Nick Young: NGOs: the Diverse Origins, Changing Nature and Growing Internationalisation of the Species (2)
Friday, 13. July 2007, 18:29:38
China Development Brief
Dec 31, 2004
Rough typology of international NGOS
Faith-based organisations
World Vision, EDE, Misereor
Church congregations; individuals; public fundraising; grants from governments and private foundations.
Humanitarian Relief and development organisations
Oxfam, Save the Children, Plan, MSF, WWF and numerous environmental groups
Individual supporter base; public fundraising; grants from government and foundations
Private foundations
Ford, Packard, Gates, Starr, Kadoorie foundations.
Interest on funds endowed by their founders.
Specialist non-profit consulting and implementation agencies
Winrock, PATH, Pact, Family Health International; PlaNet Finance.
Government and foundation contracts and grants.
Campaigning organisations
Individual supporter base; foundation grants
Policy research think-tanks
Government and foundation grants
Professional associations
American Bar Association; Hong Kong Social Workers Association
Membership fees; government and foundation grants
Mutual aid, self-help groups
Retina Hong Kong Heep Hong Society
Membership fees; government and foundation grants
Different models of partnership
Nearly all international NGOs talk frequently about ‘partnership’; but the different types of organisation listed here work in quite different ways, and partnership means quite different things to them.
Grant-making foundations give away money and call their grantees ‘partners.’ Very large foundations – like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation or the Li Kashing Foundation – often give away huge sums in a single grant. This effectively limits recipient ‘partners’ to government departments, universities or multilateral organisations like the World Health Organisation, because not many institutions have the capacity to absorb and constructively use very large sums of money. The making of large grants is partly a matter of strategy, in that the foundations want to fund big programmes with global impact; but it is also partly a matter of administrative convenience. In order to retain its non-profit status, the Gates Foundation must give away more than USD 1 billion each year. To divide that money into grants of, say, USD 50,000 would require a large army of grant making staff to review proposals and to monitor and evaluate projects.
The Ford Foundation is also large, but it is relatively unusual among American foundations in that it decentralises much of its grant making to regional offices staffed by highly qualified specialists. These ‘programme officers’ each manage their own grant-making portfolio, and the foundation places a great deal of trust in their expertise and knowledge of the field they are working in. The programme officers identify funding opportunities with government or non-government partners who, they feel, can achieve significant, developmental impact in a particular field. Partnership in this case is mainly built in the process of negotiating of a grant. The programme officers may spend many months discussing a proposed project with a prospective grantee until agreement is reached upon a specific set of planned activities, objectives and outcomes. Once a grant is made, the grantee bears full responsibility for carrying out the project as agreed. The foundation will expect regular reports, and may carry out an independent evaluation of the project, but it does not become actively involved in project implementation. The Kadoorie Foundation and Asia Foundation operate in a similar way in China.
It is worth emphasising that extremely few foundations work by simply reviewing project proposals that arrive in the mail and picking the ones they like best. Grant making is nearly always a process that starts from a shared interest in a particular topic and then moves on to discussion about objectives and approaches. A request for funding support frequently marks the beginning, not the end of an application process. Some foundations actively discourage people from sending proposals speculatively, preferring to themselves identify potential grantees and solicit proposals from them.
Partnership has a rather different meaning for operational NGOs in both the faith-based and the humanitarian traditions. Some of these organisations play a significant role in service provision – by, for example, carrying out cataract or cleft palate surgeries, or by building or refurbishing schools and clinics. (Some small organisations provide similar, charitable assistance on a small and localised scale that is nonetheless often highly cost effective.) But many of the larger operational NGOs see their work not in terms of bringing financial resources – for their funding is invariably modest relative to the needs they perceive – but in terms of bringing knowledge, skills and experience that can be deployed to develop and demonstrate new ways of working. Therefore, despite their own, non-governmental nature, these organisations are often keen to work as closely as possible with Chinese government partners, because they want to strengthen government’s capacity to respond appropriately to China’s rapidly changing situation and development challenges. (Foundations are often equally interested in ‘new ways of working’, but hope to see these promoted by the grantees that they fund.) Cooperation typically begins with an agreement with a local government agency and proceeds to joint pilot, demonstration work in a rural or urban community. Partnership at this stage is concrete and practical, with the government agency and the NGO staff (including Chinese staff employed and trained by the NGO) working together towards an agreed set of objectives, learning from experience and modifying their approaches as they proceed.
Some of the better-resourced NGOs attempt to combine demonstration projects with policy studies of the field in which they work, – whether that is AIDS prevention, vocational education or integrated river basin management – and to engage in discussion with local and national policymakers. Often, an important objective for the NGO will be encouraging different tiers and branches of government to work more closely together to resolve a particular issue.
Operational NGOs also frequently emphasise their ‘partnership’ with the communities or constituencies they aim to serve. This stems from the development of ‘participatory’ discourse, which NGOs have played a major part in advancing, as discussed in the next section.
Many of the organisations included in this directory do not have an office in China but run ‘China programmes’ from offices overseas. Some of these groups, such as the National Committee for US China Relations, concentrate on improving understanding and transferring knowledge and skills through training projects, policy research, exchange visits, study tours etc. Others, like the German church organisations, EED and Misereor, act as grant makers but with a special interest in supporting the work of Chinese partner NGOs, and helping to develop their capacity.
International campaigning organisations, as already noted, are also interested in identifying Chinese NGOs, researchers or networks of individuals who share their interests.
'Partnership' in this sense is mainly a matter of introducing Chinese citizens to global networks that share information and ideas. This may seem the least tangible – and, to some, no doubt, the least desirable – form of international cooperation with China. But, as I will conclude by arguing, it is in fact extremely important to get more Chinese voices and opinions into global debates about sustainable development and social justice.
Shifting development 'narratives': from relief to rights
As already noted, many international development NGOs were established in response to humanitarian crises, and often began by providing emergency relief supplies. This continues to be an important strand of international NGO work – in part because the general public in richer countries is often moved to donate generously for relief efforts following natural or man-made humanitarian catastrophes, and so in economic terms there is a market demand for organisations to organise and deliver this assistance.
