Okay, so what I'll do is I'll try and keep
it to 20 minutes.
It's gonna be quite whistle stop.
There are some familiar faces in the room,
which I'm very pleased to see, so I know that
there will be some new slides that you haven't
seen before.
I'm gonna try and cover what we do and how
we do it, but I use the words impact and accountability
a lot in what we do.
They're themes that you will see that run
through what we talk about, because every
charity really, our focus is to have impact.
And particularly delivering that for us means
focusing on accountability because the devil
is in the detail.
It's not easy to raise money, but it's not
where you mess up.
You mess up on delivery, on operations.
So that's really where our focus lies.
You guys can read the numbers.
I hope you can see the numbers at the back
more quickly than I can say them.
But I think we all understand that malaria
is a humanitarian issue.
The numbers are pretty frightening.
When I first came across malaria it was because
I heard that seven jumbo jets full of children
under five died from malaria every day.
And that really struck me.
Not only does it particularly affect children
under five, but pregnant women who have a
compromised immune system when they're pregnant
are also particularly vulnerable.
We focus on Sub-Saharan Africa because that's
where 90% of the cases of malaria and the
deaths occur, so that's where we work.
But it's not just a humanitarian issue.
If you're sick with malaria then you can't
teach, you can't farm, you can't function.
And that means you're not a constructive or
productive member of society to put it at
that economic level.
And so it is a drain on the economy of all
of these countries that are affected.
So if the humanitarian doesn't get you, it
got me, then I hope the economic would get
the rest.
And if we put a million dollars into fighting
malaria effectively and efficiently then we
will improve the GDP of the country or the
continent, I should say, by $12 million.
A 12 to 1 return is a pretty good offer I'm
gonna make to you all of you're not persuaded
by the humanitarian element.
Unfortunately, there's no silver bullet.
There is no vaccine.
Lots of research going on, and we all keep
our fingers crossed that they'll find something.
That along with Gene Drive is a big hope,
and we all hope fervently that something comes
of it, but for now it doesn't exist.
So to pick up on the under fives, if I invited
you all down to Heathrow Airport...
I don't know if somebody can turn the lights
off here because it might make the screen
easier for people to see.
And we saw this twice.
I'll come back to this theme of seven jumbo
jets moving to four jumbo jets, so we are
making progress at the end of the presentation.
We'd all say, "Hang on a minute.
This is slaughter."
And this is daily, remember, so it is a big
issue that we absolutely need to do something
about.
And a big part of the solution, not the only
solution, but a big part of the solution is
nets.
They cost $2.
They protect two people.
And, therefore, given that the female mosquito
that is pregnant and wants to reproduce needs
a blood meal to reproduce bites between 10:00
at night and 2:00 in the morning, that is
something terrific we have on our side.
It means that we can cover people when they
sleep, and we can protect them mechanically.
But because these nets are covered with insecticide,
as you will understand we're putting nets
in very challenging environments.
They're households.
They're not houses.
So inevitably these nets become ripped, they
become torn, they have holes in them.
But because the mosquitoes don't do a red
arrows maneuver through a hole.
They land on the net and migrate to the hole,
when they pick up insecticide it causes knock
down, kills them.
That structure of 10:00, I call the feeding
time generally typically between 10:00 at
night and 2:00 in the morning is a really
good characteristic that we can exploit here.
And the impact is dramatic.
We're talking about whether it's 600 nets
or 1,000 nets or 400 nets, it depends on the
malaria burden, but we're talking about low
thousands of dollars equals one death averted,
and broadly it's 1,000 cases of malaria prevented
for every person that dies, the mortality
to morbidity ratio.
This is an extraordinary impact.
And graphically that's what we see.
We see prior to putting nets in place you
have the top graph, the seasonality, rainy
seasons and dry seasons, happens more or less
immediately, so within weeks.
It's not as easy as just handing out nets
and saying, "Right, we're done."
Education is involved and there's sustained
effort, but broadly speaking any major health
initiative where you'd have a 10% decline
nationwide is dramatic.
So if we can introduce 40, 50% you can see
this is in the sensational category of what
we can achieve.
So just a minute or so on how I started.
Habiba described a little bit of how we got
going.
I shamelessly called 250,000 of my best friends
and said, "Would you like to swim?"
And they all said yes.
In fact, the truth is that I failed because
I was trying to get a million people to swim,
but I'm not going to count that as true failure
really.
And very much the spirit behind this was,
as I said to Michael Phelps, I should say
to Mr. Phelps because he's not a mate of mine,
but he very kindly agreed to sort of support
this as many other people did.
And I said to Michael, "What I'd like you
to do in front of the camera is just say I
would like you to swim."
It doesn't matter how fast I swim.
When I swim I count as one person.
And if you swim you count as one person as
well.
Very much the spirit behind what we do at
AMF is sort of we're ordinary folks, so very
grassrootsy in that I don't think this is
about celebrity.
It's about all of us because if a lot of people
as we've seen over the last 10 years with
crowd funding and these sort of things.
It's almost the power of all the ordinary
folk that can get things done.
And that was very much the spirit, and it
is today behind what we do at AMF.
And so there were some wonderfully nutty people
swimming as part of World Swim Against Malaria
in 2005 in Serpentine, not far from where
we are now.
A whole bunch of people at PWC decided to
go into the channel.
