PDF Summary:When Helping Hurts, by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert

Since the 1980s, short-term mission trips have become a popular form of ministry for many evangelical Christian churches throughout North America. The purpose of these missions is ostensibly to spread the gospel and help the poor, particularly in developing nations. But Christian economic development experts Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert express concern that many of these missions actually do more harm than good because the people who organize them misunderstand the true nature and causes of poverty.

In this guide, we’ll examine their concerns, their exposition of the essence of poverty, and their suggestions for helping the poor effectively—whether by restructuring mission trips or canceling them in order to support other, more effective forms of poverty alleviation. We’ll also provide additional resources for applying some of their advice and compare their perspective to other poverty alleviation experts, such as Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Amartya Sen.

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By way of illustration, imagine that your friend is suffering from appendicitis. He needs an appendectomy. Should you try to remove his appendix? Unless you’re a trained surgeon with suitable facilities available for performing an operation, probably not. It would be much better to let a doctor who has the right training and equipment perform the appendectomy.

Similarly, Corbett and Fikkert argue that the best people and organizations to provide aid are usually the ones closest (both geographically and culturally) to the people who are in need. Local churches (or other organizations) in poor communities are in a much better position to engage members of their own community effectively because they have a better understanding of their situation. And they’re better able to help them improve their situation over the long term because their close proximity makes it easier to maintain long-term relationships.

Business Perspective on the Wrong People for the Job

We can draw additional insight on the issue of selecting the right person for a task—in this case, poverty alleviation—from other authors who discuss the same problem in the context of business management. For example, in Traction, business consultant Gino Wickman advises that for your company to be successful, you have to have the right people in the right positions.

On the one hand, someone who wholeheartedly embraces your company’s mission but doesn’t have the right technical or interpersonal skills to do a certain job can’t thrive in that position and may end up causing problems for the company. You need to move this person into a position that matches her skill set, if there is one, or let her go if there isn’t.

On the other hand, Wickman says someone who has the right technical skills to function in a certain position but doesn’t share your company’s culture and vision will also do more harm than good for the company. You need to let this person go before he stirs up dissension within the company.

Based on Corbett and Fikkert’s discussion of problems with aid and missions work, we can apply Wickman’s advice to poverty alleviation as well: Someone who doesn't have the right mindset (for example, someone who suffers from a superiority complex or just wants to make a show of helping the poor for the sake of building his own reputation) isn’t ready to take part in the ministry at all. Someone who has a genuine desire to help but isn’t qualified for front-line ministry because of cultural or logistical barriers may still be able to play a supporting role, as we’ll discuss later.

The Solution to Providing Better Poverty Alleviation

Now that you understand how traditional methods of helping the poor like giving them things or building infrastructure for them can end up doing more harm than good, what can you do to help? We’ve condensed Corbett and Fikkert’s advice down to a three-step solution.

Step 1: Cultivate Humility

The first step is to adopt a mindset that will enable you to plan and execute effective aid. Recognizing that we all share the same basic spiritual problem that, for some people, results in material poverty can help us repent of any feelings of superiority. It also makes it easier to relate to poor people, which we’ll discuss more in Step 3.

Furthermore, we need to accept the solution to spiritual poverty ourselves before we can help others solve their problems with poverty, whether spiritual, material, or both. Given their assessment of the root cause of poverty, Corbett and Fikkert assert that Christ provides us with the solution to spiritual poverty by restoring our relationship with God when we accept Christianity.

Controversy and Original Sin

In a secular context, the idea that the first step to poverty alleviation is accepting Christ’s atonement ourselves (so that we can then teach it to the poor) is one of Corbett and Fikkert’s most controversial assertions. Some even make the opposite claim, asserting that a Christian worldview may perpetuate poverty by helping poor people find meaning in their suffering rather than seeking material solutions to their problems.

But in the context of Corbett and Fikkert’s Christian background, their assertion makes sense, because it is simply a specific application of the Christian doctrine that human suffering (including poverty) is ultimately the result of sin (either the particular sins of the person who suffers, or the sins of someone else who may be causing him to suffer, or just the original sin of Adam and Eve that made human suffering possible).

In Christian theology, sin is the problem and the ultimate cause of all other problems. Christ’s atonement—his ability to forgive sins because he voluntarily suffered the penalty for everyone’s sins—is the solution to the problem of sin, and thus, ultimately the solution to all problems.

Step 2: Collaborate With Those Who Can Provide the Best Aid

Corbett and Fikkert point out that humility enables you to more objectively assess what role you (or your church) should play in helping the poor. Particularly when it comes to alleviating poverty in faraway places, indigenous organizations are usually in a better position to have a lasting positive impact. So, rather than running the show yourself, connect with local churches or other organizations that are already ministering to the poor in their own communities.

Start a dialogue with them to learn more about the situation and determine how you can best support their efforts. The authors discuss a number of possible ways to help, such as providing or subsidizing training for indigenous missionaries and ministers, or donating funds to facilitate their work.