However, some NGOs that worked repeatedly in emergency situations to alleviate hunger, sickness and poverty began in due course to experiment with longer-term development programmes intended to address the underlying causes of poverty. Thus, from the 1960s onwards, NGOs became increasingly active in agricultural development, training, health, education, water and sanitation projects, often combining these in ‘integrated’ rural development programmes. (Of course, none of this was entirely new, as it largely mirrored the kind of public goods provision inherent in the Christian, missionary tradition.) This shift of emphasis was neatly encapsulated in a phrase that became common in NGO circles in the early 1970s: 'Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day; teach him how to fish and you will feed him for life.'8
While NGOs were evolving in this way, an ‘official development assistance’ community was also growing up, comprising government aid agencies from the richer countries, United Nations agencies, the World Bank and other development banks9. It is worth noting some of the most important factors that drove the creation and growth of this international aid industry in the period following the Second World War. Firstly, this was a period of de-colonisation, and development aid was seen as a way that European powers could discharge some of their historic responsibilities to their former colonies, by helping the newly independent states to thrive. Secondly, American aid to Europe for post-war reconstruction had apparently been successful, and some thought of this as a useful precedent for a global 'war on poverty'10. Thirdly, the creation of the United Nations and its affiliated agencies (including the World Bank) in 1945 provided an institutional mechanism for delivering multilateral aid. Fourthly, the Cold War and the perceived threat of spreading Communism gave Western, capitalist countries a strong interest in maintaining their influence over poorer countries; aid programmes were a useful way to build and maintain alliances.
The financial resources of international NGOs have always been small compared to those of 'official' aid donors, but NGOs have nonetheless played an important role in challenging conventional ideas about development and pioneering new approaches. For it should be borne in mind that the concept of 'developed' and 'developing' countries was a historically novel invention of this post-war period. No one had divided the world up this way before. Yet, within a few short decades, the distinction became quite universally accepted, with the World Bank publishing annual league tables of 'development indicators'. In several ways, the entire concept was quite insulting to countries that were now classified as 'developing'. It implied that the 'developing countries' were somehow infantile, and needed to grow up. It suggested the natural superiority, or at least adultness, of the 'developed countries', which, coincidentally enough, all happened (before Japan’s post-war renaissance, at any rate) to have predominantly white populations. It presupposed the desirability of 'developing countries' becoming like the 'developed countries'. It implied that development was a linear process towards a universal goal. And it appeared to offer the hope that this really could be achieved by 'developing countries' irrespective of their own particular historical situation. Both morally and logically all of these were rather strange ideas. The main wonder is that so many people around the globe agreed to see and talk about the world this way.
Through their close, working relationship with poor communities, some international NGOs became sceptical and began to raise questions like: Whose development are we talking about? What is it that we are trying to develop? And who really determines the development processes? As they worked on their own 'grassroots' projects, some of these NGOs also began to examine and critique the programmes of the large aid agencies. They found that official donor programmes at that time were mainly aimed at promoting economic development on a macro level – treating the entire economy as a single unit – through large-scale infrastructure and agricultural production projects that did not necessarily benefit, and in some cases actually harmed, the poorest people and communities. Moreover, these projects tended to confirm poor countries’ role as suppliers of raw materials and agricultural products to richer countries, rather than helping them to add value by processing the products, and to diversify their own economies. Benefits tended to remain with local elites, and seldom 'trickled down' to the poor. Much of the aid was in the form of loans and credit lines that, although preferential, threatened to create a future debt burden. Finally, many official aid programmes were 'tied' to the purchase of goods and services from the donor countries in ways that served the commercial interests of the donors but not necessarily those of the recipients.
Aid, some NGOs began to argue, should instead be directly targeted to needy communities, strengthening local livelihoods, education, health and social services. And, from their own experience of working at micro-level, NGOs found that ‘development’ was not something that could be simply bestowed upon passive recipients. ‘Projects’ only worked if the community was actively involved, ‘participating’ in their design and implementation. This also implied that, although aid was necessary, ‘development’ could not come from outside: it had to respect, build upon and ‘develop’ what was already there.
But it was never, actually, as simple as teaching a man to fish. For a start, this overlooked the key role that women generally play in production in poor countries; ‘gender analysis’ was therefore necessary, to understand relations between men and women in the beneficiary communities, and the way that these would affected ands be affected by development project interventions.
And how long would the fish stocks last? There would be little point in doubling a village’s fish production if this left the next generation of fishermen with nothing to catch. ‘Sustainable development’ therefore had to be invented.
Even more problematically, it soon transpired that many of ‘the root causes of poverty’ lay not in the ignorance and incapacity of the poor themselves, but in the local and global political economy. The poor fisherman’s ‘root’ problem might well be that someone else was taking all the fish – maybe giant fishing fleets from another country – or that industrial effluents were poisoning the fish, or that climate change was causing them to migrate to other waters. To take another, real example, poor farmers across ‘developing countries’ have to contend with the fact that many rich countries pay agricultural subsidies to their own farmers, lowering the world market prices for agricultural products and thus damaging the livelihoods of the world’s rural poor.
Thus, at least some of the international NGO community moved progressively towards an analysis of development that saw the main problem in terms of local and international equity. By the end of the 1990s, they might have expressed this by saying: ‘Give a woman a fish and you will feed her for a day. Empower her to assert and defend her economic right to a sustainable livelihood, and her social right to affordable, accessible and appropriate education and health care for her children, and she will be able to do the rest for herself.’ Not quite such a catchy, fundraising line.
This essay has repeatedly emphasised the plural, diverse nature of the international NGO community. It would be quite misleading to suggest that, from the 1960s to the present day, all international NGOs have made the kind of intellectual journey I have just described, rethinking the nature of development and the nature of the contribution they could make. But a significant number did go all or part of the way down this road – including not just groups rooted in the humanitarian tradition but also grant-making foundations and faith-based organisations. (For example, in the UK, among the most forthright and radical development NGOs are Christian Aid and CAFOD, representing, respectively, the British Protestant and Catholic churches. These groups do not appear in this directory because they no longer themselves implement ‘projects’ in developing countries, feeling it inappropriate to parachute in as outsiders and claim to be expert in fixing other people’s problems. Instead, they fund work carried out by developing-country partners; and they also do a great deal of campaigning in the UK to raise public awareness of global economic inequalities, and to lobby the British government and multilateral organisations around issues such as third world debt and the need for a fairer international trading regime.)
