FRANCAISMédecins du Monde - Comments
3) The financial resources
-Financially speaking, MDM avoids being funded by intergovernmental organisations or states when their grants have political implications. In Latin America especially, the association tried not to work with United States funds because of the way it would have been perceived by native populations. Thanks to a strong medical support and lobby, MDM-France tries to rely on individual or private companies’ patronage to finance its programmes with its own funds, without forgetting the work of volunteers, which does not appear in financial accounts and is especially important in France. Most of the institutional grants come from the European Union, with which the association signed a partnership contract in July 1993, and, in France, the regional social affairs authorities. Generally speaking, public funding pays above all emergency operations; private funding covers administration costs, public relations, fund-raising, exploratory missions and half of the development programmes. Since MDM-France bought an office building in rue Marcadet in Paris in 1994, head office expenses seem to be high, and MDM-France had a deficit in 2000. In 1996, the Cour des Comptes criticised accounts which weren’t always very well held for missions abroad. The budgets of the various sister organisations throughout the world are not published together, probably through lack of centralisation. Nevertheless MDM has made a real effort to enhance financial transparency and, in 1997, for example, stopped spreading fund-raising costs over several financial years.
