable path

Focusing a U.S. development strategy on outcomes will also demonstrate foreign aid’s impact on a global scale, making it more communicable to American taxpayers.

The model uses the existing State Department’s “F” Bureau country ranks – Rebuilding, Developing, Transforming, and Sustaining – and USAID spider graphs (pictured) to formulate a gap analysis.  The authors argue that having a clear metric for a sector where a country is falling behind can serve as justifiable evidence for funding when it comes time to make the case to Congress.  And funding in a specific sector will help the country advance to the next country rank.  However, there was also concern expressed during the discussion of the paper about the need for qualitative analysis to measure long-term development impact, not just short-term outputs.

Kunder acknowledged that the model is not perfect, but that it is a starting point for policy planning and budget allocation – all the more necessary given the limited resources we currently have.  MFAN Principal Sam Worthington, President and CEO of InterAction, was the lead respondent in the discussion, arguing that while the model reconciles allocation of resources with the political resonance of social change, it does not adequately address the principle of country ownership and could continue the top-down distribution of aid.

The paper is timely given the yet-to-be-released reviews on development and the Obama Administration’s Feed the Future food security initiative and the Global Health Initiative, which are now being operationalized.

Read about MFAN’s call to action urging the President to show leadership on creating such a global development strategy as well as on engaging with Congress on comprehensive foreign assistance reform.

Staats applauds three aspects of the working draft:

1) it appropriately defines the scope of “development” as being far broader than foreign assistance, to include debt relief, trade, agriculture, migration, environmental protection, arms sales, and all other U.S. policies that affect development;

2) it restores authority to the administrator of the U.S. Government’s lead development agency, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and calls for the administrator to serve at a minimum as vice-chair of a new interagency Development Policy Committee (the chair is left at the President’s discretion); and

3) it puts a premium on transparency, calling for information – ranging from funding amounts to country strategies to impact evaluations – to be made publicly available.

Despite the good, she raises a few key questions along the way:

• If development is more than foreign assistance, how do we deal with committee turf battles for those development-related issues that fall outside the purview of the foreign affairs/authorizing committee?
• How do we marry funds for both country-specific strategies and global (non-country specific) sector strategies effectively without making an already messy system even more complicated?
• How do we limit adding another layer (or two) of bureaucracy – read: more paperwork – with these plans?
• How can we be less prescriptive by finding that equilibrium of greater flexibility for the Executive Branch in exchange for heightened accountability to Congress?

Finally, Staats points out that the success of the reform effort ultimately hinges on the still-unresolved Presidential Study Directive on development policy at the NSC and the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) being undertaken by the State Department and USAID. She writes, “More concerning is that State and USAID have had little interaction to date with staff writing the new bill. This doesn’t bode well for striking a grand bargain between the administration and Congress on either a new development direction (which will likely require some legislation) or passing a new global partnership act (which will require support from the administration, including State and USAID).”

Speaking of the QDDR, Staats’ colleague at CGD, Todd Moss, provides a sobering perspective on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s attempt at elevating development within the U.S. foreign policy prism.  In his piece, he comments on: the one-man show at USAID – namely, Administrator Raj Shah – as there appears to be no sense of urgency around staffing him with a team of development experts to truly provide a development voice; the Secretary’s reluctance to empower the USAID administrator to really own the development agenda and portfolio; the importance of development practice as a distinct discipline and doing development for development’s sake (versus as a tool for security or diplomatic or other objectives); and the shortsightedness of not institutionalizing an elevated development function for the long term, i.e., after the Secretary departs.

Moss writes, “The staffing gap seems to be particularly acute since Raj Shah is now more than 6 months into the job (and it’s 18 months into the administration) yet still has zero of his top twelve managers in place.  Disgracefully, only two have even been named yet.  I can find only two ways to interpret this.  Either (a) no one really cares about filling these positions so it is just taking an embarrassing amount of time or (b) these mid-level spots are deadlocked in petty personnel battles between the White House and State.  It’s not good when “no one cares” may be the preferable answer.”