Even organisations whose aims are primarily charitable have become much more sophisticated in their understanding of development solutions. For example Project Hope started out in 1958 with a refitted US naval ship, sailing the southern seas with a team of American doctors and nurses aboard, putting in at ports in developing countries to provide medical services. In 1982, Orbis International began a similar programme, using a refitted DC 7 airliner to fly American eye surgeons to developing countries, where they performed cataract operations. Both programmes essentially consisted in supplying short-term Western experts to help out the less fortunate -- at considerable expense and in the dazzle of high technology. Both organisations have since substantially revised their approach, and now place much more emphasis on skills transfer, training of local surgeons and building local capacity.
Equally notable has been not just the evolution of thinking and approaches in the international NGO community itself but the impact this has had on the larger, ‘official’ aid donors. The ‘bottom-up’ and ‘community development’ approaches pioneered by NGOs began by the 1970s to win favour among official aid donors, some of whom started to fund their own programmes to meet ‘basic needs’ of poor communities. Official donors also made funds available to support NGO projects and in some cases actively sought NGO participation in their own project design and implementation, because they recognised the value of NGOs’ ability to work closely with beneficiary communities. The growing dialogue about the nature of development was further enriched by the fact that some people who had gained field experience in NGOs began to take staff or consultancy positions with official development agencies. Today, those agencies all talk the language of gender equity, environmental sustainability, rights, community participation and – as a logical consequence of the partic-ipatory discourse – ‘local ownership’, localisation and civil society development. NGOs have made a very substantial, and quite probably decisive contribution to that way of talking and thinking, about development, both through their own work and through their – sometimes quite fierce – criticism of the official aid community.
Internationalisation and localisation
The great majority of organisations in this directory originated from and are headquartered in Western countries. This is partly because those are the organisations we know best (but we did also manage to identify a reasonable sample of Asian organisations, including more than a dozen from Hong Kong, whose special position in history as a communications portal between China and the Western world is as relevant in the NGO sector as in the commercial sector). The ‘Western’ bias of this directory also reflects the fact that most international NGO activity is still rooted in aid and philanthropic flows from richer to poorer countries. However, all countries have their own philanthropic and humanitarian traditions and, over the last few decades, a local NGO sector has emerged in many developing countries, often with the encouragement and support of international NGOs and development agencies. It is quite likely that, in the future, many more NGOs from non-Western countries will establish contact and develop relationships with Chinese partners.
International NGO programmes in China are a significant part of the story of the country’s growing internationalisation and opening up to the world. The financial flows are relatively small: a rough calculation, based on the entries in this book, suggests that aggregate social investments in China made by (or through) international NGOs are in the range of USD 100 –200 million per year, probably nearer the latter figure. This is a relatively trifling sum compared both to the size of the population and to the level of international commercial investment in China (roughly USD 50 billion each year). But it is not the money that counts, so much as the contribution to the diversity of ideas in China. We have profiled 211 organisations here, each of them unique (and, given more time, we probably could have identified as many as 300). Together, their various programmes add up to a considerable amount of international contact and exchange in terms of, for example, training, study tours, seminars and conferences, not to mention the literally thousands of meetings and conversations that take place every day between international NGOs and Chinese partners to discuss specific development projects. This kind of exchange has enabled tens of thousands of Chinese officials, researchers and NGO staff to become familiar with a diverse range of international concepts, standards and practices, in many fields.
Internationalisation of this kind itself also suggests a process of localisation, as new ideas and approaches are adopted, adapted and absorbed into local contexts. Development NGOs are usually not (and certainly never should be) hostile to the localisation of what they bring: they actively want ‘ownership’ of cooperation projects to pass to local partners; they want the ‘models’ they create to be replicated by others; they want the ‘development tools’ they bring to be taken up and used. This is in its very nature a localising approach, rooted in the central, developmental tenets of sustainability, participation and local ownership, and its logical extension is to ‘hand over’ the work to organisations with an entirely Chinese identity.
It is important to stress these points because some Chinese people are inclined to see international NGOS as an undesirable influence, promoting ‘a foreign agenda.’ I have even heard this said by people in Chinese NGOs, who also complain at ‘unfair competition’ from international organisations. I find this highly ironic, given the strong commitment of most international NGOs to working with and through local partners.
The great majority of international NGOs invest significantly in building the capacity and releasing the potential of their own, Chinese staff. In China, some of the better-established operational organ-isations, like Save the Children UK and the World Wide Fund for Nature, employ many dozens of Chinese staff: not just as translators, book-keepers and drivers, but as senior managers and seasoned professionals who play the major role in advancing the organisation’s mission. Others, such as Wetlands International, employ only Chinese staff. Meanwhile, as already discussed, grant making foundations (and some faith-based and humanitarian organisations) work primarily by funding programmes carried out by local partner agencies.
Many of the organisations profiled here are embedded in global networks that have been developing for several decades and, in some cases, for a century or more. These networks may have started out as clubs with predominantly Western members, but they have become increasingly global, incorporating developing-country members. (Even organisations that do not have international affiliates, including grant-making foundations, have also acquired a much more multi-national identity than was once the case. For example, many now employ staff and appoint board members from developing countries. Increasingly, the identity of these organisations derives from their shared values and approaches, not from association with any particular country.) Some of these international networks will see the way forward as being to establish China chapters. Save the Children UK is already actively preparing to do this.
Organisations that were specifically established to work in China are also likely to decide that assuming a Chinese identity is the best way to sustain their work in future. Oganisations that work primarily by funding Chinese partners will naturally be keen to see those grantees become mature and increasingly self-sufficient organisations.
The trend towards localisation is clear in all of these different cases, although its future pattern and progress will depend significantly on how much space is created for China’s own NGO sector and civil society to mature and develop.
