Mr. David,

You have one good work in this issue. It's "The Management of Non-Governmental Development Organizations- An introduction".

http://hr.law.vnu.edu.vn/sites/default/files/resources/management_of_non_governmental_development_organizations__an_introduction__.pdf

I will try to answer the question. I work for a public university hospital, but I have contacts with some NGO's for the European Innovation Partnership activity that the board where I work develop on behalf of the Campania Region.

The management of NGO's has basically the same level of complexity and professionalism required by other organizations (public or private). The NGO’s differs from other organizations as they requires adequate knowledge of the legal and fund raising mechanisms that are typical of NGO's, in addition, the management of staff, largely made up of volunteers, requires policies much more flexible and different from organizations that work exclusively with employees.

One feature that makes the management of NGO's different from other organizations is the independence from government control and great flexibility in pursuing its institutional purposes, you surely do not have in other organizations.

I feel, like any other organization , NGOs also handle all the organizational resources. Hence the basic principles of management are also applicable to NGOs. However, NGOs are not corporate and do not have organization structure , that fixes authority-responsibility relationship. NGO members work voluntarily and independently on the principle of affiliation and are flexible. NGOs are people's initiative for the purpose of social service for empowering society and building social capital. Unlike corporate, NGOs work in competition free environment. But like corporate NGOs have vision, mission and objective. Application of concept of management is essential for accountability and good governance. Since there are many cases of reported mismanagement, it is essential to carryout in-depth study of management of NGOs.

Thanks Jaharkanti - what you say is true for some kinds of voluntaristic NGOs, but there are also more professionalised forms of NGO out there too in which staff work for salaries (like BRAC in Bangladesh, or Oxfam in India or UK). So one challenge is to find out how do these types of organizations maintain the flexibility that you correctly say is needed?

Thanks Adelaide - your point about the importance of additional skills in fundraising knowledge is well taken. This is an added layer of complexity. Many NGOs also have a combination of paid staff and volunteers, making this a more complicated issue for human resource management as well.

We all seem to agree about the high level of complexity of NGO management!

David, management of NGO's is independent from government control (other organizations are strongly influenced by government control). However, one must consider that NGO's in pursuing their institutional purposes also have a significant political role

From my experience, the problem is that people working in NGOs often do not think that they need to be managed according to basic management principals. One NGO manager said to me that the difference between "you and me" is that "we (NGO types) look for money to enable us to do good things, while you (business types) look for things to do that will enable you to make money". Sadly her NGO was in the red and declining fast due, quite simply, to poor strategic management. She was so busy "doing good things" that she was compromising her ability to do them. Surely the first order of business for and NGO (like any other organisation) is to be in business - to survive and sustain itself: and that requires the application of sound business principles. That said, of course the details of managing and NGO would be different, just as the management of a government department is different to the management of an church; and just as managing a mine is different to managing a candy store.

Thanks Hans-Peter - I agree that this is a problem in many NGOs, who sometimes feel basic nuts and bolts management is somehow not right for them. Tom Dichter argued many years ago something similar in his 'plain or fancy' article - and while some NGOs seem to have changed and become more professional in this regard, many others haven't.

Dear Adelaide , I think the NGOs aren't always independent from government control . In some countries , where the political system is autocratic and dictatorial,specially in the third world countries, NGOs are strongly influenced by government control for security reasons. It's in reality, but theoretically and logically NGOs need to be independent from government control. The reality isn't always logical.

It's all a question of organizational culture. In order to be successful, whether it is private, ngo, government, jjv, whatever, the organization should have such a culture thati is oriented and in line with goals and mission. In small family craft for exam. The driver and creator of culture is a leader in the family, they do not need to know management principles or study management if a leader has vision and energy to reach all the objectives

