A lot of our work seems to be occupied by numbers, especially last week when we were writing a proposal for one of our donors. The exercise involved a lot of wrestling with numbers. Numbers to be filled in the budget column, numbers to be filled in explaining how many people would benefit from the grant and how to make sure that the enough number of people have access to the programme without us spreading ourselves so thin that quality itself would be compromised.
Funders' compulsions are understandable. They need to calculate hard data like cost per beneficiary. If that is deemed too high, then the feasibility of the programme would be questioned. No matter how good the rationale, the bottom line is always economics.
But just how much should an organisation be driven by numbers? That's a question we haven't been able to resolve. Numbers are important, and it does cost a lot of effort to raise money and if it is not used in the most efficient and cost effective way, the donor is very likely to feel short-changed. Yet, as an organisation dealing with people and their suffering, to what extent can this be quantified? And even if it can be, to what extent is it fair or right to measure the efficacy and success of our efforts though numbers alone?
At Oasis, a large part of our work is with victims of trafficking. Often they have suffered immensely in ways that we could hardly imagine or begin to understand. We try to restore to them some of their lost years though a host of interventions. Those interventions are costly, intense and have to be worked over a long period of time.
So is it fair to ask the question 'how many?'? It's easier to ask the question than to answer some of life's unfathomable mysteries. But numbers are only one piece of the puzzle. Money is important, cost-benefit ratios are important, effectiveness is important, professionalism is important, but infinitely more important than numbers is the broken human spirit which we try to bring to wholeness.