The changing relationship between 'local' and 'global'
Thinking about internationalisation in a rather different sense, it is important to note that many of the issues on which international NGOs work in China are not, properly speaking, only ‘local’ issues. Environmental protection is the clearest example. The global environment is ultimately indivisible, and damage to it in one place is increasingly ‘transboundary’, affecting people in other countries a long way from the source of the problem. International organisations of all kinds – governmental, multilateral and NGOs – therefore have a clear interest in helping China to balance its economic growth with conservation and protection of the natural environment, not merely as a favour to China but as a way to defend their own homelands.
While this logic is easy to grasp in the case of the environment, it applies equally in many other fields. For example, HIV/AIDS or SARS. Germs don’t carry passports, and cannot be turned back at national borders. All countries in the world therefore have an interest in ensuring that China is capable of controlling infectious diseases.
Then there is legal reform and the rule of law. Many international organisations work in this field in China. Their motivations include a concern for natural justice but also, in many cases, the desire to see a clear, legal framework for the rest of the world to do business with China.
Global economic integration interlinks the destiny of humankind. Economic slowdown or social collapse in China would threaten economies across the world. Therefore, people everywhere have an interest in seeing China overcome a wide range of development ‘challenges’, from rural poverty to reform of the banking and fiscal system.
However, China’s economic rise also changes its relationship to the ‘developed’ countries from a ‘donor-recipient’ relationship to one of greater equality and mutual interest. After hosting the Olympic Games in 2008, China must expect an exodus of 'official development assistance.' Indeed, that exodus has already begun11. The populations of the donor countries, having seen on their television sets the extraordinary investment by the government of China, and the extraordinary modernisation of Beijing and Shanghai (and, probably, having seen China win a large share of the medals!) will not think it acceptable for their own countries to still be giving aid to China. They will expect to see that aid, which came from the taxes they paid, go instead to the least developed countries. It is to be hoped, in the interest of all parties, that technical exchanges and policy discussions between China and agencies of other countries, as well as with multilateral bodies, will continue and even expand; but this cooperation will increasingly be on an equal footing, rather than through programmes of 'aid' and 'technical assistance'.
Where will that leave international NGOs? I think that many of them will continue to work in – or, rather, with – China. Indeed, over the next few years, it is likely that even more international NGOs (including grant-making foundations) will want to establish China programmes, as they recognise what an important place China is, and what an important market, therefore, for the knowledge, ideas and skills that they want to share. (Moreover, it is becoming progressively easier for international NGOs to establish programmes in China: not because of improvement to the administrative mechanisms for registration and operation – for, in many respects, these remain wanting – but because there is now a pool of Chinese 'human resources' and partner agencies who are more experienced in working with and understanding foreigners.) But the nature of the relationship between international NGOs and Chinese partners is also likely to change.
China’s continuing economic growth, and the growing capacity of Chinese researchers, officials and social activists, will increase the pace of localisation. This will also be driven by the practical consideration that international NGOs will have fewer opportunities of funding support from donor-country governments, who are beginning to wind down their China programmes. The NGOs will be keen to entrust their work to local partners who share their vision and can raise their own funds in China to work towards realising it.
Also to be expected is a steady rise in the number and range of international campaigning organisations that want to engage with China. This will happen partly in response to growing awareness of China’s importance to the rest of the world, but also because 'civil society' is itself becoming increasingly internationalised, with citizens from different parts of the world cooperating across national boundaries on issues that concern them.
This form of international cooperation will doubtless prove challenging for a Chinese government that has not yet decided how much freedom it wants to accord its citizens. But, as I have tried to show, China belongs to a world where 'local people' are increasingly exposed to international ideas, and where the fortunes of all people are increasingly affected by events in distant localities. Chinese participation in global civil society is the only reliable way of ensuring that Chinese perspectives are represented in global debates.
Beijing
December 2004
By Nick Young
Founding editor, China Development Brief
Note:
1. The phrase 'associational revolution' was coined by Lester Salamon, who led a Johns Hopkins University team in a groundbreaking study of the worldwide non-profit sector.
2. See, for example: 清华 大学NGO研究中心 喜马拉雅文库 NGO文丛, 已经出版8本,包括译著, 从2001年开始,社会科学文献出版社. Also, a ten-volume series on a ‘Third Sector Research’ project, published by the China Youth Developmeng Foundation: 第三部门研究丛书, 1998-1999,共10本,青基会主编
3. Other important Christian churches are the Coptic church in North Africa, and the Orthodox churches in Greece, Eastern Europe and Russia. These, however, are not so relevant to the subject discussed here, because in recent centuries they have not been so associated with overseas missions and colonialism.
4. Robert Putnam demonstrates this quite clearly in the case of the United States in his book Bowling Alone, (especially Chapter 7), 2000, Touchstone.
5. These figures are given on the website of The Foundation Center (www.fdncenter.org) The Center, itself a non-profit organisation based in New York, is devoted to promoting public knowledge and understanding of the work of foundations in the US, to making philanthropy more effective, and to assisting individuals or organisations seeking grants.
6. British social commentators, Will Hutton and John Kay, offered a similar analysis of the underlying differences between US and European business models, during a 2003 presentation in Beijing. Hutton and Kay emphasised the stronger nature of private property rights in American society compared to Europe, where there are customary constraints on the way that property can be used. (For example, there are many public rights of way over English farmland, protected by common law, and the owners have a duty not only to allow access to the land, but also to keep the path clear.)
7. Again, this is derived from data on The Foundation Center website.
8. As far as I remember, my first encounter with this phrase was seeing it used on Oxfam UK fundraising advertisements, in about 1972. At the time of writing I am not in a position to verify whether this was the first use.
9. The Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) determines criteria for ‘official development assistance’ (ODA) flows from its 22 developed country members. To qualify as ODA, financial assistance is supposed to have the welfare and development of recipients as its main objective and, in the case of loans, must have a grant element equivalent to at least 25% of the loan value.
10. This phrase was particularly associated with Harry Truman who, in his 1949 inaugural address as US President proposed a ‘program of development based on the concepts of democratic fair dealing’. For a detailed discussion of the ‘archaeology’ of development discourse, see Arturo Escobar Encountering Development: the Making and Unmaking of the Third World (1995, Princeton University Press).
11. See Donors trim budgets, advance governance, policy agendas in the English edition of China Development Brief, Volume VIII, No. 1, Spring, 2004. Unfortunately, this is only available in English.
