I wonder whether the fact that this trend looks like a growth in single issues isn’t because that’s the way we, as voluntary or campaigning organisations, make it look.
There are lots of people out there who are engaged in multiple ‘single issues’. (See Flexibility, Honesty, Collaboration). That’s because (a) they’re trying to behave like responsible, passionate, angry, caring global citizens, and that involves many issues; and (b) we serve them up with single-issue channels for expressing themselves, rather than a broader ‘movement of global citizens’ to be activists in. And we do that because we’ve learned a lot about how to make change happen. It works.
So the media and politicians see single-issue campaigns, but the real people inside them are as multiple-issue as ever.
‘Bono-isation’ – if that means trivialisation, which is not very fair on what Bono’s actually up to – may be what it looks like from the outside, but I don’t know of any single-issue big-scale campaign that hasn’t been run in the background by hardened voluntary/community sector campaigners who are pulling all the levers of power and mobilising committed activists, as well as trying to achieve broad-span public appeal for those with other things to do with their lives. It’s never been one or the other, it’s both.
What we’re seeing is not necessarily a weakening of popular passion or of its power to change things – in fact, if anything, it’s the opposite – but it probably is a weakening of people’s willingness to devote themselves to one single organisation.
So Robin, I believe, shouldn’t be worried about a decline in people’s willingness to engage in the politics of HIV and AIDS, for example; there are lots out there, some of whom will be willing to understand and campaign on the detail, while others will stick to the short-attention-span outskirts of a campaign.
But he’s probably right to be worried that this won’t translate into so many loyal supporters for his own organisation – not because their politics has been trivialised by the media pictures of Bono, but because they are also engaging in many other issues.
Complex lives mean complex engagements; I wonder if the part-time activists out there aren’t more sophisticated than we give them credit for!
There’s a bit of both out there, I believe, Veronique. There are some (and a growing number) for whom ethical shopping is integral to their political life – is part of the same way of living as signing a petition about human rights in Tibet or campaigning for trade justice. I think of these people as striving to be good ‘global citizens.’ See Flexibility, Honesty, Collaboration for more on what their efforts mean for the voluntary sector.
Amongst these are people for whom it’s a real investment of time and commitment; they will take the time and trouble to make careful choices for good ethical reasons. There are plenty more who don’t have – or don’t give – the time to do their own research on what’s right and why; they rely on charities, campaigners or fairtrade businesses to grab their attention, and are looking for a quick way to ‘get it right’ on the basis of what they’ve heard and then get on with their lives.
Some of the commentary above is a little snide about these people for my liking. It doesn’t worry me too much if they’re not devoting large parts of their lives to making their choices – as long as they’re making them. It’s the job of the ethical trading sector, charities, etc to make sure the information they receive is attractive, easy to understand and reliable, so that a quick take is all it needs to do the right thing. And then let’s cheer them on!
The one part of the voluntary sector directly affected by this driver is the international development (NGO) sector. The causes, nature and location of poverty and exclusion will shift significantly, as will the spectrum of global power balances. The result is a need to become increasingly smart about why, whether and where to have partnerships with others. See my comment piece on NGO futures
When Michael Edwards opened BOND’s first NGO Futures conference in 1996, he challenged chief executives with this: You can become increasingly competitive in an increasingly competitive market for development delivery – where you will have scale but not impact. Or you can reappraise what your values mean today and operate in a networked, alliance-building, flexible, influencing world – where you will have impact but not scale. The one choice you don’t have is not to choose.
The great and good of the sector, entirely predictably and possibly correctly, responded, ‘We’d like a bit of both.’
To a large extent, they have managed to have exactly that. The environment has been more benign than either Edwards or they believed at the time; and NGOs themselves have had more influence over their own environment – for better or worse – than expected.
The question now is whether, given the very rapid shifts in the global environment, they can continue to have it both ways. There is a challenging agenda ahead for leading-edge NGOs, and much of it can only be achieved by NGOs stepping back from organisational self-interest (in terms of assured income and profile) and addressing the wider picture.
No longer north and south: flexible response
‘Northern’ NGOs’ existence is framed for a north-south world, their presence in rich and powerful nations adding fundraising, solidarity and influence value to their ‘southern’ partners’ drive against poverty and exclusion. Always fragile, that framework is beyond breaking point, at least as a basis for deciding where and with whom to work.
