When NGOs Go Global: Competition on International Markets for Development Donations

Abstract

Why many large non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are becoming multinational entities? What are the welfare implications of this integration of markets for development donations? To answer these questions, we build a simple two-country model with horizontally differentiated NGOs competing through fundraising effort. We find that NGOs become multinational if the economies of scale in fundraising are sufficiently large. In that case, national NGOs in the smaller country disappear, while some national NGOs remain in the larger country only if the difference in the countries' size is large enough. Social welfare is higher in the regime with multinationals than under autarky.non-governmental organizations, charitable giving, globalization, multinational firms