And then some very sensible people in Australia
and America where it was warmer.
And it was particularly important to me that
there were lots of children involved, given
the death toll is particularly affecting children.
This was my first experience, if you like
of... actually it was the second experience
after a swim for a burns victim.
But I learned a lot from this experience of
how people reacted to certain communications
I had with them inviting people to get involved.
It was a sort of seminal period, if you like.
I was intending to go back and get a proper
job because I had taken two years off to launch
World Swim.
And when we went to see the Global Fund, an
organization based in Geneva, a big funder,
they said, "Do you realize with 130,000 people
swimming, which is what we had at the time,
you are the largest malaria advocacy group
in the world."
And I said, "Are you telling me that 20 phone
calls out of the back room of my home in London
has created the world's single largest advocacy
group for the world's single largest killer
of children."
And they said, "Yes."
And I said, "Well, that's shame on all of
us if that's the case."
I guess that meant that I didn't want to go
back into a proper job.
I wanted to do an improper job.
What we do at AMF is we provide nets.
We distribute them.
We make sure they don't get stolen.
That's potentially a very big issue, back
to operations.
We certainly want to ensure they're used.
And when we get involved in funding nets we
go to governments and we talk to them about
data.
In fact we put it a lot more politely than
I'm gonna put it now, but we basically say
to governments, "Please don't ask us to trust
you, because we won't.
But we won't ask you to trust us either.
Let's just focus on the data."
And that is really important to making sure
that we do the best job we possibly can.
We don't always get it right.
We're not perfect, and things do happen we
have to dive in and try and solve as I'll
come onto.
But in essence this is all about data for
us operationally.
When we started, again more politely than
I'm about to put it, but I went to a whole
bunch of people and organizations and said,
"Please will you help me, but I'm not gonna
pay you because you don't need $5 more than
a couple of kiddies in Africa need a bed net."
And I'm delighted to say that everybody I
spoke to, I can't think of anybody who didn't
say to the question, "Who do I talk to in
your industry that would be able to help me
do X, Y, and Z?"
And the response was, "Me."
And it's incredibly humbling getting a lot
of people in big companies.
I run this with six other people out of the
back room of my house in London, and everybody
works from their own homes, so we don't have
any offices.
But there are a lot of blue chip companies
that said, "We get it.
We'll support you."
Because fundamentally the chief executive
of big company X and big company Y, he or
she have got kids, and they know kids, and
it's... they're human beings.
So I guess I appeal to that, how do we do
this together, as a lot of people coming together.
We have five full time staff.
We pay four of them.
So one of the things that was a little bit
different about what we do is I don't have
to really go out and raise money to fund admin
costs.
I could, and I could certainly use the money
we have to do that, but as you can imagine,
we want to spend the money on nets.
So I have four costs globally, centrally,
and no other costs than the other four salaries,
the four people we say a commercial salary
to.
We have no banking, accounting, legal, website,
translation.
You name it, we don't have it.
When we want to translate the website into
German, the thinking was we go to a professional
company and they'll charge us five grand to
do it, or we could go to a lot of other human
beings and say, "You're a professional translator.
Who do we talk to in your industry such that
we could get four people who would translate
two and a half thousand words each, that's
10,000 words."
We can now put our website in a language and
show people the courtesy in Germany of being
able to read the website in their own language.
And I sent out 48 e-mails, not dear all because
that doesn't work, but Dear Claudia and Dear
Claus and Dear Matthew and so on.
And in 24 hours I had 44 positive responses
out of 48.
So I could've translated the website 11 times
over for free.
And the same thing happened in every other
language.
So you sort of want to jump up and kiss people
when that happens because it's terrific that
everybody said, "We'll help."
And that in a sense is really behind what
we've all built at AMF.
We have very low overheads as a result, as
you'll be unsurprised to hear if we're only
paying four salaries.
Our overhead last year, or FY 2017, I should
say the year before last now.
I should update this slide, were 0.6% of the
money we receive, so 99.4% of what comes in
goes to the front line.
And that's because I am incredibly cynical
about charity, which is why people say people
like me set them up.
And I want to keep those costs really low
down, and I want to show people exactly what
happens with their money because I think that's
the right thing to do.
We work with co-funding partners because we
can't fund everything ourselves.
And in fact we often fill gaps, so somebody
will say to us, "We need $11 million here.
Have you got any money?"
And then we can cooperate with another organization.
And we work with distribution partners because
I don't want to set up some massive logistical
operation in a whole series of countries.
That would be daft.
So this is very much us contributing as one
of a number of organizations because this
is a big team effort.
It has to be.
So impact and accountability are important.
Transparency and efficiency are very important
to us.
I guess transparency is different from, but
it goes hand-in-hand with, accountability.
Efficiency covers not just the money we receive
but how we actually get nets out to people
in the right quantities to protect them.
Our impact, I think a charity should be able
to define in a sentence or in a few words
what it is they're trying to achieve.
It surprises me when some can't.
In our situation, it's very simple.
We want to stop people dying and stop people
falling sick.
So that in essence is the metric we must be
judged by, although I'm going to throw something
out there that we actually don't publish malaria
case rate data, and there might be some questions
on that later on as to why, if AMF is focusing
on these metrics, aren't they publishing the
metrics as to what they're achieving.
