Donors are a pain

I had a great meeting today with a very dynamic Kenyan who is using mobile phone technology to address all sorts of development issues in developing countries. The short version is that he is creating a low-tech mobile phone version of google through SMS. Very cool stuff. The funniest part of the meeting was when he talked about foreign aid organizations. He said that because donors are such a pain to work with (e.g., they move very slow, they have ridiculous and onerous requirements), dynamic social entrepreneurs in developing countries don’t want to work with them. A true laugh out loud moment.