The essential difference between usual corporates and NGOs is that while the former generally fall into ‘human serving’ category, NGOs are typically ‘human processing’ in nature. The beneficiaries become invariably ‘internal stake holders’. Though it may be argued that the universality notion of management would make management approaches, principles and practices equally applicable to all forms of organisations, the levels of engagement expected of NGO functionaries call for a qualitatively different mix of Strategies, Work planning and scheduling, HR practices, and a whole host of other administrative inputs. Engagement is the state in which individuals are emotionally and intellectually committed to the organisation or group, as depicted by three primary behaviors: 1. Say – wherein the functionary consistently speaks positively about the organisation to coworkers and refers to potential employees and beneficiaries or customers; 2. Stay – that the functionary has an intense desire to be a member of the organisation, despite opportunities to work elsewhere; and, 3. Strive – so that the functionary/employee exerts extra effort and exhibits behaviours that contribute to greater success”. The NGO management should take care in implementing appropriate decisions and practices to serve the requirements of different groups of stakeholders for invoking positive behaviours.

Dear Frederik, thanks for getting in touch. I've read some of your work and I'm very impressed. Congratulations on the thesis defence! And let's keep in touch.

In a NGO the added value comes mostly from employees ‘activity and commitment, etc. Thus, what it is absolutely determinant is to identify the type of motivation of employees ( how much intrinsic, how much extrinsic, which kind of intrinsic and of extrinsic, etc) Once the manager knows this structure he will be able to find the write management style and implement the adequate strategies in order to have the employees always motivated. This is the same procedure for a for-profit organization - but what change for NGO is that they attract ( theoretically) people more intrinsically motivated, extrinsic motivation is present but it is lower ( theoretically). Thus the incentives schemes proposed will be completely different , and so the management style, favoring more self-determination in a ONG, and more extrinsic motivation in a for-profit organization, but both kinds of motivation are always present and has to be considered in management strategies

I agree partially with Nicoleta. There are people who are motivated by extrinsic factor in international NGOs such as UN and affiliated organisations. When we look at the local level NGOs, it is mostly intrinsic person who serve longer durations. In such organisations the motivating the members of the staff are not with money but with recognitions and networking.

Interesting, I notice similarities with the literature dealing with the motivations of software developers who engage in an Open Source Software project

Yes, Nicoleta, Adelade and Srinivisan - I think this line of reasoning on types of commitment is a very useful one. However, like many issues related to NGO it is also very context specific. In some countries, a job in an NGO is simply a professional career option like many others, while a job in some areas of government or business may also carry with it strong extrinsic motivations. Organization specific too even in the same country context - a big difference between a local professionalised formalised hierchical NGO like BRAC in Bangladesh, and a small local NGO.

ps - important to recognise that the UN is not an 'international NGO' though. It is an inter-governmental organization.

Thank you all for your reaction and I take advantage on this path to make a remark, moslty for Srinivasan.

There are 2 theoretical perpectives in motivational theories: 1) the first one based on self-determination theory considers motivation as being unidimensional - statistically this situation is refected by a simplex structure obtained through correlations betweeen

the items capturing differents types of motivation, intrinsic and extristrisc - for this theoretical approach these 2 types of motivation cannot coexist, are not additive, extrinsic motivation is crowding-out intrinsic motivation. 2) the second one is based more on Vroom's theory of work motivation ( 1964), developped by Lawer and Porter (1968) and defend the idea of a bi-dimensional motivation, statisticaly these dimensions are orthogonal and additive, concretely this implies that people can be in the same time high intrinsically motivated ad high extrinsically motivated, there is no crowding-out effec, but crowding -in effect. Empirically,the situation is mitigated, both theoretical approaches found limited support and or not support at all. As motivation is a complex phenomenon depending on several and different factors, more empirical research is necessary to understand its determinants and their impacts in specific work contexts. Anyway, what is for sure,is that both types of motivations are always present, whether are their weight and their way to combine with each other. Recognition is also a form of extrinsic reward and is determinant in motivation. Thank you all, Nico

Dear David, I think we were writting answers in the same time:)), and I posted mine before reading your last one, I fully agree that motivation is, first of all ,context dependent and that's way each sector of activity has to develeop specific scales able to capture motivation, the only thing which seems to me to be constant is to always consider both types of motivations with their possible intermediary-types and their multilpe combinations.