China, India, Brazil, South Africa and others are increasingly influential investors, traders, global and regional negotiators on climate change, and emerging aid donors. New European member states, briefly seen as ‘southern’ in the ‘90s, are officially ‘northern,’ have aid programmes, and are significant voters in a powerful trading/donor bloc. Asian and Latin American economies are spread right along the spectrum of international influence. (See globalisation of markets). There is wide variation in these nations’ incidence of, and reductions in, poverty; and an underfulfilled potential for fundraising from the public as their middle classes grow. While some countries – particularly in Africa – remain clearly ‘southern’ and others clearly ‘northern’, too many now defy the north-south dichotomy to justify its continued value for NGOs. The increasing role of global inter-governmental institutions and, of course, trans-national corporations, intensifies the implications (see international institutions and power of multinationals).
Trailing-edge organisations will continue to assess their presence in countries using traditional poverty or social development indices. Leading edge NGOs will supplement this with the degree of the country’s global influence; assessment of rights and access; the strength of civil society; and the scope for fundraising from the public. The combination – alongside clarity of vision and purpose – will determine the choice of partners, nature of relationships with them, and mix of support for practical people-centred development, support for domestic public fundraising or domestic advocacy, and alliance for advocacy on global issues. There is no country in which a global poverty-focused NGO has no role; the appropriate mix will be different in every country; flexibility is key.
Broad but shallow? UK global citizens
The OECD sees the UK public’s support for international development as broad but shallow, and worries about it. Broad is better than narrow; can NGOs rise to the challenge to deepen it?
The proportion of the public behaving increasingly like global citizens is growing: witness private action on carbon emissions, growth in fair-trade shopping, giving in response to the tsunami, and the numbers mobilised for Make Poverty History (see international campaigns and movements). There is much commentary on the growth of single-issue politics (see also rise in radicalism), but this looks more like a growing overall sense of global responsibility, with many individuals dipping into a whole range of issues and types of action, seen as separate by the organisations promoting them but all parts of a whole for participants. (See attitudes to community responsibility).
But there is declining brand-loyalty to individual organisations as increasingly networked campaigners, consumers and voters shop around amongst attempts to influence them (see empowered consumers). Overall public confidence in charities , while still high, is waning. And, if support is indeed shallow, this is at least partly the responsibility of NGOs keeping messages too simple for an increasingly sophisticated public, and the public increasingly sensing it. UK culture is moving with NGOs’ issues, but away from the organisations promoting them.
Leading-edge competitors will bid for brand-loyalty with increasingly sophisticated, sassy use of new technology options to tap into a growing community of on-line consumers of global-citizen actions – campaigning, shopping, donating and voting (see interactive websites).
A best-value leading edge will see beyond NGO-brand competition. It will trust global citizens to accept a more complex truth, and develop greater transparency about the complications and imperfections of change. It will promote the image of active, vibrant change-agents in the south, not helpless recipients of aid, and resist the temptation to imply that northern NGOs are the hub of change. It will build collaborative campaigns that enable expression of global citizenship without demanding alignment to well-known NGO brands, designing them in genuine collaboration with the energies of student bodies, unions, BME and faith groups, and social movements.
Trailing edge organisations will compete by promoting their own centrality, and thereby the passivity of their beneficiaries: campaigning on their own because it is good for profile and encouraging a simplistic understanding of change as a means of achieving brand loyalty.
Threats or world-changers? New actors and shifting roles
Only ten years ago, mainstream NGOs knew their patch and other actors did something different. No longer. (See blurring of boundaries between sectors). Official donors support civil society advocacy; the military delivers rehabilitation and development programmes as part of its hearts and minds work; wealthy philanthropists inject huge amounts of money – sometimes through NGOs but often directly – into health programmes and elsewhere (see corporate giving and corporate responsibility ); venture capital explores campaign interventions and social development investments (see new philanthropists ); social movements innovate in advocacy and campaign spaces; diaspora communities evolve increasingly interesting support for their areas of origin (see global population movements ); celebrities influence in places NGOs cannot reach. This is exciting but terrifying for NGOs.
In this crowded arena, NGOs need a confident understanding of their own capabilities and limitations. Many NGOs have much more grounded experience than most new entrants, but often not comparable resources or access. Leading-edge NGOs will be able to make fine judgements between critical friendship and opposition, and will reach out to influence quality and develop creative combinations of their own strengths and those of other actors. Trailing-edge organisations will feel threatened and defend their territory.
Culture clash: Accountability to whom?
