Philanthropic Foundations and NGOs: Challenges in the Relationship
V Santhakumar
Philanthropic foundations (PFs) and funding arms of corporate organisations (which are part of or outside the framework of Corporate Social Responsibility) have emerged even in developing countries like India. These may have to develop a partnership with other non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to further their goals. However, there are challenges in building workable partnerships for this purpose. This note outlines some of these. This note draws on insights from the economics of institutions, the author’s discussions with the heads of PFs and also his personal experience (which includes the documentation of the work of several NGOs working in the domain of education and development.)
There is an argument in the literature (Jansons, 2015) that Indian philanthropists prefer operational foundation models (where the operations are carried out directly by the foundations which have the money) rather than funding other NGOs. According to her (Ibid. p. 995), `the most commonly cited reason for choosing an operational (or hands-on) approach is the desire to be engaged and in control’. Also, `the hesitation to entrust money with an NGO lies in part with the perceived and real non-professionalism of Indian NGOs’1. There is a need to understand the reasons behind such perceptions.
The other important aspect of this form of philanthropy is what Brian (2004) defines as `impact philanthropy’ as a model of altruism where the philanthropist is one who wants to personally make a difference2. Such funders may have a greater interest in using the money for what they reckon as the social purpose as it is from their personal wealth. This is more so when the absolute value of the funding is substantial or when it is a significant share of the overall wealth of the funder and most of it is acquired during his or her lifetime3. One implication noted by Brian (2004) is a possible source of conflict between such a philanthropist and those organizations which receive money from the former. This arises when the organizations prefer to spread a donor’s contribution across many services, whereas the donor may prefer to target his or her contribution at a specific service4. Such donors are increasing even in countries like India.
The need to work with grassroots organisations
Philanthropic foundations may wish to make a difference in the social situation with their resources. However, they may not have the capacity or the plan to operate on the ground. On the other hand, there are NGOs working on the ground that depend on the financial resources provided by various funders. Hence, it may seem beneficial to have a partnership between PFs and these NGOs5. By working with these NGOs, PFs can scale up their operations to make a visible impact in a given domain.
However, there are several challenges in achieving a fruitful partnership between PFs and NGOs. (There are equally important challenges in the partnership between the POs and governments, and some of these are outlined here).
A major concern of the leadership of NGOs when they collaborate with PFs is over ideological autonomy. Though they are willing to accept funding from the PFs, they may not be willing to change their strategies or approaches for this purpose. There may be deep-rooted apprehension about corporates, which may be extended to PFs due to their source of funding, even when a PF has no legal connection with a corporate. NGOs may view foundations as a mere source of money and lacking expertise in social issues. They may hold on to, what they call, certain non-negotiable principles. In my view, there are challenges in partnership even if PFs accept the ideology and strategy of NGOs. Highlighted in this article6 are some of the operational and logistical challenges that may work against a fruitful partnership between PFs and NGOs.
Working with intermediaries
As a funding agency, foundations are interested in seeing that the money they provide is used effectively. Though this is true for any funding organisation, it is more the case with foundations because they provide substantially larger amounts when compared to what NGOs receive from other sources.
Philanthropists do not deal with the NGOs directly. Those who take decisions on resource allocation on behalf of them require proper documentation of expenditure to justify their decisions/actions. This makes the nature of funding different from the one wherein philanthropists provide money for different activities based on their trust or confidence in those who spend this money. This managerial intermediation is necessary for PFs due to the large amount of resources available with them, and the scale of interventions that they plan to make. The fact that professionals are engaged for this purpose would also mean adherence to norms and standards.
Nature of outcomes
The outcomes of programs for which funding is made to NGOs may not be clearly definable in certain cases. This can be a challenge. Wherever the outcomes are tangible and clearly definable, the partnership can be relatively successful. Hence, one can argue for the use of such tangible and definable outcomes when an organisation is funded for addressing issues, such as increased enrolment in schools. For example, the number of out-of-school children brought back to school could be one such indicator. I could see such a system of funding wherein corporates or private firms provided money to an NGO to bring out-of-school children back to school through bridge courses. However, there are problems with such a funding strategy too. For example, the effort or cost to bring back different children could be different, and some children may not come back to school even after taking/incurring substantial effort (cost) on the part of the NGO. The outcomes (and the timeframe by which these outcomes are achieved), especially in domains like education, may depend not only on what NGOs do but also on several socio-economic or contextual factors. So, whether an NGO can bring a set of out-of-school children back to school or not depends partly on what it does but partly on the contextual factors which may not be under its control7. Hence, NGOs may not be in a good position when funding organisation use such an arms-length strategy of funding. They may be interested in having a funder who meets the actual costs of the processes followed and not one who provides money based only on outcomes.
