How And Why Do NGOs Attempt to Scale up Their Development Efforts - Essay Example

The last two decades have seen an explosion in the number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) engaged in development activities. NGOs now play a visible and audible role in the development process so much so that development actors have to learn to interact with voluntary development groups. Earlier, the process of yielding influence, resources and decision-making power to this sector was not as smooth especially for those mainstream agencies working with NGO groups that have emerged from or that operate at the grassroots level. These groups are often very dynamic but lacking in important professional expertise. An NGO is a non-profit association that functions outside institutionalized political structures and pursues its target issues by lobbying, persuasion or direct action. The term “NGO” typically refers to social, cultural, legal and environmental advocacy groups having non – commercial goals. Twentieth century globalization gave NGO’s a whole new lease because many problems arose that could not be solved within a nation. International treaties and organizations such as World Trade Organization were considered biased towards capitalist interests. NGOs lay emphasis on humanitarian issues, developmental aid and sustainable development which helped in counterbalancing the capitalist trend. A prominent example of this is the World Social Forum, a rival convention to the World Economic Forum held annually in Davos, Switzerland. The fifth World Social Forum in Porto Alagre, Brazil, in January 2005 was attended by representatives from more than 1,000 NGOs. [4] There are three stages or generations of NGO evolution described in “Three Generations of Voluntary Development Action” (Korten, 1990). A first generation NGO is the typical development NGO that focused on relief and welfare and delivers its services directly to its beneficiaries. These NGOs notice immediate need and respond to them spontaneously. Common services offered by them are food, shelter and health services. The second generation NGO’s are involved primarily in small scale, self reliant and local development. At this stage NGOs build the capacities of local communities to meet their needs through self reliant local action. The third generation NGOs are referred to as ‘sustainable system development’ as they attempt to advance changes in policies and institutions at local , national ,as well as international level by moving away from their operational service providing role towards a catalytic role. At this stage the NGO has said to be evolved from a relief NGO to a developmental NGO (1). It is important for NGOs to scale up from time to time to increase their impact and efficiency. Peter Uvin et al developed taxonomy of scaling-up practices and tested it in the light of the experience of 5 actual organizations and added more information to their initial list of possible paths to scaling-up and substantiating their impact. In their study of the Indian NGOs, the authors focus on 4 types of scaling-up strategies. Expanding Coverage and Size is probably the most evident form of scaling-up according to the authors. This involves increasing the number of employees, managing larger budgets, covering a larger number of beneficiaries in a larger geographical area and as a result becoming a larger organization. In Uvins previous research, this kind of scaling-up was called "quantitative" scaling-up. After an initial period of rapid growth, some of the NGOs began to take concrete measures to stop growing or even "downsize." While this pattern was not universal, it appears that many NGOs fear becoming overly bureaucratic and unresponsive if they get too big. Increasing Activities: there are 2 ways of increasing impact through increasing activities: diversification or horizontal integration: this is simply the expansion in the number and diversity of the organizations activities, vertical integration: this is when an organization adds activities that "feed into" their current activities (upstream integration) or are associated with the results of their current activities (downstream integration) During the early years, most NGOs rapidly expanded their activities. However, as they matured, the organizations started to focus on a few programs or activities in which they did well. While few programs were dropped completely, some target programs grew larger and others smaller. In short, after a period of increasing activities, the organizations tended to consolidate their range of activities. Broadening Indirect Impact: the authors distinguish between direct activities and indirect activities. Direct activities are carried out by the organization directly with their beneficiaries. Indirect activities are those in which the organization seeks to influence other organizations who will have an impact on the organizations target clientele. Indirect activities can target other NGOs, civil society organizations, state agencies, or businesses. The authors point out that indirect activities are related to "political" scaling-up in Uvins prior research, but are much broader and not limited to lobbying and advocacy activities. Enhancing Organizational Sustainability: the authors say that this kind of scaling-up activity seeks to ensure the long-term organizational health. Here, the NGO seeks to move away from its precarious entrepreneurial beginnings to a more lasting and sustainable organization. The authors identify 4 phases of increasing sustainability. Phase 1: individual entrepreneurial activities. This stage is characterized by the passionate involvement of a small group of people. There is little organization or focus. This stage involves much experimentation and learning. The energy of the entrepreneur(s) is the key to success in this phase. Phase 2: task teams. Teams assign specific tasks to each team member, but the team as a whole remains responsible for all tasks. Resource availability is highly uncertain, and the teams still do not clearly understand the time and costs involved in different activities. Membership is fluid. Phase 3: project implementation organization. Roles and positions have stabilized. Input-output relationships are well understood. The focus of the NGO at this stage is to complete the projects it has. NGOs at this phase often do not have a clear mission definition that helps them select future projects. Phase 4: program institutions. The NGO undertakes development activities as part of an on-going strategic plan. The relationships between costs and outputs are well understood, and the organization has available long-term, stable funding. Citation: This text reports some of the ideas and findings from the following source: Uvin, P., Jain. P. S., & Brown, L. D. (2000). Think large and act small: Toward a new paradigm for NGO scaling up. World Development, 28, 1409-1419. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) can increase their impact through indirect means. Researchers show how activities influencing other organizations can have an indirect beneficial effect on an NGOs target population. Organizations can increase their impact in more ways than by simply increasing the range of services to their clients which may involve working with other organizations rather than with clients. These are referred to as indirect impact activities. Researcher Peter Uvin and his colleagues Pankaj S. Jain and L. David Brown make a distinction between the activities of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that have a direct impact on their target population and those that have an indirect impact. Direct impact activities are services or products delivered directly to the target clients. Indirect impact activities are activities aimed at influencing other organizations (other NGOs, the state, businesses) for the benefit of their target population. Uvin and his colleagues list several different ways that NGOs can have an indirect impact on their target populations: Influencing Others through Integration: this occurs when government agencies or private enterprises take over NGO programs. Once an NGO program has proven its potential, institutions with much greater organizational and political efficacy can take the programs to a level that would be impossible for the original NGO. This way the NGO broadens its impact to populations it might otherwise have been unable to reach. Uvin and his colleagues describe this method of influence as "moving from development as delivery to development as leverage." Influencing Others through Joint Venture can be done by working directly with another organization to carry out a project that neither organization could successfully do on its own. The NGO has a direct impact through the delivery of the new service. However, it also has an additional indirect impact by getting the partnering organization to undertake new activities or carry out old activities in new ways. The authors give an example of an Indian NGO that carried out several non-funded joint ventures with different organizations. While the ventures did not result in an overall growth in the NGO budget, the president of the NGO argued that the organization had extended its impact through example, mutual learning, and the creation of goodwill.  Influencing Others through Training is done by NGOs extending their know-how into other organizations, its methods and practices reach entirely different populations. Influencing Others through Deputation and Delegation involves actually sending an NGO staff member to work at another organization for an extended period of time. Like training, the NGOs know-how and methods are transferred to the new organization. But, unlike training, this process occurs over a much longer period of time. Influencing Others through Encouraging Spin-offs: some NGOs adopt a strategy of creating spin-off organizations which may be done by encoiuraging staff and the projects that they manage to separate into an independent organization. In some cases, the "mother" NGO may support the new "child" NGO for a period of time before letting it operate wholly on its own. Influencing Others through Organizing Local Demand is a very different strategy for increasing indirect impact is by organizing community groups that can make demands on other institutions (like the state or commercial industry). While the NGOs use the community groups for their direct activities (like peer lending), the authors say that NGOs typically see great potential for these groups to take on an autonomous identity with a separate voice. The autonomous community organizations can lobby, put pressure on local officials, and engage in other activities that may benefit the NGO and its mission. The danger, say the authors, is that the NGO is not in control of these separate organizations. Citation: This text reports some of the ideas and findings from the following source: Uvin, P., Jain. P. S., & Brown, L. D. (2000). Think large and act small: Toward a new paradigm for NGO scaling up. World Development, 28, 1409-1419. Many NGOs tend to be small in size and have small annual budgets. The impact of the quality of an NGO in the face of pervasive poverty are captured in Sheldon Annis(1988:209-218) , an article that comments on how size and small scales growing NGO sector , does have an impact on a state and is becoming increasingly diverse. Development issues that in some manner, reduce poverty and have an impact on the livelihoods of the poor and marginalized. It is estimated that there are about 20,000-30,000 such NGOs in India, “the NGO capital of the world” (Norton, 1995; 1). Some of these are voluntary in nature, others are membership-based, but most of them have employed staff. They work in many (and often across) programmatic sectors, and with particular groups. NGOs are better and more efficient at providing relief and social services than the state or the market but they are also engaged in value-driven, community-based practice that initiates and supports political and social change. Beyond the image-building literature, considerable work is being done to evaluate NGO claims of efficiency and effectiveness in both the economic and political spheres. Studies have shown that NGO claims to economic efficiency need to be tempered: they are not as cost-efficient or innovative, lack broadness of reach, rarely target as deeply as presumed or claimed, and tend not to work in areas of highest poverty. Values of openness, accountability and transparency should definitely be encouraged and implemented as part of a "scaling up" strategy because they help pollinate best practices and provide a safe environment for innovation and risk taking. Along with strengthened NGO capacity to deliver services and effectively advocate for favorable public policy comes a deepening of the foundations of civil society. In the era of information technology, individuals and organizations serving community interests are challenged to incorporate new skills and strategies to scale-up their impact in response to social challenges. In an increasingly interconnected and information-intensive environment, strategically managing information and value systems is rapidly becoming as important as sound financial management to an organizations effectiveness and sustainability. A firm value system helps Visioning and valuation-facilitating the development of organization-wide commitment to enhanced communications and Communications planning to construct innovative and appropriate organizational strategies which aids in Fostering internal and external networking. These initiatives represent a business development orientation that will ultimately result in a more diversified and sustainable institutional and economic base for the NGO and its partners. Bibliography: Florini, Ann, ed. The Third Force: The Rise of Transnational Civil Society (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Japan Center for International Exchange, 2001). Hall, Rodney Bruce and Biersteker, Thomas. The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance (Cambridge Studies in International Relations, 2003) Hilhorst, Dorthea. The Real World of NGOs: Discourses, Diversity and Development, Zed Books, 2003 Roelofs, Joan. Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003). Smillie, Ian, & Minear, Larry, editors. The Charity of Nations: Humanitarian Action in a Calculating World, Kumarian Press, 2004 Tarrow, Sydney. The New Transnational Activism, New York :Cambridge University Press, 2005 Ward, Thomas, editor. Development, Social Justice, and Civil Society: An Introduction to the Political Economy of NGOs, Paragon House, 2005 Teegen, H., 2003. ‘International NGOs as Global Institutions: Using Social Capital to Impact Multinational Enterprises and Governments’, Journal of International Management. Teegen, H. Doh, J., Vachani, S., 2004. “The importance of nongovernmental organisation in global governance and value creation: an international business research agenda“ in Journal of International Business Studies. Washington: Vol. 35, Iss.6. Rodman, K (1998)."‘Think Globally, Punish Locally: Nonstate Actors, Multinational Corporations, and Human Rights Sanctions" in Ethics in International Affairs, vol. 12. Read More