To read more, click here.

To join MFAN’s effort to urge President Obama to show leadership on foreign assistance reform and strengthen the U.S. commitment to development, please sign our Open Letter to the President, which has already been endorsed by more than 70 organizations and prominent individuals.

CQ WEEKLY – IN FOCUS
July 19, 2010

Backers Say Time Is Ripe For Foreign Aid Overhaul

By Emily Cadei, CQ Staff

The earthquake that slammed Haiti in January also rocked the U.S. Agency for International Development and its brand-new administrator, Rajiv Shah, who were promptly assigned to head up the civilian U.S. response to the disaster. The experience of the next several months afterward was eye-opening and “helped me shape my agenda for reform for the agency writ large,” Shah said in a speech last month.

That agenda is packed, given the multitude of challenges facing USAID, an agency once viewed as the country’s lead repository for expertise on international development. But its role has declined over the past decade into what the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Democrat Howard L. Berman of California, describes as “somewhat of a contracting agency where money passes through without a creative and well-staffed process.”

Shah says the rapid mobilization of USAID after the quake demonstrated that much of that expertise, although often dormant, still exists. The Haiti response, he said in an interview, shows there are “so many different ways where this agency could be nimble, it could move quickly, it could be focused on results,” as opposed to “just getting money out the door.”

Development experts say that while Shah is moving ahead with a package of operational changes at USAID, both President Obama and Congress will ultimately need to weigh in to better delineate both the over-arching strategy and the chain of command for U.S. international development operations in the 21st century. While there is a broad consensus about the general changes that need to be made, many of the more controversial details still need to be decided, including how the authority gets divvied up among the government agencies involved.

Congress is driving the reassessment of development policy already under way with a series of legislative initiatives from Berman and the two leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: Chairman John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, and top Republican Richard G. Lugar of Indiana. But before progressing further, these lawmakers and development officials are waiting for the White House to deliver its vision for development as a pillar of its foreign policy, as well as demonstrate the political leadership to implement that vision.

Backers of a foreign aid overhaul say they will need buy-in across parties, congressional chambers and branches of government. These development boosters say that Obama elevating the role of foreign aid in places such as Afghanistan, combined with a group of allies in important positions — including Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and top Senate and House leaders — makes the next 18 months a rare window of opportunity to reconfigure the architecture for international development to an extent not seen in half a century, since Cold War foreign aid policies were set by the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. If they don’t succeed, backers of an overhaul worry that it could be another 50 years before they get as good a shot.

Beyond the Crisis

A disaster like the quake in Haiti “plays to AID’s strength, because it has a very strong, positive history in responding to humanitarian emergencies,” says George Ingram, a former deputy assistant administrator at the agency who’s now co-chairman of the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network, a coalition put together two years ago to advocate for aid changes.

“What doesn’t get attention is those 50 to 60 countries that are relatively stable, not-so-well- or moderately well-performing, and are really the countries that are struggling for how to do development better,” Ingram says. “That’s sort of the day-to-day meat and potatoes of USAID.” The challenge, he says, is to put in place a structure that lifts some of the stifling bureaucracy and allows USAID “to do what Shah wants to do — be more creative, be more responsive, be more analytical, engage your local stakeholders more.”

Shah, who before joining the Obama administration spent seven years working on global economic development for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, expressed the desire to introduce “some of the flexibility we have in our humanitarian relief operations,” such as in Haiti, more broadly across the organization. “I would like to replicate that capability throughout our agency,” he says.

Flexibility is exactly what Berman is hoping to achieve with a rewrite of foreign aid policy that he and his committee staff have been working on for the past two years. After a series of meetings and discussions with lawmakers, government officials and representatives of nonprofit aid organizations, Berman unveiled an initial draft this month. If Democrats hold the House this fall, he hopes to win passage of the legislation next year.

