Funding Fundas and Ideological Agendas:

Just as how capital for private sector enterprises is dependent on their business plan, funding, particularly from the west, for NGO projects is also dependent on the outlook of the NGO. Besides in the Indian NGO space, differentiation between charity and development has led to tremendous business challenges. ”Many NGO establishments in modern India have the aura of the traditional Hindu Ashram. The accent is on austere community life in isolated project campuses, and total dedication to the poor and deprived people in the area Spiritual advancement is the goal of Indian giving, and this accounts for the difficulties Western funders face when they talk of solving problems of poverty and withdrawal strategies - spiritual advancement could be jeopardised if the recipient of one's charitable actions is not worthy of such actions. It is common to hear counter-arguments in India that if you give money to some people, they will waste it on drinking and gambling”.

If the objective of the NGO is to help people help themselves then charity makes the recipients to ask for more rather than to develop and provide for themselves - a classic case of asking for a fish than learning how to fish. Beneficiaries are used to receiving free aid, free food and other free resources. Consequently they never thought about going through the hard work and providing for themselves and infact demand for such provisions in a few cases. Thus charity has sustained the problem instead of alleviating it. However the NGO’s objective being ‘sustainable development’, this cannot be achieved unless the all the stakeholders in the development process are committed to development. Such an outlook clearly poses issues for western funders with their different outlook. In such an instance how can the NGO change its outlook in resonance with a changing stakeholder? Should it change thus? These are questions are also related to the development of the organisation in the NGO sector. But the problem has other dimensions too.

How has this metamorphosis from charity to development affected the employees of the NGO? NGO workers, in the face of the transition from free fund flow of the charity to an account-based funding ideology of development, simply have had to tighten up their act. Logical framework analyses, pre-program pitches and post-program support, advocacy based approach, withdrawal plan are all the order of the day. No significant funding is allocated with a comprehensive review, study and plan. This is a huge improvement, if one may call it so, over previous organisations of development work. All this has caused a massive cultural shift in the work culture of NGOs.

Development workers, as a lot, are the most knowledgeable and sensitive people to development processes. How does one do development for them without trepidation? Is development of its staff a core issue at the NGO? Sheelagh O’Reilly, calls this as the ‘Glass ceiling’ issue in development work. She observes, ‘most donor agencies seemed to take the view that participation and face-to-face democracy was acceptable at village level but still did not need to affect the way these agencies operated’.

Culture is another issue grappled with keenly. She points out that in the development process, cultural bias can cause misunderstandings and wrong implementation of universalist positions such as the idea of the individual. She writes, “The universalist position itself needs to be ‘tempered with an increased understanding of the conceptual resources that many societies have which might validate concepts similar to western concepts of human and environmental justice…..from a management perspective it is important to examine the effect that different value systems have on the development practice. It is likely that while underlying values maybe agreed upon through sensitive dialogue and negotiation, the ranking of those values maybe different. The role of the individual and the community and the notion of their value in the self is important …”

Keeping the above in mind the United Nations has come up with a poignant definition of what development is all about which clearly defines how we should look at the development of people...next page

What are the business themes faced in the NGO work?
Development vs Charity – the evolving place for beneficiaries in the development process
Motivation for Development in an NGO
Funding Fundas and Ideological Agendas
Human Development – an input/output perspective
Contribution of NGO work to Human Resources Development
What should be the focus of Human Resources Development ?
Shifting the paradigm of Human Resources Development
Company vs. Community