NGOs as Philanthropy?
Some of the indexes mentioned in my recent posts group NGOs together with private philanthropy (i.e., grantmaking foundations) when creating their classifications, since both derive support from private contributions and are independent organizations with private oversight. Yet I believe the similarities go much deeper.
Because many international development and relief NGOs are operational - that is, directly involved in the design and implementation of development projects or in delivering humanitarian aid - we tend to think of them as a global version of the nonprofits we encounter daily in our communities in the United States, raising money to provide services. Even when their activities grow to include advocacy, leadership development, technical assistance, or re-granting, they are generally viewed less as a funder than as an ally or an intermediary.
Yet the context for a Northern-based NGO promoting human development and social change in developing countries seems to be quite similar to a private grantmaking foundation. There exists a similar imbalance between the resources of NGOs and the communities where they work, though like foundations, NGOs do not have unlimited capacity and must deploy their resources strategically to ensure maximum impact. Even when delivering services, they identify local staff and work through local partners to achieve their goals, in a manner meant to empower individuals and local institutions, rather than create dependence on NGO support.
I sense a cultural divide here that is analogous to the dynamics that organized philanthropy encounters, and I don’t only mean the difference in Western customs and perspectives in relation to local traditions, though that plays a meaningful role. In the NGO context, we have an organization with significant financial and intellectual resources, coming from the outside, with defined goals for itself and concrete ideas about the strategies and implementation necessary to reach them, attempting to facilitate the growth and self-sufficiency of impoverished communities and institutions. Sound familiar?
Why does this matter? On a practical level, greater and more regular communication between organized philanthropy and the NGO community about their experiences in promoting and measuring social impact could enhance our understanding of what works and how we know, especially when deploying resources through others to achieve our own goals. It also shades questions of accountability, representativeness, the niche that international NGOs occupy and the enterprise in which they’re engaged. I don’t mean to fully equate the two fields, but I think it would be fruitful to explore the similarities further.
Tags: funders, grants, private foundations
June 10th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
I agree that there are similarities between philanthropies and international NGOs, but I wish that there were fewer! International NGOs are at their best when, as you say, they work to defined goals and have “concrete ideas about the strategies and implementation needed to reach them.” Philanthropies are at their best, in my view, when they pursue broad goals but use their funding to give rein to the creativity and leadership of others, that is, their grantees. Too many philanthropies over-specify their goals and over-define the scope of acceptable action by grantees, to the extent that grantees become more like contractors and less like the sources of independent thinking and action that society really needs. Muhammad Yunus was able to persuade commercial bankers to lend money to the new Grameen bank because of a Ford Foundation Program Related-Investment that relieved the commercial banks of the initial risk of investing in a new and untested idea. Grameen and its new model for securing loans were Yunus’s idea, not Ford’s. Ford leadership had the judgment and self-confidence to get behind the ideas of others. I’m not convinced this happens enough in philanthropy today. On the other hand, international NGOs, because their missions and goals are fairly specific, and because they work to internally agreed programs of change and best practice, are going to support through their sub-granting arrangements local NGOs that work under the same general rubric. This is as it should be.
So while there are similarities, I would want to accentuate these important differences.