It's a source of frustration, but it's something
that I think is important.
So accountability for us means holding people
to account in country, so saying to our partners,
"We want to see data," so we structure our
relationships so that it focuses on data.
And we think fundamentally what that does
is it means that fewer people die and fewer
people fall sick.
We want to hold ourselves accountable to our
donors and show, as I mentioned, where every
donation goes so people can be engaged rather
than, I've given them some money, it's gone
into a black box, don't know what's happened
to it.
That, for me, would be frustrating.
And we believe that leads to this virtual
circle of driving donations because we cannot
do anything without donations.
Awareness is terrific, but awareness funds
nothing.
Awareness has to have an endpoint of moving
on to driving donations.
So for donors...
We have donors have their own individual page
as long as we have their e-mail address, and
we list all their donations.
I say as long as we have their e-mail address
not as a cute way of saying, "Goodie, then
we can market to them" because we as an organization
do no marketing.
We may be making mistakes in not doing marketing.
In a sense other people market for us.
The effective altruism community has been
sensational in a sense in marketing us, and
is a fundamental board member of AMF in terms
of what it has helped us to achieve.
We never send soliciting e-mails.
We only send informational e-mails.
It's really, really important to us because
I think what we do should drive our support,
not our ability to persuade because we write
good copy.
When we go out into the field we take enough
nets to cover everybody in a particular area,
and the ratio is broadly two people sleep
under a net.
In fact its scale is 1.8. and what we focus
on is making sure that we visited, or our
partners have visited every household so we
understand whether this household needs three,
two, four, one.
Whatever the number of nets they need that's
the number of nets we get to them.
We make sure at the moment of distribution...
and I should say there are a number of things
we do to verify and ensure that that data
is accurate.
It's not perfect, but we can send five data
collectors out after the first hundred and
get them to visit 5% of the households these
guys visited, and tell them beforehand, so
we're putting psychology to play, to make
sure they're really focusing on getting accurate
data.
And there are other things we do to make sure
that data is good because obviously, garbage
in, garbage out.
And people, I'm afraid, a very small number,
do want to subvert what we're trying to do
and misappropriate nets.
It's important to have independent supervision
at the moment of distribution that so that,
again, you make sure the right things happen.
We follow nets and their presence and use
and condition after roughly six months.
It's now sometimes nine months afterwards.
And we track malaria case rate data, albeit
there are issues with the purity, if you like,
of that data or the reliability of it.
So when we go back in and gather data we're
doing it not just because it makes us feel
good but because we do want to understand
what the decline curve is, because if we're
up at 95% here on day one, and we come down
like this over three years, that's okay, but
that's not okay.
And if we don't know, we can't do anything
about it, and we do not want to bury our heads
in the sand.
So I have no problem in saying after 18 months,
the coverage with our nets is down to 40%,
because I'd rather know and be able to say
to everybody, so we need to do something about
it, because for the next 18 months we've got
a significant number of people that we're
telling everybody we're protecting from malaria
and we're not.
So let's find the data.
That latter curve is not one we see often,
but we need to know whether it is there or
not.
And we can say to the district health officer,
"You've got 37 health center catchment areas,
and you've got limited resources, and we've
got this data of whether sleeping spaces are
covered or not, so you can focus on these
10 areas rather than the 37 and actually be
more impactful, more effective with your work."
So we're not just collecting data for data's
sake.
We're very happy to be held to account by
others and release all of our material.
There's almost nothing we won't release apart
from people's personal salaries and things
like that.
And that's obviously been a terrific benefit
to us, as we've been reviewed well.
That has been a major driver of the donations
we've received.
I don't know what the current percentage is,
but it's something like 70% of the donations
or 60% of the donations we can tie to GiveWell
and other organizations' reviews of us.
So that's massive.
So take 60% of $178 million, we're looking
at about $100 million that has been driven
by the EA community.
So AMF is an EA community thing really as
much as any of us that work at AMF.
Last year we received about 90,000 donations
from 190 countries, so we're getting to lots
of people.
And every donation matters because every $2
buys a net.
And it means that when we talk to countries
that say, "Hi Rob, if you've got $11 million,"
we say, "We've got 8."
But then the next week we've got 8.2 and 8.4.
So we can literally through the discussions
come back and up the number nets we can fund.
So we put money to work, in essence, as soon
as it comes in because I can't commit to nets
unless I've got the money.
So the three key numbers we often, if people
are sort of benchmarking, what does it cost
to do something in the world of malaria it's
$2 buys a net, $500 protects a village, and
roughly $3,000 prevents a death or $4,000
or $5,000.
I don't know what the latest number is from
GiveWell, which is where that comes from.
On top of that we have a small number of large
donors that build on top of what, in essence,
is the likes of most of us or all of us in
the room, the many individual donors that's
our life blood.
These are very lumpy donations.
We've had some very significant ones.
When you get a $23 million donation you go
like that.
That's amazing because it just means we can
say to a country, we can fund 12 million nets
for you.
And when we're funding larger quantities of
nets we can hope to achieve great success
in some of the things we're aspiring to, which
I'll come on to.
So some fantastic big donations, and I hope...
I guess if there's one thing I want to leave
somebody with hearing me and looking at this
slide is that if ever somebody were to ask,
"Somebody's given $2 million.
What does my $2 matter?"