This situation may warrant the monitoring of the processes followed by the NGO instead of merely the outcomes. However, such monitoring may be viewed as intrusive by NGOs8. And when there is a need for intrusive monitoring by one major funder and it is accepted by the operational organisation, the engagement may become similar to one where the funding organisation owns the operational organization, or both come together as one organisation. In that case, the NGO may be reduced to an implementer of the vision of the funder. This possibility may propel foundations to have their own operational arms.
Procedural demands
There are different types of NGOs. Some are based on the personal experience and intrinsic motivation of the founder. Others are similar to social movements. Some others are professional organisations manned by people with experience in management and other related skills.
Traditionally, NGOs may have faced certain generic problems. In the 1960s-70s some NGOs in the South (the developing world) emerged out of social movements opposing the state. These were generally high in motivation but low in formal organisation (Mawdsley et al, 2005). Having emerged and functioning in the context of social contingencies, they may not have given a high priority to procedures of documentation and accounting. Those built on personal experience/effort may not have had the resources to build an organisational system. Certain other organisations could be ideologically against `institutionalisation’ and may see documentation and organisational practices as part of such institutionalisation. In sum, building a conventional organisation might not have been the prime motive in these kinds of NGOs. They may have seen the documentation and accounting as avoidable troubles9 to be followed just to get money from the funders.
These issues of governance in NGOs are global and not unique to India. Though there is evidence that donors consider NGOs with better governance favourably (Harris et al, 2015), there has been a lack of adequate transparency in the accounting and accountability procedures in NGOs across the world. There could be a number of systemic reasons for this. First, these NGOs, in their attempt to attract funding, may show low administrative overheads. As higher overheads may be seen as a sign of inefficiency by potential donors. Or, as noted in Hager (2003), NGOs know that donors want to believe that only a minimum of their contribution is used for administrative purposes and find ways (some legitimate and some not) to misrepresent their expenses in this regard. When they under-account the administrative charges to meet the needs of donors (John, 2003), the actual expenditure on this may have to be met from the savings from operations, which may compel them to inflate the cost of operations.
There is also the issue of cross/multiple funding for the same purpose. Although from an auditor’s/ external funder’s point of view, there is a need to satisfactorily disclose cross/multiple funding, if any. Also, there is a need for prior information from the funder for carrying out activities beyond the scope of the agreement. The absence of such information raises issues of integrity. NGOs, on their part, may view a declaration of no-multiple-funding as mistrust by the donor. There are different views on what are acceptable, ethical standards between PFs and NGOs. The accounting (and hence, the accountability and transparency) procedures followed by Indian NGOs are significantly different from those followed by private companies and PFs.
International funding organisations too face challenges in monitoring the actions of the recipients of their funds. Ensuring that the money provided is used for the purpose it is meant for, is not easy. This requires a significant part of the cost, which then is not available for operations. There could be a higher administrative cost for these organisations, and it has been noted that this could be linked to the concern about the possible misuse of funds10. Hence, it is costly for funding organisations to ensure the effectiveness of their aid. On the other hand, NGOs involved in implementation may have to spend significant effort to meet the accounting and documentation requirements of the donors11. In general, the costs or difficulties in ensuring the effectiveness of interventions funded by altruistic organisations are not trivial.
Most NGOs receive funding for time-bound projects, but these organisations may have to incur recurring costs for the maintenance (including the cost of employees or founders) for a longer period. This may encourage them to save money from projects for expenditure smoothing (and this may be called precautionary savings12). Hence, they may have to strategically account the costs of operations which are funded as time-bound projects13. This can create opaqueness in the accounting procedures of NGOs. In general, the accountability practices followed by NGOs have focussed on external or upward accountability to donors whereas the downward and internal mechanisms are somewhat neglected (Ebrahim, 2003). Though these issues are relevant for most NGOs in different countries, some of these may be relevant for Indian NGOs too.
There can be a demand for a trust-based or informal allocation of resources by NGOs (which may be necessary considering the nature of these grassroots organisations). However, this cannot sustain when it is not followed up by systematic documentation, given the nature of PFs. This is discussed in detail in the following section.
Different institutional environments
Foundations which generate their endowment from private-sector activity or a for-profit firm, and NGOs which address a social issue might be functioning in two different cultural milieus. The political economy in India in the first four decades after independence was one that generated a high level of suspicion regarding the activities of private firms by governments, bureaucracy and civil society (though there were occasional collaborations with some of these actors with select private firms in a non-transparent manner)14. Given this history of the private sector in independent India, and that it was seen as being interested only in making profits by all means, there is a greater social and governmental demand for accountability of private firms. This may have led to the institutionalisation of such accountability practices, including auditing norms to be followed by private companies.
