​Why Project-Based Funding Is Failing Humanitarian Work. 
I am tempted to express more emotional content than would be wise in talking about this topic. It's what my boss, Dana McInturff at the Board of Accountancy in the State of Washington would have called "emotional leakage." It is the visceral reaction that most nonprofit staff feel when donors and funding institutions say they want their dollars to go to something "concrete."  It is particularly difficult to respond with just facts when the donor questions how much was spent on staff who did the work versus countable "stuff" the staff used in their work, as if paying the staff was an extravagance or misuse of the funds. This happens at the local program level and at the INGO level, and as the Executive Director of an INGO, I can tell you that we are guilty of promoting that same misguided rubric every time we are called upon to generate a donor recruitment message - "what will my $50/$500/$5000 investment do?" - and we are reluctant to say it pays a small portion of somebody's salary. Instead we say it "feeds a child for a day" or "pays for a village to have a well for clean water." And while that is often the case, it is far more likely that what is needed is to pay a staff salary needed to manage the money and the well-digging project that is necessary before the village could have clean water.