Well the answer is your $2 buys a net, and
that matters.
It just so happens that $1 million buys 500,000,
but we need both.
And if we didn't have all of us contributing
small amounts, we wouldn't be here, because
no big donations would come in on the back
of a few people giving a few dollars, so these
are inextricably linked.
Over the last few years we've started to hit
the tens of millions of dollars, and that
means we can fund millions of nets.
Everybody who's involved, all the donors,
all the supporters, everybody that is involved
together, we can say that we're putting ourselves
in the position to stop something like 60,000
people dying, preventing 660 million cases
of malaria through the number of nets funded.
And while we have operated in 36 countries
we focus typically on about seven in any one
year.
Home straight now.
So this means that we can fund millions of
nets at a time and say to countries... rather
than turning up at the table and saying, "Yes,
we can fund 100,000 nets," where they would
say, "Terrific-ish" because they need 10 million.
If we turn up and say we can fund 5 of your
10 million we get listened to, and I think
rightly so.
We don't turn up and say, "This is how you're
gonna do it" because that would be insensitive,
crass, and just not a good way of going about
things.
So we come forward and say, "Here's our draft
agreement.
Here's the focus on data.
You let us know what's difficult, and let's
work with you as to how we adjust it, but
some things we're gonna be pretty difficult
to move on because it's all about accountability,
and we think there's sense behind them."
So we're involved in a partnership in persuading.
And the more money we have the more we can
do that.
So things have radically changed in the last
four years, really, with what we can achieve.
But we have challenges, and most of those
challenges...
I'm not expecting you to read the bottom bullet
point.
The point is that they are many, and I could
go on forever, because the devil is in the
detail.
But the big ones are ensuring effective planning
where you've got limited resources and your
span of control is limited, classic stuff.
So we're improving all the time.
We don't get everything right, but we think
we get things more right as each day, each
week, each month goes by.
And we're in the business of persuading people
to do things because that's what partnerships
are all about.
We're also in the business of sometimes managing
or doing a two step tango around the politics
that suddenly can appear in certain situations
in the countries we operate in.
Managing millions of household records, which
is what we do, is the relatively easy bit.
We put 150 lovely people in the room.
We say, "Here's a laptop.
Here's some data."
And we provide them with our data entry system,
and we get the data so we can see it, so there's
no filter.
Really, really important.
But I won't bang on about that.
Insecticide resistance is a second challenge.
Charles Darwin told us that that would happen,
and certainly it has, and it happens with
all of these things.
So what we have done is we've played our part
in saying, "We need to put these new PBO nets"...
you'll remember from your chemistry a-level
of course that PBO stands for piperonyl butoxide.
Yes, everybody knows that.
It's a synergist that goes on the top of a
net or on a net, and it switches off the resistance
mechanism in the mosquito, which means that
the pyrethroid kills it.
We've stepped forward and funded six million
of those distributed in 2017, lots and lots
of clusters for the statisticians in the room,
so that we can actually have a very powerful
study, a randomized control trial, the gold
standard if you like, so that for the rest
of the malaria community, the funding community,
and others we can say, "Here's the data that
tells us whether PBO nets are good, and if
they are in what way and in what circumstances."
And we'll have those results in about six
months' time.
We don't know them.
We are the funder, we are the sole funder
of the study, and in a sense we were a bit
surprised that others weren't going to step
forward, but nobody did so we said, "We'll
do it because this is important."
Insecticide resistance is a challenge to be
met.
The next challenge is funding.
We're allocating about $50 million at the
moment, and we have $200 million worth of
requests, so we have to make some nasty, nasty
decisions in the next three months where we
will have to say to countries, "We don't have
the money."
But we will do our best to try and make sure
that the money we do deploy goes to optimize
the impact we can have.
But that challenge is also an opportunity
because there are lots of countries that need
help.
We don't turn up in the morning and think
all these challenges are weighing us down.
These are opportunities for us to help.
And we tend now to look at anything between
2 and 20 million nets of requests a time,
so some of the numbers are quite chunky.
We have to really make sure that the partnerships
and the agreements we put in place are gonna
deliver what we expect it to deliver.
We tend to look three years out now because
that matches with other funders.
It means we can really plan operationally
much better.
We also have an opportunity with technology.
And this is one of my favorite pictures.
It shows in one of the poorest countries in
the world, the Democratic Republic of Congo,
the use of technology, smart phones, to demonstrate
to within six meters where 250 odd thousand
households are located that received nets.
And when you do stuff like this you've got
real time data, you've got a better accountability,
you've got lower costs, yada, yada, yada.
The list goes on.
So, fantastic opportunity to do better, but
there are challenges with deploying it because
you can't just put thousands of phones into
the DRC and expect it all to go well, so we
have to be very careful how we do this.
I'm going to leave you, last slide, on the
note of optimism, which is if we reflect on
what we've been doing in the last 15 years within
the malaria community, all of us together,
it's pretty dramatic in bringing down over
15 years the number of deaths and cases of
malaria by about 60%.
And there are countries that have moved into
elimination, malaria is gone now.
Sri Lanka, a very challenged country, the
turmoils, war, all sorts of challenging things
going on, but they are now malaria free, three
years of no native cases of malaria.
That's terrific.
And there are now eight other countries, I
think, on the cusp of that.
So elimination is possible, eradication is
possible.
