Grant-Eating Organizations (Part 2 of 2)

(the first part can be found here

The lesson for international donors is not that they should disappear, but that they should present partnership opportunities only when they are certain that local demand is driving an initiative. A lesson can be drawn from social research, such that a researcher does not ask, “would your life be better if you had X & Y?” Instead, we should ask, “what would make your life better?” Then we deliver the assistance, keeping in mind that these organizations are developing a constituency that will pay for these services once they see the value.

Instead, many international NGOs take a cookie-cutter approach to civil society development. They produce NGOs with beautifully written mission statements, with free services, that lack a dues-paying membership base. If civil societies are to generate genuine grass-roots democracy, they must be driven by local demand. By nature of the arrangement, dependency on funds from abroad will make them targets for government repression, and the needs of local people are more likely to go unmet when NGOs think they are accountable to the donors before their supposed constituency.  

Except in extreme humanitarian circumstances, the best case scenario would be for local civil society organizations to seek funds from local business communities, allowing them to confront pressing local issues that keep their countries from developing. This would dilute contentions that civil society groups are serving the interests of foreigners and it would increase the possibility that initiatives become sustainable, locally owned, effective at achieving results, and effective at developing real grass-roots led initiatives. Many would say this is an unrealistic scenario, but we all need to ask ourselves how unrealistic it is. As international donors, we need to be working with local organizations to get them to that point and to work ourselves out of a job.

Published Date: January 20, 2006