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New resources in /1_General_Resources/Civil_Society_Library
- Dead Aid, by Dambisa Moyo (book review)
Cut aid to Africa. Foreign economic assistance is to blame for Africa's poverty and corruption. Aid worsens governance and impoverishes a nation, and moreover, has compounded Africa’s problems. These are Dambisa Moyo’s main arguments of her controversial book, which became one of the most hotly debated topics in the development field in 2009. She is a Harvard and Oxford educated economist and heads the Africa strategy of the London office of Goldman Sachs. Dambisa Moyo argues that the world should stop sending billions of aid to corrupt regimes in Africa, resulting in crippling debt, and replace it with direct investment: governments should find development money through international markets. Paul Collier, professor of economics and author of “The Bottom Billion”, responds in his review of her book that cutting aid may not be the best response and that what is most needed may not be money: “African societies face problems deeper than their dependence on aid. Divided by ethnic loyalties, they are too large to be nations. Yet with only tiny economies, they lack the scale to be effective states. As a result the vital public goods of security and accountability cannot adequately be provided. In their absence the valuable natural assets that many countries possess become liabilities instead of opportunities for prosperity.” Paul Collier notes that “Aid is not a very potent instrument for enhancing either security or accountability. Our obsession with it has detracted from the more important ways in which we can promote development: peacekeeping, security guarantees, trade privileges, and governance.” See also the video of Paul Collier on how to help at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/paul_collier_shares_4_ways_to_help_the_bottom_billion.html. For more, see Duncan Green’s blog at http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?p=273.
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11/22/2009 | 2 Views |
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New resources in /1_General_Resources/Civil_Society_Library/NGOs_and_civil_society
- Keeping a Low Profile: What Determines the Allocation of Aid by Non-Governmental Organizations?
NGOs provide better targeted aid than official aid agencies as thy are closer to the poor. Or is it? While this has been commonly assumed for a long time, at least among NGOs, this assumption has never been comprehensively tested and analysed. This study, which was published by the renowned Kiel Institute for the World Economy (Germany), uses several economic methods to test some 60 of the largest NGOs from OECD countries. The results show, amongst others, that NGOs do provide better targeted aid than state aid agencies, as they are focusing on the neediest countries and on the poor. Authors: Dirk-Jan Koch, Axel Dreher, Peter Nunnenkamp and Rainer Thiele, Kiel Working Paper No. 1406, 32 p., March 2008.
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11/22/2009 | 1 Views |
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- The myth of NGO superiority
Peter Nunnenkamp, one of the co-authors of Keeping a Low Profile: What Determines the Allocation of Aid by Non-Governmental Organizations (see separate entry), comes to a different conclusion after comparing Swedish and Swiss NGOs and official development assistance (ODA) of these two countries. Preliminary findings, he points out, show “NGO aid not being a panacea for providing better-targeted aid and boosting aid effectiveness. In contrast to what one might expect, NGOs seem to prefer to keep a low profile. They did not try to distinguish themselves from state aid agencies by outperforming the latter in terms of focus on the neediest, or by entering uncharted waters where ODA is likely to fail.“
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11/22/2009 | 1 Views |
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New resources in /1_General_Resources/Studying_NGO_Management/Short_training_courses
- Courses at Geneva’s Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies
The Graduate Institute offers leaders from governmental, corporate, and non-profit sectors short courses and degree-granting programmes in its executive programme. Next short courses: 26-28 November: Successfully Lead Impact Evaluations / 18-20 January, and 25-27 May: International Negotiation in Practice: Fundamentals / 21-25 June: Global Health Diplomacy /Degree-granting programmes: International Executive Master in Development Studies (IMAS), deadline for applications: 31 January 2010 / Executive Master in International Negotiation and Policy-Making, deadline for applications: 1 June 2010
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11/22/2009 | 2 Views |
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New resources in /2_Organisational_Development/Capacity_building
- You Learn Something New Every Day
A great blog on learning, with insight, tips and hand-on tools on many subjects ranging from Appreciative inquiry to informal learning, from learning organisations to networked knowledge, the workplace of the future and much more. Gillian Martin Mehers and Elisabeth Crudgington run this blog, which is fun to read and very inspiring.
