This is the last of a five-part series of blog posts by Keith Johnston on the role of international board members in the governance of international NGOs. By Keith Johnston Identifying and making decisions of global scope and significance is challenging for two related reasons. Compared with a national board, the issues become more abstract [...]

This is the fourth of a five-part series of blog posts by Keith Johnston on the role of international board members in the governance of international NGOs. By Keith Johnston The central governance questions for any board are: What are we trying to become? Where are we going? These are the core questions for the [...]

This is the third of a five-part series of blog posts by Keith Johnston on the role of international board members in the governance of international NGOs. By Keith Johnston A consistent endeavour is for each organisation to be more representative of the whole world in which it is working and to be able to [...]

This is the first of a five-part series of blog posts by Keith Johnston on the role of international board members in the governance of international NGOs. By Keith Johnston American folk icon Pete Seeger, when he encourages his audiences to sing along with him, often notes that by the time you have learnt the [...]

by Open Forum for CSO Development Effectiveness and CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation The 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, held December 2011 in Busan, South Korea, was a landmark event where civil society participated in negotiations on the new direction for international development cooperation on an equal basis with governments and donors, [...]

By Steven Lawry and Elisa Peter The trial of 43 people including 16 Americans on criminal charges of working in nonregistered nonprofit organizations and receiving foreign funding began on February 26 in Cairo. The charges against the NGO workers, including 16 Americans, has ignited a deep crisis in US-Egyptian relations, including threats from members of [...]

By Ayesha Barenblat In my new role as BSR’s Director of Stakeholder Collaboration, I am focused on building relationships with NGO colleagues globally to bring their insights to our member companies and develop next-generation stakeholder engagement approaches that are outcome based and take into account trends in the field. BSR created this position to deepen [...]

By Rahul Daswani The reason there are 9 “Major Groups” of stakeholders as part of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development is because these groups are the ones who are pushy and vocal. Felix Dodds (Executive Director of Stakeholder Forum), shared his tips during a talk at the Harvard Kennedy School on November 10 2011: [...]

By Elisa Peter The women are sitting in a circle on the ground under a tree. They were brought together by an international development NGO. An NGO staffer is facilitating the discussion and drawing lines on a large sheet of paper. This could be in Bangladesh, Mali or Peru. All of us working in international development [...]

By Abby Bellows In April 2011, the Indian middle class started to wake up. Development activist Dr. R. Balasubramaniam (Balu) (HKS Mason Fellow, 2009-10) shared the story in a talk at the Hauser Center on October 31, 2011. India’s “dying democracy,” he explained, was revived by a convergence of factors – the Arab Spring uprisings [...]