Toward multinational enterprise (1969–80)

The final chapter sheds light on CARE’s second internationalization throughout the 1970s, the establishment of CARE Canada and CARE Europe, as well as CARE’s drive towards multinational non-profit enterprise. It analyses CARE’s organizational development, programming innovation and CARE’s drive towards an even closer integration of food aid and long-term development planning and its stance towards the ongoing multilateralization of food aid during the so called world food crisis and afterwards.

Food aid and private–public cooperation in Egypt

Chapter 5 is a case study on CARE’s overseas operations in Egypt. It traces CARE’s cooperation with US and Egyptian government agencies and officials and sketches how Cold War dynamics both triggered and impeded effective cooperation in large-scale school feeding programs.

New cooperative horizons (1955–61)

Chapter 4 traces CARE’s development during a period of recurring organizational crisis and economic instability. It analyses how CARE’s management and board of directors dealt with organizational overextension and the need to find both a new humanitarian mission and more sustainable business model. CARE began to apply for government-donated food surplus resulting from structural agricultural overproduction in the United States. By delivering agricultural abundance such as milk powder, butter oil and other food staples to people in the developing countries, CARE successfully occupied a humanitarian market niche and established itself as a (neither entirely private nor entirely public) provider of food aid.

In search of a new mission in Korea

Chapter 3 is a case study on CARE’s work in Korea during and after the Korean War. It traces CARE’s response to a presidential aid appeal in the United States, shows how American NGOs competed for donor dollars and media attention. In addition, it depicts the difficulties private humanitarian players encountered in a foreign setting involving a refugee crisis and a tight web of players with different stakes, meaning military players, Korean and United States government agencies, United Nations organizations as well as diverse foreign aid agencies.

From Europe to Asia and beyond (1948–55)

Chapter 2 focuses on CARE’s expansion from a private relief organization delivering ten-in-one rations from citizens of the United States to recipients in Europe into a constantly growing organization focusing on diversified food relief parcels to recipients in dozens of countries in Europe and Asia. It takes a closer look at internal governance processes and conflicts accompanying CARE’s organizational growth and the enhancement of its humanitarian mission

CARE and the Peace Corps

Chapter 7 takes a closer look at CARE’s role in the creation of the Peace Corps. It looks at CARE’s stakes in the training and handling of Peace Corps volunteers in the United States and on the ground in Colombia and shows how the transfer of development expertise and knowledge between a private player and a government agency worked. It also traces the development of organizational rivalries and competitive behaviour between CARE and the Peace Corps up to the point where both organizations severed their ties and went their separate ways.

Conclusion

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From American relief to international development cooperation (1961–68)

Chapter 6 focuses on CARE’s ongoing professionalization and its ties to government agencies, international diplomats, corporate players and marketing firms. It sheds light on CARE’s first attempts at a further internationalization of the enterprise and its investment in external development and nutrition expertise. CARE merged with the NGO Medico Inc. fostered community organising activities and pushed for a more development-oriented approach in its hunger relief programming.

Setting up a non-profit enterprise (1945–47)

Chapter 1 depicts the political, social and economic situation on the European continent at the end of World War Two and gives an account of international and United States relief activities to help feed the war-afflicted civilian populations in Europe. It takes a closer look at the incorporation and establishment of the Cooperative for American Relief to Europe (CARE) as a temporary private voluntary relief organization and sheds light on the social and political dynamics leading up to the establishment of one of the fastest growing US humanitarian NGOs in the aftermath of WWII

Introduction

Charity is a big business and as such it should be run with business efficiency.1 Richard Reuter, 1953 In 1990 Harold Gauer, former regional director of CARE in the American Midwest, published his professional memoirs entitled Selling Big Charity: The Story of C.A.R.E. In this book Gauer recalls his first CARE conference in the agency’s New York headquarters in 1950. Having gained the impression that “out-of-towners” like him “would do well to just keep quiet and listen,” Gauer silently observed how during the meeting “a parade of home office folk took turns telling the story of their jobs and how they did them. Which according to them was very capably indeed.” After the CARE delegates from other US cities had responded “with tales of their own special local situations and with copious advice on how to run the home office,” a group of “young intense” managers from the Lever Brothers Company showed up:...