Thank you, Nico

Thanks David for correcting me. What I meant was the employees recruited for UN jobs in NGOs for a fixed tenure.

Here, I have another interesting observation. The state in which I stay, Kerala in India, runs number of Organisations. The Government run Organisations similar to the functions of NGOs. It may look confusing. For instance there are missions such as Information Technology Mission, Information Kerala Mission, Kudambasree(SHG) and so on. All of them are registered under Societies Act(the Act used for registering NGOs in India) and headed by Government Officials(IAS officers- Bureaucrats). I do not understand how one can classify them. Are they NGOs or Government organisations. For the purpose of getting funds from different agencies they send proposals as societies.

I think are government organizations. This phenomenon is very common. In UK, we have what are called quasi-nongovernmental organisations (QUANGOs) which are viewed suspiciously by the public as agencies created when the government is under pressure to be seen to be doing something about a problem. Also, in many countries the term GONGO (government organised NGO) is used to describe the organisations you observe in Kerala. A true NGO may be funded by government, but it cannot be established or managed by government. It needs to be independent.

Regardless, if the Organisation, open for discussion is an CSO/NGO or profit making company. They should all be practicing good Governance, through law, policy and ethics.

INGO's are greatly challenged by capacity of skills, particularly those that have established in a conflict or post conflict International environment, the majority are good people trying to address critical needs in their communities, particularly where Government has disintegrated, in transition, or weak.

Trying to find the balance of independence, whilst still needing International donor or Government funding, is not easy. It is up to all of us to recognize building capacity, particularly in fragile states, is challenging at best, most CSO/INGO's are doing amazing work in their own countries, with little reward, often limited education and an environment of social trauma.

NGOs are also required to be registered with in the governmental framework. Their operations are guided by the governmental policies and programs. While the fund management is more related with the donor organizations; the activities they do are in line with the government priorities. NGOs could be involved in poverty alleviation, good governance, women empowerment and mostly in social development activities. the commitment, spirit and synergy required for NGOs management is definitely different than managing a government organization, which is more bureaucratic and hierarchical in nature. NGOs would require more a teamwork, motivational and capacity development work.

Dear all,

What an interesting topic this is. I find it very informative as I have a student who just started to write her thesis on HRM practices in NGOs. If you all could recommend literature which we should read and refer to, I would be truly appreciative. I will share the progress and findings when the study is completed. thanks.

Dear all,

What an interesting topic this is. I find it very informative as I have a student who just started to write her thesis on HRM practices in NGOs. If you all could recommend literature which we should read and refer to, I would be truly appreciative. I will share the progress and findings when the study is completed. thanks.

An interesting paper is: J. Rothschild-Whitt, "The collectivist organization: An alternative to rational-bureaucratic models," American Sociological Review, vol. 44, pp. 509-527, 1979.

NGOs are mission driven organizations. They are of competing to mobilise the funds to provide good services to the community. But, if we consider private organizations their objective is completely profit oriented. In this sense, The NGOs objective is different from other types of organizations. Therfore, NGOs makes srategies diffeerent from the others since their main focus on community development and self sustainability. Therefore, some cases, its management might differ from others.

The paper of Rothschild-Whitt that I mentioned before is interesting because it discusses the objectives and motivations of the individuals in NGO's. People's inclination to contribute becomes more and more relevant as working life is liberated and people can choose where they work.

Reading the previous answers to this question, I feel the most fundamental points are missing so far:

1) NGOs are part of a fiercely competitive 'donation collection' market, which requires classic strategic management like any other private business. BUT, the recipients of the NGO services are not the paying (!) customers. There is, therefore, no financial feedback to determine if the organization does a good job. Pretty much all management tools for private companies ultimately rely on financial success as an indicator for good management. The lack of reciprocity between performance and revenue means that a transfer of most established management tools is riddled with problems - problems most NGOs I work(ed) with are blissfully unaware of.