As UK NGOs’ profile and influence has grown, their multiple stakeholders, as well as opponents, have been increasing the pressure for greater accountability (see information on the VCS and expectations of evidence).
DFID, in perhaps an over-response to a National Audit Office report, is placing increasingly heavy emphasis in NGO funding relationships on its own priorities, reflecting a global trend by donors to see NGOs in an instrumentalist role. Meanwhile, there is a growing movement for ‘downward accountability’ in the aid chain, to the priorities of the partners and people that UK NGOs exist to support. A direct clash between responsiveness up the power chain and down it is developing. In a delicate balancing act, NGOs’ choices will speak volumes about where their souls lie.
Leading edge NGOs will develop new means of ensuring downward accountability, increasingly focusing on the quality of relationships with partners in their work. To do so effectively, they will need to work together to convince institutional donors that – counter-intuitively but correctly – this is in their best interests too. However, this will require subtlety around legitimate demands to account to taxpayers. Trailing-edge NGOs will be driven by institutional survive-and-thrive instincts to focus on upward accountability.
Conclusion: Honesty, flexibility and core values
In this increasingly complex and fluid world of power and influence, poverty and exclusion, leading-edge NGOs will have clear values and purpose to guide them (see importance of organisational values). Armed with these, they will assess their role in any country with decreasing use of the north-south paradigm; they will treat emergent global citizens in the UK with honesty and faith in their judgement, mobilising them in alliance with others; they will use delicate judgement in relating with a host of other actors in development, to influence the quality of their work; and they will prioritise accountability to, and strength of relationship with, their partners.
This is a demanding but potentially rewarding set of challenges. It requires flexibility based on strong values and mission, and a confident understanding of competences; a focus on honesty and depth in central relationships; agility in more tactical ones; and – given the fluidity of the environment – extensive networking activity.
This is likely to come most easily to the more innovative smaller organisations and devolved larger ones: those with greater capacity (and guidance to staff) to listen, learn, analyse, adapt in diverse situations, and give time to developing relationships.
At its heart this presents a challenge to reverse the pressure to focus on institutional survival, growth and profile. Leading-edge NGOs and their personnel will be driven by mission not growth, diversity not uniformity of response, honesty not fear, collaboration not competition.
Richard
I wonder whether the fact that this trend looks like a growth in single issues isn’t because that’s the way we, as voluntary or campaigning organisations, make it look.
There are lots of people out there who are engaged in multiple ‘single issues’. (See Flexibility, Honesty, Collaboration). That’s because (a) they’re trying to behave like responsible, passionate, angry, caring global citizens, and that involves many issues; and (b) we serve them up with single-issue channels for expressing themselves, rather than a broader ‘movement of global citizens’ to be activists in. And we do that because we’ve learned a lot about how to make change happen. It works.
So the media and politicians see single-issue campaigns, but the real people inside them are as multiple-issue as ever.
‘Bono-isation’ – if that means trivialisation, which is not very fair on what Bono’s actually up to – may be what it looks like from the outside, but I don’t know of any single-issue big-scale campaign that hasn’t been run in the background by hardened voluntary/community sector campaigners who are pulling all the levers of power and mobilising committed activists, as well as trying to achieve broad-span public appeal for those with other things to do with their lives. It’s never been one or the other, it’s both.
What we’re seeing is not necessarily a weakening of popular passion or of its power to change things – in fact, if anything, it’s the opposite – but it probably is a weakening of people’s willingness to devote themselves to one single organisation.
So Robin, I believe, shouldn’t be worried about a decline in people’s willingness to engage in the politics of HIV and AIDS, for example; there are lots out there, some of whom will be willing to understand and campaign on the detail, while others will stick to the short-attention-span outskirts of a campaign.
But he’s probably right to be worried that this won’t translate into so many loyal supporters for his own organisation – not because their politics has been trivialised by the media pictures of Bono, but because they are also engaging in many other issues.
Complex lives mean complex engagements; I wonder if the part-time activists out there aren’t more sophisticated than we give them credit for!
Richard
There’s a bit of both out there, I believe, Veronique. There are some (and a growing number) for whom ethical shopping is integral to their political life – is part of the same way of living as signing a petition about human rights in Tibet or campaigning for trade justice. I think of these people as striving to be good ‘global citizens.’ See Flexibility, Honesty, Collaboration for more on what their efforts mean for the voluntary sector.