Dec 31, 2004
Rough typology of international NGOS
Faith-based organisations
World Vision, EDE, Misereor
Church congregations; individuals; public fundraising; grants from governments and private foundations.
Humanitarian Relief and development organisations
Oxfam, Save the Children, Plan, MSF, WWF and numerous environmental groups
Individual supporter base; public fundraising; grants from government and foundations
Private foundations
Ford, Packard, Gates, Starr, Kadoorie foundations.
Interest on funds endowed by their founders.
Specialist non-profit consulting and implementation agencies
Winrock, PATH, Pact, Family Health International; PlaNet Finance.
Government and foundation contracts and grants.
Campaigning organisations
Individual supporter base; foundation grants
Policy research think-tanks
Government and foundation grants
Professional associations
American Bar Association; Hong Kong Social Workers Association
Membership fees; government and foundation grants
Mutual aid, self-help groups
Retina Hong Kong Heep Hong Society
Membership fees; government and foundation grants
Different models of partnership
Nearly all international NGOs talk frequently about ‘partnership’; but the different types of organisation listed here work in quite different ways, and partnership means quite different things to them.
Grant-making foundations give away money and call their grantees ‘partners.’ Very large foundations – like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation or the Li Kashing Foundation – often give away huge sums in a single grant. This effectively limits recipient ‘partners’ to government departments, universities or multilateral organisations like the World Health Organisation, because not many institutions have the capacity to absorb and constructively use very large sums of money. The making of large grants is partly a matter of strategy, in that the foundations want to fund big programmes with global impact; but it is also partly a matter of administrative convenience. In order to retain its non-profit status, the Gates Foundation must give away more than USD 1 billion each year. To divide that money into grants of, say, USD 50,000 would require a large army of grant making staff to review proposals and to monitor and evaluate projects.
The Ford Foundation is also large, but it is relatively unusual among American foundations in that it decentralises much of its grant making to regional offices staffed by highly qualified specialists. These ‘programme officers’ each manage their own grant-making portfolio, and the foundation places a great deal of trust in their expertise and knowledge of the field they are working in. The programme officers identify funding opportunities with government or non-government partners who, they feel, can achieve significant, developmental impact in a particular field. Partnership in this case is mainly built in the process of negotiating of a grant. The programme officers may spend many months discussing a proposed project with a prospective grantee until agreement is reached upon a specific set of planned activities, objectives and outcomes. Once a grant is made, the grantee bears full responsibility for carrying out the project as agreed. The foundation will expect regular reports, and may carry out an independent evaluation of the project, but it does not become actively involved in project implementation. The Kadoorie Foundation and Asia Foundation operate in a similar way in China.
It is worth emphasising that extremely few foundations work by simply reviewing project proposals that arrive in the mail and picking the ones they like best. Grant making is nearly always a process that starts from a shared interest in a particular topic and then moves on to discussion about objectives and approaches. A request for funding support frequently marks the beginning, not the end of an application process. Some foundations actively discourage people from sending proposals speculatively, preferring to themselves identify potential grantees and solicit proposals from them.
Partnership has a rather different meaning for operational NGOs in both the faith-based and the humanitarian traditions. Some of these organisations play a significant role in service provision – by, for example, carrying out cataract or cleft palate surgeries, or by building or refurbishing schools and clinics. (Some small organisations provide similar, charitable assistance on a small and localised scale that is nonetheless often highly cost effective.) But many of the larger operational NGOs see their work not in terms of bringing financial resources – for their funding is invariably modest relative to the needs they perceive – but in terms of bringing knowledge, skills and experience that can be deployed to develop and demonstrate new ways of working. Therefore, despite their own, non-governmental nature, these organisations are often keen to work as closely as possible with Chinese government partners, because they want to strengthen government’s capacity to respond appropriately to China’s rapidly changing situation and development challenges. (Foundations are often equally interested in ‘new ways of working’, but hope to see these promoted by the grantees that they fund.) Cooperation typically begins with an agreement with a local government agency and proceeds to joint pilot, demonstration work in a rural or urban community. Partnership at this stage is concrete and practical, with the government agency and the NGO staff (including Chinese staff employed and trained by the NGO) working together towards an agreed set of objectives, learning from experience and modifying their approaches as they proceed.
Some of the better-resourced NGOs attempt to combine demonstration projects with policy studies of the field in which they work, – whether that is AIDS prevention, vocational education or integrated river basin management – and to engage in discussion with local and national policymakers. Often, an important objective for the NGO will be encouraging different tiers and branches of government to work more closely together to resolve a particular issue.
Operational NGOs also frequently emphasise their ‘partnership’ with the communities or constituencies they aim to serve. This stems from the development of ‘participatory’ discourse, which NGOs have played a major part in advancing, as discussed in the next section.
Many of the organisations included in this directory do not have an office in China but run ‘China programmes’ from offices overseas. Some of these groups, such as the National Committee for US China Relations, concentrate on improving understanding and transferring knowledge and skills through training projects, policy research, exchange visits, study tours etc. Others, like the German church organisations, EED and Misereor, act as grant makers but with a special interest in supporting the work of Chinese partner NGOs, and helping to develop their capacity.
International campaigning organisations, as already noted, are also interested in identifying Chinese NGOs, researchers or networks of individuals who share their interests.
'Partnership' in this sense is mainly a matter of introducing Chinese citizens to global networks that share information and ideas. This may seem the least tangible – and, to some, no doubt, the least desirable – form of international cooperation with China. But, as I will conclude by arguing, it is in fact extremely important to get more Chinese voices and opinions into global debates about sustainable development and social justice.
Shifting development 'narratives': from relief to rights
As already noted, many international development NGOs were established in response to humanitarian crises, and often began by providing emergency relief supplies. This continues to be an important strand of international NGO work – in part because the general public in richer countries is often moved to donate generously for relief efforts following natural or man-made humanitarian catastrophes, and so in economic terms there is a market demand for organisations to organise and deliver this assistance.