But a child still dies from malaria every
minute, so while I've been talking, depending
on how long I've been talking, 22 kiddiwinks
have not made it, and that's pretty shocking.
As we know what we need to do, which is nets,
we don't have a silver bullet with a vaccine.
We don't have a silver bullet with gene drive
technology yet.
Nets is a big part of what we do.
So certainly from our part and with others'
help, we're gonna continue to do as much as
we can.
Thank you very much.
We've got a half an hour more for questions
from the audience.
For a start you can start adding...
I know some of you have already started adding
questions on the Bizzabo app.
If you go to the poll section of the app then
you can select the AMF one and type in your
question in a bit where it says write your
answer.
We've already started getting some through,
so just to start if I can just start with
some of the more... if you can explain a bit
more of the detail about, like, specifically
how your operations kind of work.
In terms of the nets that you distribute someone's
asked, do you distribute kind of nets that
are manufactured outside that country or are
they manufactured there?
The nets are manufactured broadly in Asia,
so the three dominant countries of manufacture
are China, Thailand, and Vietnam.
There's also a factory in Tanzania, and there
may be other factories sort of coming online
in several other countries.
And there might be one that's come online
in, I think, Ethiopia and Nigeria were looking
at it.
Effectively nets are a textile, so economies
of scale are key, and therefore there are
relatively few plants that produce 80,000
nets a day or more, because it's just not
economic to put small manufacturing facilities,
one in each country, which would be great
for transport and logistics and local economies
and employment if you could do that, but it
just doesn't work.
The fiduciary duty I have, if you like, is
if I'm looking to spend a million dollars
do I spend a million dollars on funding nets
from a facility in Africa, there is one, that
is gonna charge me because of reasons of economy
of scale 20% more, or do I buy 20% more nets
and protect 20% more people?
And the latter has to be my responsibility.
I'm not here to employ people.
I'm here to protect people from malaria.
However, when there's a very narrow gap, then
we can make judgment calls.
But broadly those are the locations of the
nets.
They're brought in, and it costs roughly $2
a net and about 20 cents a net to ship a net,
so it's about 10% of the cost.
It used to be $5 a net, so that shipping cost
has become a larger proportion, but that's
still the way the operations, the production
works.
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
So I supposed following on from that, so thinking
about, do you try and measure or think about
the impact beyond just immediately saving
people's lives?
So for example like the knock-on effects that
has to their economy and to the other lives
that they then affect in the next 10, 20 years.
Is that something that you think about at
all?
No and yes.
No in terms of the decision we make each day
is where can we protect the most people over
the next three years with these nets.
We're cognizant of the fact that if you've
got people that are not sick, as I mentioned
they can function and they can lead healthier
lives, and you can transform fundamentally
the health of a community, because if you
protect people with nets you're reducing the
people in the blood pool that's infected,
so when a non-malaria carrying mosquito bites
the person who is now not infected, it's annoying
and they'll bite somebody else, but they're
not transmitting.
They're not acting as a vector.
So we're aware of the impact it has at the
micro level within a community, the macro
level within a country.
But really our day-to-day focus is more pragmatic
and prosaic.
Do you think there might be... if organizations
like GiveWell or so on started to look at
those longer term impacts, do you think they
might be able to start measuring some of those
longer term things even if they're not your
immediate focus?
Whether they can start measuring them I don't
know.
That's probably more for experts within their
organization, but it would probably be of
benefit in terms of our own sort of statistics,
because there is a dramatic economic impact,
not just the health impact.
Okay, cool.
Thanks, Bob.
Another kind of question, there's some questions
around donations and things, so I just wanted
to ... Because I get to ask you questions
I get to like niff in mine as well.
I just wanted to check.
If people are interested in donating do you
have a preference around people kind of donating
little and often out of their pay packets,
or groups of people getting together and pooling
donations, or saving now and donating more
later?
Do you have a particular preference around
any of that kind of thing?
So in reverse order donate now rather than
later because we've got massive gaps.
I suppose we would prefer people to... we
have no method preference per se because we
don't want to frighten anybody off by saying,
"They want me to give online, and I don't
really want to do that.
I'd rather give by bank transfer."
So we're agnostic when it comes to that perspective.
We do like recurring donations.
It's something that I look at really closely
because I think it acts as a bellwether.
It acts as... there's an element of are we
seeing recurring donations falling away?
Is that saying something about people thinking,
"I think I've done my bit.
I'm gonna do something elsewhere."
So if somebody was thinking of giving 12 pounds,
would I prefer 12 pounds now or a pound a
month I'd probably prefer a pound a month
because this also is the long game.
This is not something where we're after money
now, despite my prior comment.
If somebody's thinking about whether they're
recurring or not, recurring sort of shows,
I think it also shows a more considered view
that I'm not just gonna give 50 bucks.
I'm actually gonna give 20 bucks a month because
I'm probably not gonna cancel it in three
months' time.
And there was one other part of that question
I missed I think.
One of the things that people do in the community
is pool money together into like EA funds
and things like that.
Is that preferred to people donating individually?
Individually much better, simply because,
going back to the point I made about trying
to connect individual donations to a distribution,
so if somebody's given us $50 we can say,
"Your $50 have bought 25 nets that have gone
to this area of Uganda," I think is, we hope,
more energizing and engaging than collectively
we raised $1,000 from 50 people and we've
funded something here.
