The founder

Annet van den Hoek (founder Be-Work)

International cooperation has had my interest since my last years at Wageningen University. I worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Indonesia, Pakistan en Kenya and spend almost 10 years  living and working in developing programmes in rural areas. My Phd study entiteld: “Planning as a learning process” was my first step towards “effective giving” in 1992.

In 2011, after having worked as a business consultant in the Netherlands for more then 20 years I wondered how I could use my knowledge and experience to help increase the impact of NGO’s.  I started supporting organisations, social businesses and foundations in India, Ghana and the Netherlands.

I have seen the beautiful work and intentions of many NGOs, but I also came to learn that their impact was limited. As board member of the Jazi foundation I became aquainted with the new movement of “effective giving”.  I applied the principles in my work as programme manager of a family foundation and learnt valuable lessons. Here I also experienced that just giving money is not enough. Making proper choices, being  critical about programmes and expected value of programmes helped NGOs to strengthen their approach and increased the value of the grant tremendously.  I also learnt that if you really want to have an impact it will help  to align the different funding partners and go for a change in the government systems.

So in order to be effective myself and use my unique resources well, I started  Be-Work.