However, some NGOs that worked repeatedly in emergency situations to alleviate hunger, sickness and poverty began in due course to experiment with longer-term development programmes intended to address the underlying causes of poverty. Thus, from the 1960s onwards, NGOs became increasingly active in agricultural development, training, health, education, water and sanitation projects, often combining these in ‘integrated’ rural development programmes. (Of course, none of this was entirely new, as it largely mirrored the kind of public goods provision inherent in the Christian, missionary tradition.) This shift of emphasis was neatly encapsulated in a phrase that became common in NGO circles in the early 1970s: 'Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day; teach him how to fish and you will feed him for life.'8
While NGOs were evolving in this way, an ‘official development assistance’ community was also growing up, comprising government aid agencies from the richer countries, United Nations agencies, the World Bank and other development banks9. It is worth noting some of the most important factors that drove the creation and growth of this international aid industry in the period following the Second World War. Firstly, this was a period of de-colonisation, and development aid was seen as a way that European powers could discharge some of their historic responsibilities to their former colonies, by helping the newly independent states to thrive. Secondly, American aid to Europe for post-war reconstruction had apparently been successful, and some thought of this as a useful precedent for a global 'war on poverty'10. Thirdly, the creation of the United Nations and its affiliated agencies (including the World Bank) in 1945 provided an institutional mechanism for delivering multilateral aid. Fourthly, the Cold War and the perceived threat of spreading Communism gave Western, capitalist countries a strong interest in maintaining their influence over poorer countries; aid programmes were a useful way to build and maintain alliances.
The financial resources of international NGOs have always been small compared to those of 'official' aid donors, but NGOs have nonetheless played an important role in challenging conventional ideas about development and pioneering new approaches. For it should be borne in mind that the concept of 'developed' and 'developing' countries was a historically novel invention of this post-war period. No one had divided the world up this way before. Yet, within a few short decades, the distinction became quite universally accepted, with the World Bank publishing annual league tables of 'development indicators'. In several ways, the entire concept was quite insulting to countries that were now classified as 'developing'. It implied that the 'developing countries' were somehow infantile, and needed to grow up. It suggested the natural superiority, or at least adultness, of the 'developed countries', which, coincidentally enough, all happened (before Japan’s post-war renaissance, at any rate) to have predominantly white populations. It presupposed the desirability of 'developing countries' becoming like the 'developed countries'. It implied that development was a linear process towards a universal goal. And it appeared to offer the hope that this really could be achieved by 'developing countries' irrespective of their own particular historical situation. Both morally and logically all of these were rather strange ideas. The main wonder is that so many people around the globe agreed to see and talk about the world this way.
Through their close, working relationship with poor communities, some international NGOs became sceptical and began to raise questions like: Whose development are we talking about? What is it that we are trying to develop? And who really determines the development processes? As they worked on their own 'grassroots' projects, some of these NGOs also began to examine and critique the programmes of the large aid agencies. They found that official donor programmes at that time were mainly aimed at promoting economic development on a macro level – treating the entire economy as a single unit – through large-scale infrastructure and agricultural production projects that did not necessarily benefit, and in some cases actually harmed, the poorest people and communities. Moreover, these projects tended to confirm poor countries’ role as suppliers of raw materials and agricultural products to richer countries, rather than helping them to add value by processing the products, and to diversify their own economies. Benefits tended to remain with local elites, and seldom 'trickled down' to the poor. Much of the aid was in the form of loans and credit lines that, although preferential, threatened to create a future debt burden. Finally, many official aid programmes were 'tied' to the purchase of goods and services from the donor countries in ways that served the commercial interests of the donors but not necessarily those of the recipients.
Aid, some NGOs began to argue, should instead be directly targeted to needy communities, strengthening local livelihoods, education, health and social services. And, from their own experience of working at micro-level, NGOs found that ‘development’ was not something that could be simply bestowed upon passive recipients. ‘Projects’ only worked if the community was actively involved, ‘participating’ in their design and implementation. This also implied that, although aid was necessary, ‘development’ could not come from outside: it had to respect, build upon and ‘develop’ what was already there.
But it was never, actually, as simple as teaching a man to fish. For a start, this overlooked the key role that women generally play in production in poor countries; ‘gender analysis’ was therefore necessary, to understand relations between men and women in the beneficiary communities, and the way that these would affected ands be affected by development project interventions.
And how long would the fish stocks last? There would be little point in doubling a village’s fish production if this left the next generation of fishermen with nothing to catch. ‘Sustainable development’ therefore had to be invented.
Even more problematically, it soon transpired that many of ‘the root causes of poverty’ lay not in the ignorance and incapacity of the poor themselves, but in the local and global political economy. The poor fisherman’s ‘root’ problem might well be that someone else was taking all the fish – maybe giant fishing fleets from another country – or that industrial effluents were poisoning the fish, or that climate change was causing them to migrate to other waters. To take another, real example, poor farmers across ‘developing countries’ have to contend with the fact that many rich countries pay agricultural subsidies to their own farmers, lowering the world market prices for agricultural products and thus damaging the livelihoods of the world’s rural poor.
Thus, at least some of the international NGO community moved progressively towards an analysis of development that saw the main problem in terms of local and international equity. By the end of the 1990s, they might have expressed this by saying: ‘Give a woman a fish and you will feed her for a day. Empower her to assert and defend her economic right to a sustainable livelihood, and her social right to affordable, accessible and appropriate education and health care for her children, and she will be able to do the rest for herself.’ Not quite such a catchy, fundraising line.
This essay has repeatedly emphasised the plural, diverse nature of the international NGO community. It would be quite misleading to suggest that, from the 1960s to the present day, all international NGOs have made the kind of intellectual journey I have just described, rethinking the nature of development and the nature of the contribution they could make. But a significant number did go all or part of the way down this road – including not just groups rooted in the humanitarian tradition but also grant-making foundations and faith-based organisations. (For example, in the UK, among the most forthright and radical development NGOs are Christian Aid and CAFOD, representing, respectively, the British Protestant and Catholic churches. These groups do not appear in this directory because they no longer themselves implement ‘projects’ in developing countries, feeling it inappropriate to parachute in as outsiders and claim to be expert in fixing other people’s problems. Instead, they fund work carried out by developing-country partners; and they also do a great deal of campaigning in the UK to raise public awareness of global economic inequalities, and to lobby the British government and multilateral organisations around issues such as third world debt and the need for a fairer international trading regime.)
