Non-Governmental Development Organizations and the Poverty Reduction Agenda

NGOs, States, and Donors Revisited: Still Too Close for Comfort?

“…This offers possibilities for NGOs to free themselves of donor influence and harness national resources (Makuwira, 2014). We can see this to some extent as an opportunity for NGOs to pursue their civil society functions through stealth rather than contestation, demonstrating through partnerships strategies for more effective and democratic service provision (Batley, 2011;Rose, 2011).…”

“…We can call these their "service delivery functions" and their "civil society functions" respectively (with individual NGOs displaying a mixture of these two functions to varying extents). The visions and missions of NGOs -which some have referred to as their 'moral crusade against poverty' (Makuwira, 2014) -usually focus more on the latter, particularly their desire to 'empower' poor and marginalized groups through their activities. But in part because of their weak civil society roots and in part due to external pressures to act in this way, there is a mismatch between these visions and the ability of NGOs to influence the drivers of social change through their programs.…”

“…Like a natural ecosystem, civil society gains strength and sustenance through two things: one is diversity -so that all angles of a problem can be tackled, from service delivery to street protest; and the other is connection, so that the whole can be more than the sum of its parts and synergies can be developed between different elements. A key challenge to NGOs, therefore, is to reflect on their roles within this complex ecosystem and hierarchies as well as on how their interventions unfold in the complex terrain of social, political, economic, and cultural dynamics (Makuwira, 2014).…”

Addressing Geospatial Preparedness Inequity: A Sustainable Bottom-up approach for Non-Governmental Development Organizations

“…Therefore, both realities should be considered. They could serve the community as external stakeholders or themselves be part of the receiving community [31,33]. The research was conducted globally to avoid country or culture-related biases.…”

“…Conceptually, the study is focused on Non-Governmental Development Organizations (NGDOs) which places the topic on NGOs working within the framework of International Cooperation. As indicated by Makuwira, the generic concept of these NGOs as "organizations that work for the aid and development of others, without direct profit for themselves" includes a great diversity of organizations and it has many nuances [31]. Indeed, given the thin and blurry line separating NGOs in general from NGDOs, it is difficult to estimate the number of organizations that fit in the total target population [32], but it could exceed the hundreds of thousands [31,33].…”