Amongst these are people for whom it’s a real investment of time and commitment; they will take the time and trouble to make careful choices for good ethical reasons. There are plenty more who don’t have – or don’t give – the time to do their own research on what’s right and why; they rely on charities, campaigners or fairtrade businesses to grab their attention, and are looking for a quick way to ‘get it right’ on the basis of what they’ve heard and then get on with their lives.
Some of the commentary above is a little snide about these people for my liking. It doesn’t worry me too much if they’re not devoting large parts of their lives to making their choices – as long as they’re making them. It’s the job of the ethical trading sector, charities, etc to make sure the information they receive is attractive, easy to understand and reliable, so that a quick take is all it needs to do the right thing. And then let’s cheer them on!
Richard
The one part of the voluntary sector directly affected by this driver is the international development (NGO) sector. The causes, nature and location of poverty and exclusion will shift significantly, as will the spectrum of global power balances. The result is a need to become increasingly smart about why, whether and where to have partnerships with others. See my comment piece on NGO futures
Richard
When Michael Edwards opened BOND’s first NGO Futures conference in 1996, he challenged chief executives with this: You can become increasingly competitive in an increasingly competitive market for development delivery – where you will have scale but not impact. Or you can reappraise what your values mean today and operate in a networked, alliance-building, flexible, influencing world – where you will have impact but not scale. The one choice you don’t have is not to choose.
The great and good of the sector, entirely predictably and possibly correctly, responded, ‘We’d like a bit of both.’
To a large extent, they have managed to have exactly that. The environment has been more benign than either Edwards or they believed at the time; and NGOs themselves have had more influence over their own environment – for better or worse – than expected.
The question now is whether, given the very rapid shifts in the global environment, they can continue to have it both ways. There is a challenging agenda ahead for leading-edge NGOs, and much of it can only be achieved by NGOs stepping back from organisational self-interest (in terms of assured income and profile) and addressing the wider picture.
No longer north and south: flexible response
‘Northern’ NGOs’ existence is framed for a north-south world, their presence in rich and powerful nations adding fundraising, solidarity and influence value to their ‘southern’ partners’ drive against poverty and exclusion. Always fragile, that framework is beyond breaking point, at least as a basis for deciding where and with whom to work.
China, India, Brazil, South Africa and others are increasingly influential investors, traders, global and regional negotiators on climate change, and emerging aid donors. New European member states, briefly seen as ‘southern’ in the ‘90s, are officially ‘northern,’ have aid programmes, and are significant voters in a powerful trading/donor bloc. Asian and Latin American economies are spread right along the spectrum of international influence. (See globalisation of markets). There is wide variation in these nations’ incidence of, and reductions in, poverty; and an underfulfilled potential for fundraising from the public as their middle classes grow. While some countries – particularly in Africa – remain clearly ‘southern’ and others clearly ‘northern’, too many now defy the north-south dichotomy to justify its continued value for NGOs. The increasing role of global inter-governmental institutions and, of course, trans-national corporations, intensifies the implications (see international institutions and power of multinationals).
Trailing-edge organisations will continue to assess their presence in countries using traditional poverty or social development indices. Leading edge NGOs will supplement this with the degree of the country’s global influence; assessment of rights and access; the strength of civil society; and the scope for fundraising from the public. The combination – alongside clarity of vision and purpose – will determine the choice of partners, nature of relationships with them, and mix of support for practical people-centred development, support for domestic public fundraising or domestic advocacy, and alliance for advocacy on global issues. There is no country in which a global poverty-focused NGO has no role; the appropriate mix will be different in every country; flexibility is key.
Broad but shallow? UK global citizens
The OECD sees the UK public’s support for international development as broad but shallow, and worries about it. Broad is better than narrow; can NGOs rise to the challenge to deepen it?
The proportion of the public behaving increasingly like global citizens is growing: witness private action on carbon emissions, growth in fair-trade shopping, giving in response to the tsunami, and the numbers mobilised for Make Poverty History (see international campaigns and movements). There is much commentary on the growth of single-issue politics (see also rise in radicalism), but this looks more like a growing overall sense of global responsibility, with many individuals dipping into a whole range of issues and types of action, seen as separate by the organisations promoting them but all parts of a whole for participants. (See attitudes to community responsibility).
But there is declining brand-loyalty to individual organisations as increasingly networked campaigners, consumers and voters shop around amongst attempts to influence them (see empowered consumers). Overall public confidence in charities , while still high, is waning. And, if support is indeed shallow, this is at least partly the responsibility of NGOs keeping messages too simple for an increasingly sophisticated public, and the public increasingly sensing it. UK culture is moving with NGOs’ issues, but away from the organisations promoting them.