Even organisations whose aims are primarily charitable have become much more sophisticated in their understanding of development solutions. For example Project Hope started out in 1958 with a refitted US naval ship, sailing the southern seas with a team of American doctors and nurses aboard, putting in at ports in developing countries to provide medical services. In 1982, Orbis International began a similar programme, using a refitted DC 7 airliner to fly American eye surgeons to developing countries, where they performed cataract operations. Both programmes essentially consisted in supplying short-term Western experts to help out the less fortunate -- at considerable expense and in the dazzle of high technology. Both organisations have since substantially revised their approach, and now place much more emphasis on skills transfer, training of local surgeons and building local capacity.
Equally notable has been not just the evolution of thinking and approaches in the international NGO community itself but the impact this has had on the larger, ‘official’ aid donors. The ‘bottom-up’ and ‘community development’ approaches pioneered by NGOs began by the 1970s to win favour among official aid donors, some of whom started to fund their own programmes to meet ‘basic needs’ of poor communities. Official donors also made funds available to support NGO projects and in some cases actively sought NGO participation in their own project design and implementation, because they recognised the value of NGOs’ ability to work closely with beneficiary communities. The growing dialogue about the nature of development was further enriched by the fact that some people who had gained field experience in NGOs began to take staff or consultancy positions with official development agencies. Today, those agencies all talk the language of gender equity, environmental sustainability, rights, community participation and – as a logical consequence of the partic-ipatory discourse – ‘local ownership’, localisation and civil society development. NGOs have made a very substantial, and quite probably decisive contribution to that way of talking and thinking, about development, both through their own work and through their – sometimes quite fierce – criticism of the official aid community.
Internationalisation and localisation
The great majority of organisations in this directory originated from and are headquartered in Western countries. This is partly because those are the organisations we know best (but we did also manage to identify a reasonable sample of Asian organisations, including more than a dozen from Hong Kong, whose special position in history as a communications portal between China and the Western world is as relevant in the NGO sector as in the commercial sector). The ‘Western’ bias of this directory also reflects the fact that most international NGO activity is still rooted in aid and philanthropic flows from richer to poorer countries. However, all countries have their own philanthropic and humanitarian traditions and, over the last few decades, a local NGO sector has emerged in many developing countries, often with the encouragement and support of international NGOs and development agencies. It is quite likely that, in the future, many more NGOs from non-Western countries will establish contact and develop relationships with Chinese partners.
International NGO programmes in China are a significant part of the story of the country’s growing internationalisation and opening up to the world. The financial flows are relatively small: a rough calculation, based on the entries in this book, suggests that aggregate social investments in China made by (or through) international NGOs are in the range of USD 100 –200 million per year, probably nearer the latter figure. This is a relatively trifling sum compared both to the size of the population and to the level of international commercial investment in China (roughly USD 50 billion each year). But it is not the money that counts, so much as the contribution to the diversity of ideas in China. We have profiled 211 organisations here, each of them unique (and, given more time, we probably could have identified as many as 300). Together, their various programmes add up to a considerable amount of international contact and exchange in terms of, for example, training, study tours, seminars and conferences, not to mention the literally thousands of meetings and conversations that take place every day between international NGOs and Chinese partners to discuss specific development projects. This kind of exchange has enabled tens of thousands of Chinese officials, researchers and NGO staff to become familiar with a diverse range of international concepts, standards and practices, in many fields.
Internationalisation of this kind itself also suggests a process of localisation, as new ideas and approaches are adopted, adapted and absorbed into local contexts. Development NGOs are usually not (and certainly never should be) hostile to the localisation of what they bring: they actively want ‘ownership’ of cooperation projects to pass to local partners; they want the ‘models’ they create to be replicated by others; they want the ‘development tools’ they bring to be taken up and used. This is in its very nature a localising approach, rooted in the central, developmental tenets of sustainability, participation and local ownership, and its logical extension is to ‘hand over’ the work to organisations with an entirely Chinese identity.
It is important to stress these points because some Chinese people are inclined to see international NGOS as an undesirable influence, promoting ‘a foreign agenda.’ I have even heard this said by people in Chinese NGOs, who also complain at ‘unfair competition’ from international organisations. I find this highly ironic, given the strong commitment of most international NGOs to working with and through local partners.
The great majority of international NGOs invest significantly in building the capacity and releasing the potential of their own, Chinese staff. In China, some of the better-established operational organ-isations, like Save the Children UK and the World Wide Fund for Nature, employ many dozens of Chinese staff: not just as translators, book-keepers and drivers, but as senior managers and seasoned professionals who play the major role in advancing the organisation’s mission. Others, such as Wetlands International, employ only Chinese staff. Meanwhile, as already discussed, grant making foundations (and some faith-based and humanitarian organisations) work primarily by funding programmes carried out by local partner agencies.
Many of the organisations profiled here are embedded in global networks that have been developing for several decades and, in some cases, for a century or more. These networks may have started out as clubs with predominantly Western members, but they have become increasingly global, incorporating developing-country members. (Even organisations that do not have international affiliates, including grant-making foundations, have also acquired a much more multi-national identity than was once the case. For example, many now employ staff and appoint board members from developing countries. Increasingly, the identity of these organisations derives from their shared values and approaches, not from association with any particular country.) Some of these international networks will see the way forward as being to establish China chapters. Save the Children UK is already actively preparing to do this.
Organisations that were specifically established to work in China are also likely to decide that assuming a Chinese identity is the best way to sustain their work in future. Oganisations that work primarily by funding Chinese partners will naturally be keen to see those grantees become mature and increasingly self-sufficient organisations.
The trend towards localisation is clear in all of these different cases, although its future pattern and progress will depend significantly on how much space is created for China’s own NGO sector and civil society to mature and develop.
The changing relationship between 'local' and 'global'
Thinking about internationalisation in a rather different sense, it is important to note that many of the issues on which international NGOs work in China are not, properly speaking, only ‘local’ issues. Environmental protection is the clearest example. The global environment is ultimately indivisible, and damage to it in one place is increasingly ‘transboundary’, affecting people in other countries a long way from the source of the problem. International organisations of all kinds – governmental, multilateral and NGOs – therefore have a clear interest in helping China to balance its economic growth with conservation and protection of the natural environment, not merely as a favour to China but as a way to defend their own homelands.
