Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are critical change agents in promoting economic growth, human rights and social progress. Many bodies partners with NGOs to deliver assistance across all regions and sectors in which they work and to promote inclusive economic growth, strengthen health and education at the community level, support civil society in democratic reforms and assist countries recovering from disasters. (Source)
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are nonprofit associations founded by citizens, which function independently of the government. NGOs, also known as civil societies, are organized on “community, national, or international levels” to help developing nations in their humanitarian, health care, educational, social, environmental and social issues. These citizen-run groups perform various services and humanitarian functions by advocating citizen concerns to governments, overlooking policies and encouraging political participation by providing information to the public.
History of Non-Governmental Organizations
Non-governmental organizations started emerging during the 18th century. The Anti-Slavery Society, formed in 1839, is the first international NGO. This organization had a profound impact on society, and it stimulated the founding of many other NGOs since opening its doors. Of note, many civil societies began to form as a result of wars. For example, the Red Cross formed after the Franco-Italian war in the 1860s, Save the Children began after World War I and Oxfam and CARE started after World War II. The term non-governmental organization emerged after the Second World War when the United Nations wanted to differentiate between “intergovernmental specialized agencies and private organizations.”
NGOs engage in many different forms throughout communities in the sense that they are a “complex mishmash of alliances and rivalries.” Some have a charitable status, while others focus on business or environment-related issues. Other non-governmental organizations have religious, political, or other interests concerning a particular issue.
The World Bank identifies two broad types of non-governmental organizations: operational and advocacy.
Operational NGOs
An operational non-governmental organization is a group of citizens that focus on designing and implementing development projects and advocacy. NGOs promote and defend particular causes, and operational NGOs fall into two categories: relief and development-oriented organizations. They are classified on whether or not they “stress service delivery or participation.”
An example of an operational NGO is the International Medicine Corps (IMC) in Afghanistan. The IMC installed a vaccination campaign against measles. They trained about 170 Afghani’s how to vaccinate children between the ages of 6 and 12, and conducted a two-week-long “vaccination campaign.” These efforts assisted 95 percent of children in the capital of Kabul.
Advocacy NGOs
Advocacy non-governmental organizations use lobbying, press work and activist events. This is in order to raise awareness, acceptance and knowledge on the specific cause they are promoting or defending. An example of an advocacy NGO is America’s Development Foundation (ADF). This NGO provides advocacy training and technical assistance in efforts to “increase citizen participation in democratic processes.”
Non-Governmental Organization Funding
Since non-governmental organizations are nonprofit organizations, they rely on membership dues, private donations, the sales of goods and services and grants. These funds cover funding projects, operations, salaries and other overhead costs. NGOs have very large budgets that reach millions, even billions, of dollars because of heavy dependence on government funding.
Another chunk of NGO funding belongs to the individual, private donors. A few of these donors are affluent individuals, such as Ted Turner who donated $1 billion to the United Nations. Most nonprofits, however, depend on multiple small donations from people to raise money.
Overall, non-governmental organizations function to build support for a certain cause whether it is economic, political or social. In addition, NGOs tend to bring people together, especially advocacy NGOs. (Isabella Gonzalez Montilla).
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are high profile actors in the field of international development, both as providers of services to vulnerable individuals and communities and as campaigning policy advocates. This book provides a critical introduction to the wide-ranging topic of NGOs and development. Written by two authors with more than twenty years experience of research and practice in the field, the book combines a critical overview of the main research literature with a set of up-to-date theoretical and practical insights drawn from experience in Asia, Europe, Africa and elsewhere. It highlights the importance of NGOs in development, but it also engages fully with the criticisms that the increased profile of NGOs in development now attracts.(Source)
The acronym ‘NGO’ has become part of everyday language in many countries. It has entered the vocabulary of professionals and activists, and that of ordinary citizens. Images and representations of NGOs and their work have also become mainstream. In the UK, NGO fundraising leaflets fall from the pages of the Sunday newspapers each week, more often than not featuring a photo of a young, wide-eyed African or Asian child. NGOs also feature prominently in cultural life, such as in movies and books. In the Hollywood film About Schmidt (2002), the central character, played by Jack Nicholson, finds redemption when he sponsors an African child after seeing a television appeal. In Helen Fielding’s novel Cause Celeb (1994), the heroine escapes an empty London working life when she joins an international NGO and works with African famine relief (Lewis et al. 2005).(Source)
From the late 1980s onwards, NGOs rapidly assumed a far greater role and profile on the landscape of development than they had previously. NGOs were celebrated by donors as being able to bring fresh solutions to complex and long-standing development problems. The new attention given to NGOs at this time brought many far-reaching changes to development thinking and practice, as a consequence of new interest in then alternative concepts such as participation, empowerment, gender and a range of people-centred approaches. But alongside such claims and much positive change, there was a wider problem, which was that too much became expected of NGOs. All too often NGOs were seen by donors as a ‘quick fix’ or, in Vivian’s (1994) phrase, a ‘magic bullet’ that could unblock the disappointment, disillusionment and deadlock that had characterized the world of development. Such views then inevitably led to a backlash by the end of the 1990s, when evidence began to suggest that many NGOs had failed to live up to expectations.(Source)
The 1990s witnessed a growth of writing about development NGOs. Much of this work tended to present a fairly positive picture of the work that NGOs were doing, and was often written by people directly involved with, or very sympathetic to, the world of NGOs. Often this material was of a high quality, and it served to highlight the new importance of NGO work in the field of development and emergency work. But in retrospect, it is possible to see that some of the writings about NGOs that emerged at this time, particularly the many case studies of NGO work that were written up by people involved in the actual work, contained important limitations (Najam 1999). This type of literature tended towards a descriptive rather than an analytical approach, it tended to focus on individual organizational cases rather than on the broader picture, and such write than a more objective, critical purpose (Lewis 2005).(Source).