However, voluntary or NGOs have been perceived differently in India. First, many such organisations had their beginnings in the social concern of their founders. A greater part of the work of these organisations was based on the voluntary efforts of the founders and members. Such a social concern or voluntarism was expected to encourage these people to act (including the manner in which they use resources mobilised from different sources) in the interest of the society. Even when they had employees or paid volunteers, their work was seen partly voluntary, as the wages or salaries were much lower than that for government or private-sector jobs.
Most of these organisations were not well-funded, especially during the first four to five decades after independence. The funding available from Indian sources (government and private sector) was minimal then. When the government provided grants, the amount of support provided was small and was mediated through bureaucratic red-tape. (Allegations of corruption were not uncommon). Most of the NGOs depended on international organisations (Christian NGOs or multilateral, bilateral or international funding organisations), and their cost in funding Indian NGOs (in terms of foreign currency) was not high. The Christian funders may have expected the religious values to serve as the basis of earnestness in the practices of NGOs funded by them. There could be personal relationships between the funders and NGOs or there could be informal ways of regulating the activities of the latter (Mawdsley et al, 2005). Or as noted by these authors (Ibid), the northern (developed countries) NGOs which served as funders were, until then, taking a direct role in the implementation by treating the southern (developing countries) NGOs as operational entities. For all these reasons, the social demand for explicit accountability measures in NGOs in India was muted then and hence, they might not have followed such practices15. They might have used internal mechanisms to monitor the behaviour of employees, but these would not be visible to external stakeholders. These NGOs might have continued in this situation in the 1990s and early 2000s, even though there was an increase in funding from other sources (including private sector within India) by then.
These two different institutional environments that private firms and NGOs faced in India may have created the incompatibility between the accountability measures expected by foundations and those followed by the NGOs. In general, there are two issues faced by NGOs, especially those which are located in the developing societies (Mawdsley et al, 2005): lack of professionalization (organisational development and capacity building) and accountability (financial probity and transparency). Though certain strategies employed at professionalization may be seen as those which rob the autonomy from NGOs16 (Tvedt 2001 & 2006; Wallace 2004), the absence of certain practices of accountability could be a source of friction between the PFs and NGOs17.
Power structures
Political scientists and sociologists have been concerned about the power structure in the relationship between donors (mostly organisations located in the developed world) and NGOs (which are likely to function in developing or poorer societies)18. With regard to PFs, although they have the backing of a sizable endowment, some of the new organisations could not establish long-standing relationships with NGOs and hence, the concerns of dependency of NGOs on the donor was not a major issue. One cannot see much effort on the part of NGOs to change their procedures (or organisational culture) to meet the needs of PFs. In fact, one can see signals of resistance against what they have considered `institutionalisation’ and to change their ideological positions to align with those of the funding PFs.
Foundations may use the ‘exit’ option19 when NGOs do not meet their requirements of accountability, whereas NGOs may continue and expand their operations with funding from other sources.
Similarly, PFs may not be able to influence the development agenda of the NGOs or the latter may not make changes in their agenda because of their relationship with PFs. Both PFs and NGOs may focus on similar issues which are of long-term interest to the country. Foundations may not pursue easily quantifiable results. Both may pursue systematic changes in the socio-economic context. Hence, the possible strain in the relationship may not be due to any attempt on the part of one of the parties to influence the agenda of the other. In summary, the concerns in the literature about the donor-dominance may not be very relevant, and these may not explain the dynamics of the relationship between PFs and NGOs.
While analysing NGO-donor relationship, a number of features are identified for a successful partnership (Lister, 1999; Reith 2010; Morse et.al 2006). These include mutual trust, complementary strengths, reciprocal accountability, joint decision-making and a two-way exchange of information; clearly articulated goals, equitable distribution of costs and benefits, performance indicators and mechanisms to measure and monitor performance, clear delineation of responsibilities and a process for adjudicating disputes; shared perceptions and a notion of mutuality with give-and-take; mutual support and constructive advocacy; transparency with regard to financial matters, long-term commitment to working together, and recognition of other partnerships20. A number of these elements could be missing in the relationship between foundations and NGOs, and that could be the reason for the outcomes that we have discussed earlier. In that sense, foundations may attempt to become a donor-cum-operating organisation driven by the concern about the final impact of its actions21.
AUTHOR
V Santhakumar, Professor, Azim Premji University
REFERENCES
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