While this logic is easy to grasp in the case of the environment, it applies equally in many other fields. For example, HIV/AIDS or SARS. Germs don’t carry passports, and cannot be turned back at national borders. All countries in the world therefore have an interest in ensuring that China is capable of controlling infectious diseases.
Then there is legal reform and the rule of law. Many international organisations work in this field in China. Their motivations include a concern for natural justice but also, in many cases, the desire to see a clear, legal framework for the rest of the world to do business with China.
Global economic integration interlinks the destiny of humankind. Economic slowdown or social collapse in China would threaten economies across the world. Therefore, people everywhere have an interest in seeing China overcome a wide range of development ‘challenges’, from rural poverty to reform of the banking and fiscal system.
However, China’s economic rise also changes its relationship to the ‘developed’ countries from a ‘donor-recipient’ relationship to one of greater equality and mutual interest. After hosting the Olympic Games in 2008, China must expect an exodus of 'official development assistance.' Indeed, that exodus has already begun11. The populations of the donor countries, having seen on their television sets the extraordinary investment by the government of China, and the extraordinary modernisation of Beijing and Shanghai (and, probably, having seen China win a large share of the medals!) will not think it acceptable for their own countries to still be giving aid to China. They will expect to see that aid, which came from the taxes they paid, go instead to the least developed countries. It is to be hoped, in the interest of all parties, that technical exchanges and policy discussions between China and agencies of other countries, as well as with multilateral bodies, will continue and even expand; but this cooperation will increasingly be on an equal footing, rather than through programmes of 'aid' and 'technical assistance'.
Where will that leave international NGOs? I think that many of them will continue to work in – or, rather, with – China. Indeed, over the next few years, it is likely that even more international NGOs (including grant-making foundations) will want to establish China programmes, as they recognise what an important place China is, and what an important market, therefore, for the knowledge, ideas and skills that they want to share. (Moreover, it is becoming progressively easier for international NGOs to establish programmes in China: not because of improvement to the administrative mechanisms for registration and operation – for, in many respects, these remain wanting – but because there is now a pool of Chinese 'human resources' and partner agencies who are more experienced in working with and understanding foreigners.) But the nature of the relationship between international NGOs and Chinese partners is also likely to change.
China’s continuing economic growth, and the growing capacity of Chinese researchers, officials and social activists, will increase the pace of localisation. This will also be driven by the practical consideration that international NGOs will have fewer opportunities of funding support from donor-country governments, who are beginning to wind down their China programmes. The NGOs will be keen to entrust their work to local partners who share their vision and can raise their own funds in China to work towards realising it.
Also to be expected is a steady rise in the number and range of international campaigning organisations that want to engage with China. This will happen partly in response to growing awareness of China’s importance to the rest of the world, but also because 'civil society' is itself becoming increasingly internationalised, with citizens from different parts of the world cooperating across national boundaries on issues that concern them.
This form of international cooperation will doubtless prove challenging for a Chinese government that has not yet decided how much freedom it wants to accord its citizens. But, as I have tried to show, China belongs to a world where 'local people' are increasingly exposed to international ideas, and where the fortunes of all people are increasingly affected by events in distant localities. Chinese participation in global civil society is the only reliable way of ensuring that Chinese perspectives are represented in global debates.
Beijing
December 2004
By Nick Young
Founding editor, China Development Brief
Note:
1. The phrase 'associational revolution' was coined by Lester Salamon, who led a Johns Hopkins University team in a groundbreaking study of the worldwide non-profit sector.
2. See, for example: 清华 大学NGO研究中心 喜马拉雅文库 NGO文丛, 已经出版8本,包括译著, 从2001年开始,社会科学文献出版社. Also, a ten-volume series on a ‘Third Sector Research’ project, published by the China Youth Developmeng Foundation: 第三部门研究丛书, 1998-1999,共10本,青基会主编
3. Other important Christian churches are the Coptic church in North Africa, and the Orthodox churches in Greece, Eastern Europe and Russia. These, however, are not so relevant to the subject discussed here, because in recent centuries they have not been so associated with overseas missions and colonialism.
4. Robert Putnam demonstrates this quite clearly in the case of the United States in his book Bowling Alone, (especially Chapter 7), 2000, Touchstone.
5. These figures are given on the website of The Foundation Center (www.fdncenter.org) The Center, itself a non-profit organisation based in New York, is devoted to promoting public knowledge and understanding of the work of foundations in the US, to making philanthropy more effective, and to assisting individuals or organisations seeking grants.
6. British social commentators, Will Hutton and John Kay, offered a similar analysis of the underlying differences between US and European business models, during a 2003 presentation in Beijing. Hutton and Kay emphasised the stronger nature of private property rights in American society compared to Europe, where there are customary constraints on the way that property can be used. (For example, there are many public rights of way over English farmland, protected by common law, and the owners have a duty not only to allow access to the land, but also to keep the path clear.)
7. Again, this is derived from data on The Foundation Center website.
8. As far as I remember, my first encounter with this phrase was seeing it used on Oxfam UK fundraising advertisements, in about 1972. At the time of writing I am not in a position to verify whether this was the first use.
9. The Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) determines criteria for ‘official development assistance’ (ODA) flows from its 22 developed country members. To qualify as ODA, financial assistance is supposed to have the welfare and development of recipients as its main objective and, in the case of loans, must have a grant element equivalent to at least 25% of the loan value.
10. This phrase was particularly associated with Harry Truman who, in his 1949 inaugural address as US President proposed a ‘program of development based on the concepts of democratic fair dealing’. For a detailed discussion of the ‘archaeology’ of development discourse, see Arturo Escobar Encountering Development: the Making and Unmaking of the Third World (1995, Princeton University Press).
11. See Donors trim budgets, advance governance, policy agendas in the English edition of China Development Brief, Volume VIII, No. 1, Spring, 2004. Unfortunately, this is only available in English.
WIDGETIZE