Drafters are hoping to write a bill that, in the words of one Berman committee aide not authorized to speak about the matter, would embody “a new grand bargain” of “accountability in exchange for flexibility.” The president would have to provide more detailed information about his international development plans and set ways to measure their results, the aide says, and in exchange Congress would “lighten up on the very specific directives and earmarks.”

The trick will be in getting all involved — lawmakers, the White House, the State Department and the non-governmental organizations — to endorse that system. Of course, the legislation would have some specific mechanisms for limiting congressional earmarks for specific projects — by creating, for example, accounts that would be reserved for certain countries or types of aid, such as for farmers or HIV/AIDS eradication.

But mostly, the drafters are hoping an overhaul of the system will by itself reduce the inclination to earmark. “When you have a coherent, intelligent process, where there is a rational examination by the agency, a rational process of determining some national priorities and a built-in flexibility to allow a significant amount of resources to be shaped by the mission and the country,” says Berman, “I think the temptation to do this becomes less.”

Forging Consensus

Such a grand bargain would also require an unprecedented level of coordination between the executive branch and Congress. “The biggest thing that needs fixing is to get the Congress and the administration maybe not on the same page but on the same playing field,” instead of everybody “going at it in their own little way,” says Ingram.

The Obama administration is in the midst of two major policy reviews — the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review being run by the State Department, and a National Security Council review of foreign aid, both of which have dragged on longer than initially intended.

The administration kick-started the reviews last year after Berman wrote language into the State Department reauthorization bill that would mandate the processes. The bill quickly stalled in the Senate after passing in the House, but it’s clear that “Congress got this process going,” says David Beckmann, president of the anti-hunger advocacy group Bread for the World, and Ingram’s co-chairman at MFAN.

Until both policy reviews are complete — likely by early fall — the administration has declined to provide any formal feedback to Congress’ activities to overhaul the foreign aid process. But development experts are starting to get restive, with several former USAID administrators issuing calls in the past few days for faster action.

One thing they would like to see the president outline is an over-arching rationale for American foreign assistance programs. “Only the president can clarify the mission,” says Gregory Adams, aid effectiveness director at the global humanitarian group Oxfam. Obama, he says, needs “to define what we are going to do and what we’re not going to do and how we make choices about that.” The legislation from Congress, Adams says, can then provide “the statutory framework to support that.”

The same groups of people are also looking for the president to take a stand on the long-running debate over the relationship between the State Department and USAID. During George W. Bush’s presidency, the aid agency was effectively subsumed more deeply under State. But for years, there has been a debate over how much autonomy USAID should have — something that has played out most recently over Caribbean earthquake relief.

“The Haiti response has made clear a lot of the divisions going on between State and USAID over who should be in charge and what should happen,” one senior congressional aide says. This split in authority was evident in something as simple as the State Department’s briefing last week on the six-month anniversary of the quake. Cheryl Mills, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s chief of staff and lead counselor on issues surrounding Haiti, fielded questions while Shah played backup.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was so concerned about the lack of a clear government head of the Haiti rebuilding effort that it proposed, as part of a relief measure it approved in May, establishing a new coordinator position under Clinton to oversee the government’s policies.

Clinton’s involvement in development, as well as that of some of her key deputies — including Jacob J. Lew, her deputy secretary for management who was tapped last week to become White House budget director — is lauded by many development boosters, but it has added heat to the turf battle still playing out.

State has already signaled its displeasure with part of Berman’s plan. An internal department e-mail, sent earlier this month to solicit comments on the chairman’s draft, noted it would create a development policy committee that included the secretary of State “only as a co-equal member as opposed to placing her as the lead, as had been earlier requested.” Other provisions “do not vest authorities in the secretary, as had been requested for comparable provisions.”

Berman has held off taking an explicit position on just how the relationship between State and USAID should break down. But, he says, “As a general principle I want to elevate the role of development, and therefore I want to elevate the role of AID.”

Clinton, he acknowledged, is “a big friend and big booster of development,” but to make the changes enduring, “you can’t make decisions based on any one person that is in any one position at a given time.”

