Outside Funding of Community Organizations: Benefiting or Displacing the Poor?

In response to the widespread consensus on the importance of social capital, and to concerns about the scarcity of institutions giving voice to disadvantaged groups, some donors have begun programs designed to strengthen indigenous community organizations. We use a prospective, randomized evaluation to examine a development program explicitly targeted at building social capital among rural women's groups in western Kenya. The program increased turnover among group members. It increased entry into group membership and leadership by younger, more educated women, by women employed in the formal sector, and by men. The analysis suggests that providing development assistance to indigenous community organizations of the disadvantaged may change the very characteristics of these organizations that made them attractive to outside funders.

Disease Surveillance Networks Initiative Global: Final Evaluation

In August 2009, the Rockefeller Foundation commissioned an independent external evaluation of the Disease Surveillance Networks (DSN) Initiative in Asia, Africa, and globally. This report covers the results of the global component of the summative and prospective1 evaluation, which had the following objectives:[1] Assessment of performance of the DSN Initiative, focused on its relevance, effectiveness/impact, and efficiency within the context of the Foundation's initiative support.[2] Assessment of the DSN Initiative's underlying hypothesis: robust trans-boundary, multi-sectoral/cross-disciplinary collaborative networks lead to improved disease surveillance and response.[3] Assessment of the quality of Foundation management (value for money) for the DSN Initiative.[4] Contribute to the field of philanthropy by:a. Demonstrating the use of evaluations in grantmaking, learning and knowledge management; andb. Informing the field of development evaluation about methods and models to measure complex networks

Resilience amid Uncertainty: The on-going impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on nonprofits in Washington State

This report represents the second phase of on-going research to understand how nonprofits in Washington State have responded to the twin public health crises of systemic racism and the COVID-19 pandemic. The first report focused on the initial phases of the pandemic from March to July 2020 and revealed that many nonprofits faced precarious financial and operational conditions precipitated by an increased demand for services and dwindling revenue sources. Our second phase sought to understand how nonprofits fared in the subsequent period, specifically to investigate (a) how nonprofits, especially organizations led by and serving communities of color, which bore the greatest burden of the twin pandemics, have been able to navigate, (b) the types of support that organizations have been able to access, what that support has allowed them to do (i.e. the needs it covered), the sufficiency of that support to meet organizational needs, and any challenges experienced in receiving support, and (c) the financial and operational outlook for the future of nonprofits in Washington State.We interviewed 37 nonprofit leaders located across Washington State from March to August 2021. Our sample included many of our 2020 survey respondents as well as nonprofits serving communities of color and rural communities. Our interviews revealed that nonprofits responded to the twin pandemics with resilience, compassion, and initiative.

Discourse and Regulation Failures: The Ambivalent Influence of NGOs on Political Organizations

In the last decades, NGOs have become an important participant in the work of political organizations (e.g., national authorities, the EU or the UN). This development brings many opportunities and also some challenges, including discourse failure which is one of the topics discussed in this paper. We present a case study that illustrates the interdependence of discourse failure and regulations failure. We conclude that discourse failure is frequently not merely an accidental by-product, but rather, a non-intended consequence of deliberate NGOs’ campaigns. We make particular note of probable discourse failure when campaigns attempt to deal with complex issues in an environment rife with wide-spread prejudices and where the NGO’s work is transparent. In this situation, regulation failure may be consequent upon discourse failure. We present collectively binding commitments for NGOs and binding services enforced by political organizations to prevent discourse failure. In conclusion, we argue that the field of political economy can benefit from this challenging environment if it systematically researches the interdependencies between discourses and regulations.In den letzten Jahrzehnten kamen NGOs als wichtige Akteure im politischen Regelsetzungsprozess hinzu (z. B. in der EU, der UN und auch auf den nationalen Ebenen). Aus dieser Entwicklung ergeben sich für die Zivilgesellschaft vielfältige Chancen, allerdings auch einige Herausforderungen. Zu den Herausforderungen zählt unter anderem Diskursversagen, woraus häufig Regulierungsversagen resultiert. Der Beitrag präsentiert eine Fallstudie, die das Zusammenspiel aus Diskurs- und Regulierungsversagen aufzeigt. Das Beispiel illustriert, dass Diskursversagen nicht nur ein zufälliger Nebeneffekt von öffentlichen Diskursen ist, sondern eine nicht-intendierte Folge zielgerichteter Kampagnen von NGOs sein kann. Insbesondere Kampagnen, die sich mit komplexen Themen auseinandersetzen, über die es in der Öffentlichkeit weitverbreitete Vorurteile gibt, neigen zu Diskursversagen. Durch transparente Kampagnen seitens der NGOs wird dies sogar begünstigt. Zur Überwindung dieser Defizite stellt der Beitrag verschiedene Bindungsmechanismen für NGOs und Bindungsservices durch Behörden und Politik vor. Abschließend zeigt der Beitrag auf, dass die Politische Ökonomik davon profitieren kann, wenn sie systematisch das Zusammenspiel zwischen Diskurs und Regulierung erforscht

Signaling virtue: voluntary accountability programs among nonprofit organizations

Nonprofit accountability, Collective action, Voluntary programs, Voluntary clubs, Self-regulation, Certification,

You Can’t Save Alone: Commitment in Rotating Savings and Credit Associations in Kenya

This article examines one reason why individuals develop and maintain local-level financial savings organizations known as rotating savings and credit organizations, or Roscas. Economic theories suggest that individuals form Roscas to finance the purchase of a lumpy durable good, in response to intrahousehold conflict over savings, or to provide themselves with insurance. The article proposes an additional hypothesis for Rosca participation: saving requires discipline, and some Roscas may be formed to provide a collective mechanism for commitment in the presence of time-inconsistent preferences. Data from 70 Roscas located in western Kenya indicate that the commitment hypothesis is plausible and broadly consistent with the design and patterns of participation in these Roscas. As many Rosca participants put it, “You can’t save alone.”

STRUCTURAL BARRIERS TO TRADE IN AFRICA

The economic performance of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) over the past two decades has been disappointing. The initial explanation for this poor performance focussed on deficient macroeconomic policies. However a number of SSA countries have undertaken and sustained a reasonable measure of macroeconomic reform and still see no significant expansion in the growth of manufactured exports. This suggests that a stable, credible, and consistent macroeconomic environment may be a necessary but not sufficient condition for export growth. This paper reviews the literature dealing with other constraints, including poor infrastructure, lack of appropriate human capital, a failure to develop a variety of export support services, and the impact of an unresponsive civil service. We conclude that while there are clearly numerous structural barriers to exports in SSA, no systematic analysis has been undertaken that would assist policy-makers in determining which constraints are most important

Local Impacts of a Global Crisis: How Washington state nonprofits are responding to COVID-19

The COVID-19 crisis has caused deep and widespread strain across sectors and individuals since taking hold in early 2020. Despite this adversity, nonprofits—especially those comprising the modern social safety net—have continued to serve their communities during this tumultuous time (Kulish, 2020). This report seeks to understand (a) the major challenges facing nonprofits in Washington state as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, (b) the strategies that nonprofits are using to mitigate the effects of the crisis, (c) how nonprofits are experiencing changes in funder relationships as a result of the crisis, (d) the degree to which nonprofits in the state have accessed assistance under the CARES Act, and (e) the most pressing needs nonprofits have as they face the ongoing uncertainty and hardship presented by COVID-19