{"id":749,"date":"1995-12-31T13:37:38","date_gmt":"1995-12-31T18:37:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/abebbington\/?p=749"},"modified":"2016-08-04T13:49:09","modified_gmt":"2016-08-04T17:49:09","slug":"the-direct-funding-of-southern-ngos-by-northern-donors-new-agendas-and-old-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/abebbington\/1995\/peer-refereed-articles\/the-direct-funding-of-southern-ngos-by-northern-donors-new-agendas-and-old-problems\/","title":{"rendered":"The direct funding of Southern NGOs by Northern donors: new agendas and old problems"},"content":{"rendered":"

| By\u00a0A.Bebbington and R.Riddell | Published in\u00a0the\u00a0Journal for International Development,<\/em> vol. 7 No. 6: 879-893 |<\/strong><\/p>\n

Introduction<\/strong>: The tendency of official donors to channel an increasing amount of funds directly\u00a0to Southern NGOs (SNGOs) raises a range of questions: why is this occurring;\u00a0how is it being done; what are the impacts on SNGOs; what sorts of SNGOs are\u00a0being supported; what does this imply for institutional and power relationships\u00a0within Southern civil societies; what does this mean for the relationship between\u00a0state and civil society in the South and what does this imply for Northern NGOs\u00a0(NNGOs)? For several reasons, these are apposite and timely questions. In the\u00a0North, the ever-growing interest of bilateral donors in Southern NGOs raises\u00a0concerns among Northern NGOs that bring to the surface the longer-standing\u00a0problem of how far Northern and Southern NGOs are really partners in a reciprocally\u00a0accountable relationship. At the same time. Northern NGOs are challenged\u00a0to think what it is they can contribute that their increasingly strong Southern\u00a0‘partners’ cannot, and whether their increased receipt of government funds to\u00a0implement projects is distracting them from a more searching self-analysis of their\u00a0‘distinctive competence’ and their own identity. In the South the contribution and\u00a0legitimacy of professional, non-membership NGOs (or grassroots support organizations\u2014GSOs)^\u00a0is being subjected to increased scrutiny. The discovery of Southem\u00a0NGOs by larger donors is bringing to the surface similar longer standing\u00a0problems in the relationship between Southern GSOs and popular organizations\u00a0where the same questions arise as in the North: has this really been a partnership\u00a0of reciprocal accountability between GSOs and popular organization? Some, particularly\u00a0those linked to popular organizations, think not, and are increasingly vocal
\nabout this.<\/p>\n

These observations suggest that it would be wise for official donors to be cautious\u00a0in moving rapidly into direct funding because bilaterals may not have the knowledge\u00a0and capacity to engage in direct funding effectively. More importantly, increased direct funding will influence both the relationships between Northern and\u00a0Southern NGOs, and those between Southern GSOs and popular organizations \u2014\u00a0relationships that are sometimes (perhaps often) fragile. This paper is an attempt\u00a0to open up some of the questions surrounding these issues (see also Riddell et al.,\u00a01994). It does so by concentrating on three questions. Firstly it looks at issues\u00a0around the reasons why bilateral donors choose to support Southern NGOs\u00a0directly. The main message of this first section is that donors need to be clear first\u00a0on what development objective they seek through supporting Southern NGOs, and\u00a0only then determine the most appropriate means of achieving this goal which often\u00a0may not be direct funding. The second section looks at several donor experiences\u00a0with channelling funds to Southern NGOs. We close with some reflections on what\u00a0seems to be happening in donor-NGO relations, and compare this with what we\u00a0feel ought to be happening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

| By\u00a0A.Bebbington and R.Riddell | Published in\u00a0the\u00a0Journal for International Development, vol. 7 No. 6: 879-893 | Introduction: The tendency of official donors to channel an increasing amount of funds directly\u00a0to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":455,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34928,34831],"tags":[30665,34882,24544,34812],"class_list":["post-749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-34928","category-peer-refereed-articles","tag-aid","tag-civil-society","tag-development","tag-ngos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/abebbington\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/abebbington\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/abebbington\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/abebbington\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/455"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/abebbington\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/abebbington\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/abebbington\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/abebbington\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/abebbington\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}