We can only attach one e-mail to a donation,
so therefore I'm only engaging one person
whereas I'd like to engage all 50.
But again we'd prefer the donation of funds
rather than not.
Yeah.
And I suppose are you thinking about those
50 people and wanting to give them a better
connection, and if those 50 people don't mind
and are happy to give it to you and trust
you, does that make a difference and you wouldn't
mind not connecting it with the individual
50?
Yeah, whatever comes to us.
It's opportunities like this and people ask
us questions and we put them on our blog and
so on in terms of how do you prefer.
I think in some ways it's probably a refined
level of thought because at the top level
we need to persuade people why should I give
to this charity.
And if you've got energetic people that are
gonna group people together and say, "Hey,
why don't we do a fundraiser or do something"
then that's terrific.
That's also another pebble in the pond in
the sense because people getting involved
will... it'll spread to their friend groups
and networks and so on.
Okay, so that was donate now rather than later,
recurring rather than in a lump sum, and individually
rather than pooled is AMF's preference if
you wanted to know.
We've got a question from someone around what
relations do you have with the Bill Gates
Foundation, who are also involved in fighting
malaria?
Effectively none in the sense that we don't
have sort of active connections.
I chose not to go either to friends and family
or big organizations when I started AMF, because
I didn't want people saying, "Oh, what's he
doing now?
We'll give him 50 quid."
And I didn't want to tap into money that already
existed.
I really wanted to get a whole set of people
like me who really didn't know anything as
much as I felt could be known about malaria.
So we've not gone to the Gates Foundation
and said, "Hi, would you give us tens of millions?"
I think they know of us.
I'm aware of that.
I was in a room with Mr. Gates recently, but
one of 500 people, so there's nothing special
there.
Whether or not... and there have been sort
of connections along the way.
The chair of my malaria advisory group was
a guy called Professor Sir Brian Greenwood,
and Brian was also the chair of the... the
director of the Gates malaria partnership
in London, and three of our malaria advisor
group members also were chairpersons of Gates
malaria centers in Africa.
And one of our trustees advised Bill Gates,
Sr, when they were setting up the Gates Foundation.
So we have connections, but we've not exploited
them because what we're about is new money.
Okay.
So I suppose that's the money side of it.
Is there also the expertise and the knowledge
side of things that could be beneficial to
work together?
They tend to work in research rather than
product, which is what we are.
And there have been connections and I have
spoken with senior people at the Gates Foundation
over the years, and it's been swapping ideas
and notes on things, so that does happen.
Okay.
Keep your questions coming in.
We'll have maybe roving mics in just a second
after I've gotten through all of the things
that I really want to ask.
I will give you a chance to ask your questions.
But just following on from that point, I suppose,
so you say that you've worked with the Department
for International Development UK Government
as a collaborator.
Again around sort of the funding point, is
there ever a possibility or are you interested
in the governments actually funding your work?
Yes, in the sense that pragmatically I could
use $150 million now that I don't have.
So if somebody came forward and said, "We'd
like to talk to you seriously about that,"
we'd be straight there.
And even though that's not new money, that's
just a sort of pragmatic response to... it
is also an objective.
I think we feel that we are a good funder
of nets.
I think there are some less good funders of
nets.
I could get myself into dodgy territory here,
so I'll be careful what I say, but I think
that we bring an attention to data, an accountability
that sometimes other organizations don't have
as their specific focus.
That's not quite...
Diplomatic.
So I think that we back ourselves.
If somebody said, "We'd give you this much
money.
Can you spend it on nets?"
We'd say, "Yes, but I'll tell you what.
Hold onto the money.
We'll put that program in place, knowing that
you're committed, right?"
And they'll go, "Yes."
And we'll say, "Right, okay.
Don't give us the money.
We'll go and put it in place and get it all
ready to go, and then we'll come back and
say now there's no risk to you.
Here you go.
Evaluate that.
Now give us the money."
And at the moment I think my focus is increasingly
on how do we increase the volume and the constancy
of donations, and also some of the really
big donations because I think if I'm going
to try and do my best, we're all gonna try
and do our best to fill that $150 million
gap.
If I can phrase it that way then I have to
have some really, really big donations come
in, so that's something I'm thinking a lot
about at the moment.
Do you think there is an actual responsibility
for governments to be actually doing some
of this work, or are you happy for it to be
kind of a third sector kind of thing to be
doing?
Agnostic.
At the end of the day, as fast as we can,
we need to make sure that $5 billion a year
is made available to malaria, and it's only
$5 billion a year.
Financial crisis and billions talked about
here, there, and everywhere.
It's a tiny amount of money for the number
of people that die and the lack of productivity.
So I don't care where it comes from.
Our plan B, we in AMF a plan B, and it's to
close.
And I want to do that as fast as I can, not
just to see more of my four kids but because
then I'd be an unbelievable hypocrite if I
wanted AMF to keep going.
Because I want to see malaria gone.
There are plenty of other things to work on.
So, yes, we want to see money coming from
wherever it comes.
The reality is, it's not coming from government.
Or rather, all of the money at the moment
is coming from governments, and in 2017 the
four biggest funders of nets were the Global
Fund, about $500 million, the British government
and the American government in one order or
another, and then AMF, which is ridiculous.
