Sustainability is not about money!: the case of the Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry

With specific reference to the BCCI, the author argues that equating sustainability with financial self-sufficiency can lead development organisations to sacrifice or compromise their development work in order to generate revenue. The BCCI was funded by USAID for seven years and, to compensate for the loss of that funding and ostensibly in order to continue their development activities, set up and ran a national Lotto which consumed resources and ultimately became the sole raison d'être for the organisation. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader Development and Patronage.