The Needs of the Needy, or the Needs of the Donors

Bibliographic Data

ID6251869
AuthorsNimruji Jammulamadaka (0000-0002-5488-1638, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume24
Issue1
Pages37-50
Publication date2012-03-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCritical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0891-3811 • E-ISSN: 1933-8007
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/08913811.2012.684471
OpenAlexW2160901507
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited17

NGOs are popularly viewed as altruistic and responsive to the needy. However, the availability of donors is a primary trigger for the formation of NGOs. This finding need not dispel the impression that NGOs are altruistic enterprises, though altruism is primarily an individual-level characteristic, but when it leads to the formation of an NGO, the organization will usually require funding, and donors appear to use the existence of other NGOs as a heuristic indicating the need for more NGOs. Thus, the number of NGOs formed in an area is an ecological-level characteristic that may create the impression of self-interestedness, but one that is not necessarily inconsistent with the altruism of the individuals involved. Notes 1. The National Advisory Council advises the cabinet on matters of policy. 2. This implication is apparent in the requests of the Planning Commission of India for “partnership between government, the voluntary sector.” The Prime Minister of India's exhortation that “greater involvement of voluntary organizations will help the government in providing more efficient delivery of services at substantially lower costs and create gainful employment” also conveys the same view. This view is not restricted to the government but shared by development workers as well who seek a renegotiation of the relationship between government and NGOs under the liberalized regime and an enlargement of space for civil society to work as equals with the government (All India Conference on the Role of Voluntary Organizations in National Development, 2002, http://www.planningcommission.nic.in/data/ngo/vac_prced.pdf). 3. See also the Proceedings of the All India Conference on the Role of the Voluntary Sector in National Development, 2002, http://www.planningcommission.nic.in/data/ngo/vac_prced.pdf. 4. I obtained these data from the Council for Advancement of People's Action and Rural Technology (CAPART), an autonomous organization under the Ministry of Rural Development. 5. This is according to the Planning Commission's VO database. 6. “Receipt of Foreign Contribution by Voluntary Agencies, Annual Report 1997–98,” Government of India, Ministry of Home Affairs, Foreigners Division, New Delhi. 7. The formation (registration) of NGOs and their operations are not tracked systematically in India by either the government or by private agencies. Hence no exact figures pertaining to the scale and scope of NGO sector are available. Of the kind of data available, the earliest are the lists of partner NGOs maintained by funding and support agencies, which include only those NGOs supported by them, thus excluding a large number of NGOs. In 2004, the Planning Commission of India and CAPART began the creation of a national database of NGOs. I used the CAPART database because it provided the date and place of incorporation details, permitting an analysis over time and space. Financial details were available in the database for about 50 percent of the approximately 5,000 NGOs in the CAPART database for AP. This shows that the NGOs listed in the database have been active and are not simply paper NGOs. In the analysis it was assumed that an NGO is simultaneously active in more than one field. It was also assumed that an NGO works in the mandal (subdistrict) in which it has its office. 8. In 1980, for the first time in the Sixth Five Year Plan (1980–85) NGOs were recognized as agents for rural development by the Government of India. This recognition meant a sea change in the environment of NGOs. Qualitative field work also showed that the 1977 tidal-wave devastation (the worst in a century) in AP was followed by a fund inflow by 1980 and surge in NGO numbers. As per the CAPART database, while 241 NGOs were formed before 1980, 1,043 NGOs were formed in 1980 itself. After that, the average number of NGOs formed per year fell to less than a few hundreds. I thus treated 1980 as a cutoff point. Hence the number of NGOs formed in a mandal before 1980 was taken as the measure of the independent variable. 9. A weakness of this procedure is that it omits church-based NGOs that do not make their affiliation explicit through their names. However, the strength of the procedure is that it does not overestimate the presence of church-based NGOs. 10. This can be concluded from the role of familiarity, feedback, and managerial articulation in the funding agency's fund-allocation decision—aspects that lead to the need for human resources skilled in managerialism. 11. Natalie Warne (2011 Warne , Natalie . 2011 . “ Natalie Warne: The Power of Anonymous Extraordinaries .” http://humaneconnectionblog.blogspot.in/2011/11/natalie-warne-power-of-anonymous.html [Google Scholar]) calls such people “anonymous extraordinaries”: “People who work selflessly and vigorously for what they believe in.” When I share my basic findings, audience members often question that NGOs are self-interested by citing examples of the altruism of such extraordinary people

Business · Political science · Sociology · International Development and Aid · Public Administration · Religion, Society, and Development

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