What Do Nongovernmental Organizations Do?

Abstract

Nongovernmental organizations are one group of players who are active in the efforts of international development and increasing the welfare of poor people in poor countries. Nongovernmental organizations are largely staffed by altruistic employees and volunteers working towards ideological, rather than financial, ends. Their founders are often intense, creative individuals who sometimes come up with a new product to deliver or a better way to deliver existing goods and services. They are funded by donors, many of them poor or anonymous. Yet these attributes should not be unfamiliar to economists. Development NGOs, like domestic nonprofits, can be understood in the framework of not-for-profit contracting. It is easy to conjure up a glowing vision of how the efforts of NGOs could focus on problem solving without getting bogged down in corruption or bureaucracy. But the strengths of the NGO model have some corresponding weaknesses -- in agenda setting, decision making, and resource allocation. We highlight three factors in explaining the increased presence of NGOs in the last few decades: a trend towards more outsourcing of government services; new ventures by would-be not-for-profit "entrepreneurs"; and the increasing professionalization of existing NGOs.

Corporate Funding and Sustainability of Non- Governmental Organizations in Africa

“…However, failure to stick to their jobs may trigger query which is a warning to improve your performance or risk dismissal from the job. The findings also rhyme with the studies such as (Sullivan, 1996;Hammami, 2000;Rutherford, 2000;Friedman et al, 2001;Gough and Simon, 2001;Cosgrove, 2002;Dorman, 2002;Breen, 2003;Charnovitz, 2006;Linton and Hauss, 2007;Werker and Ahmed, 2008;Ohanyan, 2009;Bieri and Boli, 2011;O'Reilly, 2011;Shieh and Deng, 2011;Shannon et al, 2012;Huang, 2013).…”

Save the poor, shoot some bankers

“…8 Third, weaken the market power of middlemen. Although competing middlemen can crowd out good projects or give monopsony power to recipients (Platteau and Gaspart 2005;Werker and Ahmed 2008), benchmarking and community discipline can reduce this problem. NGOs are taking market share from official agencies (Masud and Yontcheva 2005) because they compete with each other, emphasize intrinsic compensation, and modify their structure and alliances for each delivery project.…”

Aid Allocation by German NGOs: Does the Degree of Public Refinancing Matter?

“…They tend to be altruistic and should be better suited to provide foreign aid the quality of which is difficult to verify (Werker and Ahmed 2008). Critics suspect, however, that NGOs might be less autonomous than widely believed and rather implement the policy agenda of governments (Edwards and Hulme 1996).…”