(Shortform note: To help quantify the effectiveness of collaborating with members of the indigenous church, it’s worth considering the case of Wycliffe Bible Translators, a non-profit that facilitates Bible translations into local languages around the world. In the 2010s, Wycliffe transitioned from having a missionary first learn a language and then translate the Bible into it to hosting workshops to help native speakers translate the Bible into their own languages, typically from regional trade languages that already had Bible translations. This new approach allowed for better quality translations to be completed in about a tenth of the time.)

In the case of donations, the authors caution that you generally shouldn’t pay the whole cost of anything (such as a training program or a minister’s salary). That could create dependency or even undermine their credibility in the local community by implying that they can’t do anything without foreign aid. Instead, Corbett and Fikkert recommend letting the locals pay whatever portion of the costs they can and donating just enough to make up the difference, enabling them to do more than they could with only their own resources.

That said, the authors also warn you not to be stingy with donations. They observe that efforts to economize on aid by standardizing the approach have generally proved counterproductive. Each impoverished individual and community faces unique challenges and requires a unique solution. Finding that solution hinges on developing long-term relationships with the individuals in question, which in turn drives up the cost of the project by increasing the time and attention that the aid workers must invest in it. But the greater investment is worth it because it produces a better outcome.

What Business Startups Can Teach Us About Funding Ministries

In Crossing the Chasm, business consultant Geoffrey Moore offers advice for start-up companies making the transition from the small early market to the mainstream market. While Moore doesn’t discuss poverty or philanthropy, his advice on business finance runs sufficiently parallel to Corbett and Fikkert’s advice on financing poverty alleviation efforts to provide a corroborating perspective and some additional insight on the issue.

Moore explains that in the early market, most startup companies are dependent on venture capital for their daily operations. At this stage, profits serve mostly to reassure the company’s financial backers that they’re making a good investment. But Moore advises start-ups to become self-sustaining on profits as early as possible, warning that running too long on venture capital can create a “welfare mentality” within the company. This mentality can cause the startup to stall by decreasing workers’ sense of focus and urgency.

By the same token, Corbett and Fikkert would likely agree that providing limited resources to a poverty alleviation ministry may actually increase its chances of success, because it forces those involved to focus on what’s most important.

At the same time, Moore also echoes Corbett and Fikkert’s praise of custom solutions and elaborates on it in a business context. He explains that mainstream customers usually prefer to buy from the companies with the largest market share, making it hard for start-ups to break into the market. But if you identify a specific niche application and design your product to solve that particular niche customer’s problems in a way that no generic product can, then this allows you to gain a foothold in the market and establish your credibility.

If we generalize Moore’s approach, this principle could apply to poverty alleviation as well: If you try to come up with a standard solution that solves everybody’s problems, you’ll probably end up with a product, service, or program that doesn’t really solve anybody’s problems. But if you focus on one specific scenario, you (or the people you’re backing) are more likely to come up with a compelling solution.

So, combining these two principles, we infer that there’s an optimal level of funding for any project: enough to develop a complete and compelling solution to the problem in question but also little enough to keep the solution narrowly focused.

Promote Microfinance

Corbett and Fikkert point out that poor people often benefit from programs that enable them to accumulate savings or allow them to borrow money that they can use to improve their situation.

Again, these programs are usually best administered at the local level. The local church can directly establish a savings and credit association—a group of people who pool their savings, make small loans to each other, and collect interest on the loans, which helps build their savings. Or the local church may, in turn, collaborate with a microfinance company—basically a bank that’s willing to handle smaller loans than traditional financial institutions.

Corbett and Fikkert note that if the indigenous ministry isn’t already using savings and loan programs, you can bring these options to their attention or even provide training on how they work. Depending on the situation, it may or may not be appropriate to donate additional capital to the savings association or microfinance company. One case the authors endorse is donating funds to the microfinance company to cover the cost of teaching their loan recipients about the Christian perspective on managing money.

Criticism of Microfinance

Some sources argue that microfinance institutions are actually not as effective at helping the poor as Corbett and Fikkert suggest. In Poor Economics, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo discuss a number of factors that limit the usefulness of microfinance loans.

For one thing, they note that microfinance companies typically prefer to make a loan to a group of people rather than to an individual. Relative to making individual loans, this reduces administrative costs (because there are fewer loans to track). Moreover, it reduces the risk of non-payment, both because other people in the group must make up the difference if one person fails to repay his share of the loan and because this possibility motivates the members of the group to verify each other’s integrity before taking out the loan. However, shifting more of the liability and credit verification to the loan recipients also makes loans less attractive to poor people.

Both Corbett and Fikkert and Banerjee and Duflo also note that microfinance companies were created to provide poor people with a more helpful alternative to predatory lenders (lenders that charge exorbitant interest rates to cover the risk of loaning money to people with no credit). But some sources report that in recent years the distinction between predatory lenders and microfinance institutions has become blurred, leading poor people to borrow money at high interest rates and become trapped in debt.