We need to try and tap into that wall of money
that I passionately believe exists within
our communities.
And I think the greatest barrier to it, frankly,
is accountability.
I think there's massive cynicism of, "If I
give money to a charity operating in Africa
where's it gonna go?"
And I think that's a valid concern, hence
my cynicism.
And boy if I was cynical when I started AMF
14 years ago, boy am I cynical now given what
I've seen, which is why we do what we do the
way we do it.
So, tell me what's the cynicism that you've
kind of developed over the last 14 years?
I've seen many, many cases of benign incompetence
all the way through to malign corruption at
staggering levels.
Like an example?
No.
Okay.
Nice try.
Okay.
His lips are sealed.
I want to stay out of jail.
I'm very intrigued.
Sort of moving a little bit away from the
donation side of things, then, one person
has asked, apart from donations how else can
people contribute to AMF's mission?
That's a good question.
I suppose what Julian and I should do...
Julian is sitting just in the right here.
He'll wave.
He's been with us for a year as operations
manager.
Is we need to, and Julian runs the volunteer
program, which we need to do... we need to
work out how we can do even better at taking
the fantastic offers we get from people saying,
"How can I help with our time?"
So that's one answer to your question and
expertise.
I suppose there are specific ways in which
we approach volunteering and say... because
that's in a sense where I'm headed, is that
if you've got expertise or connections with
people I'm shameless.
My favorite dinner party would be three of
the 170, I think it's 170, people in the world
that have assets of $10 billion or more, and
I'd like to sit down with three of them at
dinner and say, "Just give me the interest
on the money.
That's all I want, because there's only so
many hundred-meter yachts you people can buy."
Please don't repeat that.
But in that way we would...
That's leverage.
Three of you could save God knows how many
people and et cetera, et cetera.
But apart from that we need to redesign our
website.
We all internally, although there's a huge
amount of talent that's gone into it, it's
way out of date.
It's not responsive.
We sort of cringe at it.
So what I would like is a really big website
designing company to come forward and say,
"Great, here's your team, Rob, all for free,"
because we do things for free, right.
And then we redesign it.
And we get another group of people who say,
"You've got expertise, we don't.
How do we keep this, this, this, this, and
this, but generate a fantastic website that's
responsive so that... how do we..."
Another thing I'd throw out there is where
we need help, but it's very pragmatic to AMF's
needs if you like because we have to be focused
on what we're trying to deliver and then fold
in volunteers so they can do things that excite
them and they're good at, so we have to marry
those two things up.
I would like to try and get a million people
to give me one net each, and only one net
each.
They're not allowed to give us more.
Well, if you want to you can go over here,
but this bit of the project is a million people
giving me a net, in a way that so when Julian
gives a net he can come back 10 days later
and see, "Wow, five other people gave a net."
It's pyramid selling, but it's sophisticated.
And then there's more down here.
And he can see that, "Wow, there are 42,000
nets that are being given as the result of
the net I gave and the five e-mails I sent
or the three or the two or the one."
Now, I don't know who to talk to about that,
so if there's anybody who knows the senior
people at Google and Facebook and wherever
we get those two guys and say, "How do you
guys make that happen?
You must be able to do that in about three
weeks."
And that would be a million nets and two million
people protected.
So the help we get is we're always really
interested in getting people writing to us
and saying, "How can I help?"
And we've now got a series of questions where
we say, "What are you good at?
What do you want to do?
How much time do you got, et cetera?"
We have a database running, so we can then
sort of work out how do we not gets lots of
time sucked into volunteer management, because
that can be a real danger, but we can focus
people on helping.
So it sounds like it says partly individuals
who have those skills can get in touch and
sort of ask to help, but is it also that people
who work at big corporations can try and get
in touch with you and leverage the expertise
in their organization?
Yeah.
And we might say to somebody, is there a consulting
team that over the next three months... not
that it's the time thing because people have
got jobs, they're earning money, they're paying
the rent, so they can't just say, "I can do
something for three weeks."
Sometimes there are people in that position.
But in the next three months could you guys
take on, and we would liase with them, a study
to work out what are the top new types of
net on the market that we might have missed
and so on and do a research project and come
back with us.
And what we try and do is identify people
who are totally self driven.
So our management time doesn't get sucked
into it, because there are only seven of us.
They then go away, say, "Got it.
We'll be back to you in ..." and every four
weeks we have a conversation, and they deliver
something that we go, "That's terrific.
We can now use that."
And there are lots of examples of that, where
we try and involve people as best we can helping
with the mission.
Okay, so we've got about six minutes left.
I'm just gonna open up to the floor.
Do people want to put your hands up if you
have a question, and we'll get a roving mic
over to talk to you?
Gentleman here, first hand up that I saw.
Okay.
There we go.
Yes, I saw an article a couple of months ago
about new nets with a combined sort of approach
of combined chemical and something to do with
growth regulation that effects the growth
of mosquitoes or... and I was wondering if
there had been developments with that since,
and whether the nets have changed or that's
something that you focus on?
I don't know is the answer.
The PBO net is a combined net in terms of
two chemicals trying to have a particular
impact.
There are a number of different types of nets
that are now coming onto the... or being tested.
They're not on the market because they have
to go through something called WHOPES, the
WHO Pesticide Evaluation Scheme, a bit like
the FDA in America where it's gotta be tested.