FOR FURTHER READING (Note: a subscription to CQ is require to access additional reading.): Lew, p. 1759; fiscal 2011 foreign aid spending, CQ Weekly, pp. 1629, 1274; State Department reauthorization (HR 2410), p. 44; fiscal 2010 foreign aid spending (PL 111-117), p. 28; background, 2009 CQ Weekly, p. 1303; Foreign Assistance Act (PL 87-195), 1961 Almanac, p. 293. The Senate Foreign relations’ Haiti relief bill is S 3317 .

• Create America’s first-ever development strategy
• Signal a willingness to work with Congress on a new Foreign Assistance Act
• Empower USAID with clear authority

A significant part of Ingram’s argument is based on weighing the policy successes against the lack of bureaucratic and systematic reform.  Ingram writes:

“At a policy level, the administration should be commended for its approach to development…Progress on actual nuts and bolts of turning policy into action has been less forthcoming. It is time to act on the broad recognition that multiple agencies carrying out similar or inconsistent programs is not good practice; that assistance programs need greater transparency and accountability; and that the legislative foundation for our foreign assistance system, a 500-page Cold War-era statute, lacks clear goals and objectives and is bursting at the seams with outdated, overlapping, and duplicative and conflicting provisions.”

Nancy Birdsall, president of MFAN Partner the Center for Global Development, put this argument in more stark terms – grading the Obama administration on its development efforts thus far:  “When it comes to global development, I’d give President Obama and his top advisors an A for strategic vision and a big fat F for failure to get on with it.”  Birdsall’s blog post, which takes the form of a letter addressed to Secretary Clinton, National Security Advisor Gen. Jim Jones, and National Economic Council director Larry Summers, offers a five-step process that focuses on empowering USAID.

Media outside of MFAN’s network is also abuzz with updates on the debate.  Foreign Policy blogger Josh Rogin reported yesterday on the stalled development reviews, including a quote from MFAN Co-Chair and World Food Prize Laureate Rev. David Beckmann:  “The Obama administration is doing smart and creative things to help hungry and poor people around the world. But they are hung up by organizational confusion, and the president needs to make it clear that USAID, not the State Department, has the lead responsibility for development.”

With the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Summit in September – where last year President Obama promised to return with a plan – serving as a deadline, we need action now.  Learn about the ways you can contribute to this strong push for reform and join the 70 organizations who have already signed our Open Letter by clicking here.

Today, MFAN is proud to announce the launch of its Reform Within Reach campaign aimed at getting President Obama to show leadership on foreign assistance reform and strengthen America’s commitment to development.

To serve as the rallying cry for the campaign, MFAN created the “Open Letter to President Obama on the U.S. Commitment to Global Development.”  This letter, which has already been signed by 50 organizations, calls for President Obama to create America’s first-ever Global Development Strategy and partner with Congress to rewrite the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961.

We need your help in getting the message out and letting President Obama know that his leadership on reform is critical to achieving U.S. foreign policy goals.  This issue is even more important with the Millennium Development Goals Summit fast approaching in New York in September, when the eyes of the world will be on the fight against global poverty and the U.S. role in that fight.  As you’ll remember, one year ago, President Obama made a promise at the UN General Assembly to return to the MDGs Summit with a plan for how the U.S. will strengthen its contribution on development.  We must hold him accountable to that pledge.

Action is needed now.  You can take the following steps to join us in this important call to action:

• Join individuals from across the country and sign the Open Letter
• Download a badge for your Facebook, MySpace, or other profile page to show you support more effective foreign aid
• Read about how reform will make even more U.S. aid success stories possible
• Tweet:  “I signed a letter urging Pres Obama to increase U.S. foreign aid’s impact.  YOUR TURN! http://bit.ly/12FBms #ReformWithinReach” and follow us @ModernizeAid to see how momentum for reform is building

“The Pentagon says it wants out of the development business because that’s not what it does. So the question, which apparently the White House will resolve, is whether development is going to be a distinct, though coordinated, function. That is, who’s going to be in charge of development out in the field.”