Step 3: Connect With the People You Want to Help

In some cases, you may not need to go beyond Step 2, but what if you find that there isn’t another church or organization that’s positioned better than yours to assist a particular impoverished community? Corbett and Fikkert point out that there are unmet needs and opportunities to make a difference in poor neighborhoods throughout the United States. If your church is the local church, you may very well be the best people to help the poor in your own community.

As we’ve discussed, Corbett and Fikkert emphasize the importance of getting to know the people you are trying to help through your program. This is because to help them find effective solutions to their problems, you need to understand their unique situation. However, they don’t recommend asking people to discuss their problems up front, because focusing too much attention on their problems may only make them worse by amplifying their sense of shame.

Instead, the authors recommend starting off any relationship with a poor person by asking him about his strengths, skills, or other unique assets. You need this information because the most effective solution to his problems will involve leveraging his strengths. But more importantly, asking him to list his strengths reminds him that he has valuable qualities, helping him regain a measure of dignity and confidence. This in itself begins to alleviate his psychological poverty, and it starts the relationship off on a positive note. You can discuss his problems later, after you’ve gotten to know him and gained his trust.

Why You Should Help the Poor Develop Their Strengths

Just as Corbett and Fikkert recommend focusing on poor people’s assets when you’re trying to help them, in Strengths Finder 2.0, Tom Rath argues that the best way to advance your career is to focus on cultivating your strengths, rather than on fixing your weaknesses. Since poor people generally need career development, Rath’s discussion provides some additional insight on how understanding a person’s strengths could allow you to coach her through career advancement.

For one thing, Rath asserts that it’s just not possible to fix all your weaknesses. No matter how much time and energy you devote to self-improvement, you’ll always have weaknesses, so you might as well accept that. Moreover, even if you spend a lot of time and energy improving your abilities in an area of weakness, chances are you’ll still only end up with average ability in that area. But if you spend the same amount of time and energy honing an ability that comes naturally to you, you’ll end up far above average. Exceptional ability in certain areas is more useful for advancing your career than average ability across the board. For a poor person, career advancement is especially important because it's empowering, both psychologically and materially.

Rath also points out that many human traits are not intrinsically either strengths or weaknesses, but rather can be perceived as either one, depending on the context. So trying to eliminate a trait that’s a weakness in one context may only hold you back from excelling in a context where it’s a strength. For example, maybe you’re a perfectionist. At a job where you need to finish tasks quickly, and there’s a generous margin for error, perfectionism is a weakness. But at a job that’s slower-paced and requires careful attention to detail, perfectionism is a strength.

In the case of poverty alleviation, this underscores the importance of getting to know the people you’re trying to help and understanding their unique abilities, so you can help them find jobs where their abilities will be strengths rather than weaknesses.

Organize a Support Network

Corbett and Fikkert also offer some advice on the organizational structure of your poverty intervention program. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. The optimal program might involve meeting with poor people one-on-one, meeting in groups, holding classes, or some combination thereof. The classes you offer could teach them biblical principles for teamwork, problem-solving, money management, work ethic, or other “soft skills” that could help them find jobs, mend relationships, or otherwise improve their situation.

The authors do advise that each poor person should have contact with at least two and preferably about five different aid workers. This has several advantages: It spreads out the workload over more aid workers, helping to keep individual workloads manageable and preventing volunteers from burning out. It also helps to ensure that if the poor person has an urgent concern come up, at least one of the people she knows in the program will be available to talk with her about it. And it lets the poor person network with more people, which is beneficial for finding job opportunities.

(Shortform note: Typically, church members helping with a poverty alleviation program are volunteers, not paid employees of the church. Based on other sources, ideally you should structure your program so that each volunteer’s time commitment is about 100 hours per year. In Give and Take, Adam Grant points out that people who volunteer between 100 and 800 hours of their time per year get the most satisfaction from their volunteer work. He also reports that volunteering up to 100 hours per year correlates with a measurable improvement in health, but the improvement plateaus above 100 hours.)

Comparing When Helping Hurts to Development as Freedom

In Development as Freedom, Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen discusses the problem of poverty and possible solutions. Sen approaches poverty—and poverty alleviation—from a more theoretical and systemic perspective, while Corbett and Fikkert focus more on practical advice, specifically for churches looking to help the poor. Yet there are enough parallels in their reasoning that their respective viewpoints reinforce each other to some extent.

To begin with, Sen defines poverty as a lack of freedom or a lack of opportunity, rather than a lack of material resources. As we discussed earlier, Corbett and Fikkert define poverty as a mental state of shame and powerlessness. These two definitions may have some subtly different implications, but they both equate poverty with powerlessness, which is the antithesis of freedom. Consequently, their respective solutions focus on finding ways to empower the poor.

Sen focuses on empowering the poor by guaranteeing them various rights, including the right to participate in government, the right to engage in commerce, and the right to basic services like education and healthcare.

Corbett and Fikkert suggest ways that your church can empower local poor individuals: Helping them identify their assets and strengths is psychologically empowering. Offering classes or other training can empower students by teaching them new skills or making them aware of opportunities that they didn’t know about. Letting them network with several volunteers also gives them more opportunities, especially for job placement and career advancement.