You can't put a baby underneath a net with
insecticide on it unless it's been fully tested.
And by the way, a baby could lick two square
meters of net and get a mild tummy ache, so
obviously these things are tested.
There are different things that are being
brought to bear, to try and solve the problem
of resistance rather than greater efficacy.
They're fantastically effective as long as
resistance isn't an issue, so I don't have...
back to my volunteering thing.
We need somebody to go and help the team by
working at briefing us.
Okay.
Gentleman here.
Hi.
You said you spend zero pounds on marketing,
is that right?
Given... so a lot of advertising agencies
can demonstrate their effectiveness of their
campaigns.
Quite similarly you had 1 million US dollars
spent can save about 12 million for a country's
local economy.
That's about the same ratio as the John Lewis
Christmas Advertising Campaign.
So is there not a bit of an ethical dilemma
in not spending money on marketing and advertising
given that you could get more money if you
did it?
I think it's not an ethical dilemma.
It's a sort of commercial one.
If I put my commercial hat on as to how do
I spend the million dollars that somebody
gives me?
Do I buy a million dollars worth of net?
I think the way we've come out at AMF is that
I think we're getting into some tricky territory.
If we were to announce to you that we were
spending $5 million over Christmas on a marketing
campaign I think there would be some people
that would go, "Really?"
And the problem with advertising is that 50%
is effective.
The problem is which 50%.
The way we prefer to look at marketing and
the most general thing is that let's put in
front of people what we do and how we do it
and the results we have, and hopefully that
will encourage people to support what we do.
If somebody from an advertising firm said,
"We're prepared to put together a marketing
campaign for you all for free.
Here's a case team.
And we've got a million dollar budget.
Are you interested?"
I'd say maybe rather than yes because it depends
on the nature of the marketing.
Because I think one of the things that we
value at AMF is, if somebody gave me a billion
dollars tomorrow I couldn't spend it all.
It's a capacity issue.
So our growth has been managed in a way.
Boy, it took eight years to fit them or get
there.
But now we're at the stage where we could
scale, and we could take $150 million easily.
I would be interested in an advertising campaign,
but we're not about celebrities.
This is back to this grass roots thing.
I think celebrities, they're interested for
a while and they go.
And I think that can often be disempowering.
It can obviously be empowering because it
gets the message out.
If Oprah Winfrey said, "Look, I'm interested
in supporting you all.
What can I do?"
I think we'd be really interested in having
a conversation.
But there's an element of, maybe I'm mistaken
and I'm not a marketer, is that I feel there's
a sort of...
I don't like the word brand, associated with
AMF.
At AMF we're sort of quite family, we're quite
grass rootsy.
We want to try and engage as many people we
have, but we just want to get on with the
job and do it as well as we can.
And I think that's hopefully the best way
that will allow us to expand and maybe, as
Habiba says, DFID will come to us and say,
"Look, you've got a track record now operationally.
We'd like to talk to you about big dollars
to see whether... make the case to us.
Maybe we should give you some money."
I think that's more the way we put our limited
hours than thinking about getting...
I'm being pejorative... getting sucked into
a marketing side of it.
But we're not completely closed to it, and
we're actually dealing with something at the
moment with, do we AB test something, and
we've got free stuff given to us.
And we're even sort of sitting here going,
"Ooh, do we want to do this?"
So we probably need somebody to advise us
because we're not very good in this area.
Sorry, that's a rather inadequate response.
Let's squeeze in one more question if we can.
Lady over here.
Thank you.
I'm quite interested in AMF's monitoring and
evaluation.
It's so exceptional.
Why do you think that most NGOs actually don't
do monitoring and evaluation, and do you think
that you can advise other NGOs with different
types of programs in low income countries
to do monitoring evaluation better?
I think, there are three things.
Firstly, it can be expensive.
Secondly, it can be difficult and time consuming.
And I think there's attitude as well.
I think that many start with the attitude
that they don't want to do no monitoring and
evaluation, but they don't want to do much
because it requires effort and time.
So surely the best thing is just get 10 million
nets out to the country.
And even if some of them get stolen and so
on, "Hey, look, like seeds being cast they'll
cover most people, right."
And my answer to that to one of the comments
or the questions Habiba tried to answer is
that I've seen, I've heard of, and I've heard
on very good authority, no AMF nets, tens
of thousands, and in one case 1.4 million
nets being stolen and sold to another country,
which means that the two million people that
were gonna be protected with those 1.4 million
nets, they didn't get any nets.
And nobody was coming in afterwards.
So I think monitoring is really important
to stop these sorts of things happening.
But a lot of organizations think there are
so many challenges we have already.
If we're going to do monitoring in this way
then we're gonna have to have a team of people
doing it.
There's money involved.
So I think generally things focus on the statistical.
So let's do a survey and see how many households
are covered or not covered rather than what
I would almost call proactive monitoring where
you're trying to influence behavior sort of
upstream by letting people know you're actually
gonna monitor after the fact what goes on.
There are loads more questions that people
had for you, but the good news is that Robert
is going to be doing office hours now for
the next half hour, so you can find him in
room 834 if you want to carry on this conversation.
And if you ever scroll through the questions
you'll find out the kinds of things people
are asking.
It is now... so if you could just join me
in thanking Rob for an excellent talk.