Leading-edge competitors will bid for brand-loyalty with increasingly sophisticated, sassy use of new technology options to tap into a growing community of on-line consumers of global-citizen actions – campaigning, shopping, donating and voting (see interactive websites).
A best-value leading edge will see beyond NGO-brand competition. It will trust global citizens to accept a more complex truth, and develop greater transparency about the complications and imperfections of change. It will promote the image of active, vibrant change-agents in the south, not helpless recipients of aid, and resist the temptation to imply that northern NGOs are the hub of change. It will build collaborative campaigns that enable expression of global citizenship without demanding alignment to well-known NGO brands, designing them in genuine collaboration with the energies of student bodies, unions, BME and faith groups, and social movements.
Trailing edge organisations will compete by promoting their own centrality, and thereby the passivity of their beneficiaries: campaigning on their own because it is good for profile and encouraging a simplistic understanding of change as a means of achieving brand loyalty.
Threats or world-changers? New actors and shifting roles
Only ten years ago, mainstream NGOs knew their patch and other actors did something different. No longer. (See blurring of boundaries between sectors). Official donors support civil society advocacy; the military delivers rehabilitation and development programmes as part of its hearts and minds work; wealthy philanthropists inject huge amounts of money – sometimes through NGOs but often directly – into health programmes and elsewhere (see corporate giving and corporate responsibility ); venture capital explores campaign interventions and social development investments (see new philanthropists ); social movements innovate in advocacy and campaign spaces; diaspora communities evolve increasingly interesting support for their areas of origin (see global population movements ); celebrities influence in places NGOs cannot reach. This is exciting but terrifying for NGOs.
In this crowded arena, NGOs need a confident understanding of their own capabilities and limitations. Many NGOs have much more grounded experience than most new entrants, but often not comparable resources or access. Leading-edge NGOs will be able to make fine judgements between critical friendship and opposition, and will reach out to influence quality and develop creative combinations of their own strengths and those of other actors. Trailing-edge organisations will feel threatened and defend their territory.
Culture clash: Accountability to whom?
As UK NGOs’ profile and influence has grown, their multiple stakeholders, as well as opponents, have been increasing the pressure for greater accountability (see information on the VCS and expectations of evidence).
DFID, in perhaps an over-response to a National Audit Office report, is placing increasingly heavy emphasis in NGO funding relationships on its own priorities, reflecting a global trend by donors to see NGOs in an instrumentalist role. Meanwhile, there is a growing movement for ‘downward accountability’ in the aid chain, to the priorities of the partners and people that UK NGOs exist to support. A direct clash between responsiveness up the power chain and down it is developing. In a delicate balancing act, NGOs’ choices will speak volumes about where their souls lie.
Leading edge NGOs will develop new means of ensuring downward accountability, increasingly focusing on the quality of relationships with partners in their work. To do so effectively, they will need to work together to convince institutional donors that – counter-intuitively but correctly – this is in their best interests too. However, this will require subtlety around legitimate demands to account to taxpayers. Trailing-edge NGOs will be driven by institutional survive-and-thrive instincts to focus on upward accountability.
Conclusion: Honesty, flexibility and core values
In this increasingly complex and fluid world of power and influence, poverty and exclusion, leading-edge NGOs will have clear values and purpose to guide them (see importance of organisational values). Armed with these, they will assess their role in any country with decreasing use of the north-south paradigm; they will treat emergent global citizens in the UK with honesty and faith in their judgement, mobilising them in alliance with others; they will use delicate judgement in relating with a host of other actors in development, to influence the quality of their work; and they will prioritise accountability to, and strength of relationship with, their partners.
This is a demanding but potentially rewarding set of challenges. It requires flexibility based on strong values and mission, and a confident understanding of competences; a focus on honesty and depth in central relationships; agility in more tactical ones; and – given the fluidity of the environment – extensive networking activity.
This is likely to come most easily to the more innovative smaller organisations and devolved larger ones: those with greater capacity (and guidance to staff) to listen, learn, analyse, adapt in diverse situations, and give time to developing relationships.
At its heart this presents a challenge to reverse the pressure to focus on institutional survival, growth and profile. Leading-edge NGOs and their personnel will be driven by mission not growth, diversity not uniformity of response, honesty not fear, collaboration not competition.