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11/22/2009 | 3 Views |
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- How to improve NGO Effectiveness in Development? A Discussion on Lessons Learned
The proliferation of NGOs in the North and South since the late 1980s and 90s has brought critical questions about NGOs effectiveness and sustainability: It is time to rethink the NGOs’ role in development and to explore ways to improve their effectiveness. In this context, Esra Guler draws four key lessons from the review of NGO literature that could provide useful recommendations for non-profits to improve organizational performance.1. “Vision without action is a daydream, action without vision is a nightmare”: In Southern NGOs, strategic planning is often weak, since they orient their priorities towards the choices of their Northern partners. 2. Organisational learning and strategic knowledge are keys to gain leverage and credibility: The prevailing culture of action over refection often inhibits organizational learning. Investing more in monitoring and evaluation systems, among others, will create opportunities to learn and increase accountability. 3. Interactive partnerships among NGOs, public and private organisations are required for sustainable impact on development. 4. What is vital for sustainability is not only sufficient quantity of funding, but also its quality and diversification. Dependency on one donor may distort and NGO’s autonomy and weaken legitimacy. When mobilizing funds, NGOs need to find multiple donors with an optimum mix of quantity and quality of funds. February 2008, 6 p. Esra Guler is Associate in Research at the Duke Center for International Development.
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11/24/2009 | 0 Views |
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- Incorporating Social Entrepreneurship into Development NGOs: Some Recent Perspectives and Recommendations from the Field
Rafe Mazer examines the role of social entrepreneurship and revenue-generating ventures within NGOs and identifies criteria to determine if a social entrepreneurship approach might be interesting for an NGO. He lists five potential benefits which need to be assessed: Financial sustainability and autonomy, reduction in costs of already-provided services, improved client service, innovations in management and organizational structure and a stronger connection to the local economy. To ensure that the mission and effectiveness of the NGO are not compromised, three design considerations should be addressed: whether a social enterprise should be housed within or outside of the existing organization, the use of existing staff or hiring of new ones and if he new service or product link up with existing ones. Successful social enterprises may also show the business world “how they can rethink their operations to achieve greater sustainability that goes beyond the balance sheet.” February 2009, 7p. Rafe Mazer is a Master’s candidate in International Development Policy at Duke’s Center for International Development.
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11/24/2009 | 0 Views |
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New resources in /2_Organisational_Development/Organisational_Assessment
- Challenges of Local NGO Sustainability
After a rapid overview on changing NGO roles, Jerry VanSant emphasizes that good governance requires both citizen empowerment and measures to ensure accountability. Two principal strategies to strengthen relations between government and citizens are creating linkages and building capacity. He notes that there is growing focus on NGO capacity and a proliferation of tools for measuring NGO capacity: There are several excellent organizational assessment tools available which share a great deal of similarity and reflect an emerging consensus on the criteria for effective and sustainable organisations. He proposes to organize these criteria in three clusters, organizational resources, organizational performance, and organisational sustainability. Organizational resources captures what the organization has to work with at a given point in time, namely access to financial human and technical resources. Organizational performance assesses both efficiency and effectiveness, or what it does with its resources. Organisational sustainability refers to autonomy, learning capacity and leadership, it attempts to capture where the organisation is going in the future. In this discussion from capacity to sustainability, leadership is the most essential ingredient and determinant of organizational performance. Jerry Vansant identifies four key components of leadership: vision, innovation, decisiveness and a strong people orientation. Creating links between government and civil society includes creating mechanisms for holding leaders accountable. Such a link should incorporate communication, collaboration, problem-solving and mutually beneficial interaction. Prospects for efficiency and sustainability are enhanced substantially, he points out, when citizens are well informed and can participate in decision making. 2003, 12 p. Jerry VanSant is Visiting Professor at the Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke University.
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11/24/2009 | 0 Views |
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New resources in /2_Organisational_Development/Social_Entrepreneurs
- Social Entrepreneurship: The Case for Definition
What is social entrepreneurship, what are its aims and how does it work? This article by Roger L. Martin and Sally Osberg provides a broad overview with many examples of successful case stories. Roger L. Martin is on the board of the Skoll Foundation, and Sally Osberg is the CEO of the Skoll Foundation. This foundation, together with Ashoka and the Schwab Foundation, are the key promoters of social entrepreneurship worldwide. Article in Stanford Social Innovation Review, Spring 2007.
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11/24/2009 | 0 Views |
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New resources in /4_Managing_Finances/Fundraising
- Ten Nonprofit Funding Models
Fundraising with whom and how? This framework provides a most useful overview on funding models and shows the tools which work best for each model. It is defined by three parameters: source of funds, types of decisions makers and the motivation of decision makers. The ten funding models are ordered by the dominant type of funder. The first three models are funded by many individual donations, one model is funded largely by a one or several persons, tree models are funded by the government, one model by corporate funding, and the last two have a mix of funders. Article by William Landes Foster, Peter Kim and Barbara Christiansen of the Bridgespan Group, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Spring 2009, 8 p.
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11/22/2009 | 3 Views |
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