2) To compensate for the above, one can say that NGOS typically feature objectives aiming to serve the public good, thus their strategy setting might be done using tools closer to public policy making. BUT development NGOs typically pursue such objective is foreign countries. In a variation of the above argument, political feedback mechanisms between politicians and constituents are absent. Doing a bad job does not lead to personal consequences for the mandate holders. NGO objectives might even openly contradict public policies (or the public good) in the in target areas. This means that a transfer of instruments developed for good governance and public policy making is difficult and, again, riddled with problems.

Management of a development NGO is identical to a private company if the only goal it has is maximizing donation turnover. But if you care about achieving development objectives while managing an NGO - I am still searching for a book getting the full complexity of the problem and providing good answers. (My own dabbling in the issue unfortunately never got beyond the conceptual stage).

Much of the "feedback" NGO's provide to donors, recipients of service and communities, comes in the form of their activity reporting. "Was the service quality and episodes of service in line with their agreement with donors and reflected in their organizational work-plan"

Lack of sufficient, timely and accurate financial reporting, often accompanies insufficient explanation and support from some donors.

Accountability of NGO's needs to be a partnership with donors. One can not expect great increased capacity in Governance of NGO's, if donors have unrealistic technical reporting and do not include advice, mentoring and training to accompany their grants.

There will always be some, in all sectors, who have their own agenda, however, the vast majority of NGO's I have had the privilege to accompany over more than 25 years, are accountable and welcome, indeed encourage, Governance support to increase their financial, management, activity and M&E capacity.

Chris, of course feedback to donors is provided in form of reporting. But this is the core of the problem I mentioned: NGOs are accountable to the money-providers, not to the service recipient. Financial feedback, in the form of donations/grants, reflects the satisfaction of the money givers, not the satisfaction of service recipients.

In management terms, this makes "reporting" the main product of an NGO. This is what they "sell". If you try to draw a (Porter) market force diagram for a development NGO, the people this organization claims to serve have to be seen as suppliers, not customers - their need and willingness to be served is one main ingredient to the sell-able product, the report. The financial feedback is, therefore, solely a measure of the NGOs ability to report.

Today, many donors require some form of stakeholder feedback as part of reporting. This is meant to circumvent the problem. But in reality, that adds a crazy twist to the above: Stakeholders are usually not paid for evaluations and "participatory approaches" to NGO and government projects. They provide time and brainpower for free. In management terms, NGOs get one valuable production factor - stories to report - for free (good). In economic terms, it creates negative external effects (bad).

HHHHHHM....

Perhaps I have had the pleasure of working with, in the main, exceptional NGO's. As someone who has been engaged in grant application assessment for many years, I would not recommend support to an NGO from a donor or Government, where the trade off was the NGO was not able to retain its independence.

An NGO "satisfaction" goal, with regard the donor, is to undertake activities reflected in the agreement and work plan. To use funds as per the agreement and to monitor the activities and financial actions and provide accurate timely reporting to demonstrate this.

On the other hand, a well governed NGO with adequate support will engage with service recipients and communities at every stage of the project cycle, ensuring the project they undertake is wanted and needed by the community, the project stays on track, identifies potential risks early and reports against agreed outcomes and objectives.

NGO's should not be alone in undertaking stakeholder feedback, donors need to undertake their own independent stakeholder feed back and where NGO projects are undertaken in countries with "legitimate governments" I would say donor policy dictates to only fund projects that DO NOT contradict public policy or public good.

David, thank you for starting this very intersting thread, and I'm grateful to everyone who's commented in it for their insightful comments. Norizan, you might be interested in an article I wrote a while back: Hull, C. E., & Lio, B. H. (2006). Innovation in non-profit and for-profit organizations: Visionary, strategic, and financial considerations. Journal of Change Management, 6(1), 53-65. I am now preparing a response and update based on subsequent empirical research, so any feedback you have on the original would be very welcome.

Several interesting ideas were cited by some researchers. I would likt just to add that the purpose of an NGO is essentially different from the purpose of a company. Or so, to the extent that the income is not a measure of performance, NGO need people who can adapt to your purposes, shaping an organization also focused on them.

Yes; How ever to answer this we have to make few assumptions. those assumptions include NGO is not maximizing profit but maximizing benefits to stakeholders of the NGO. Other organizations may either maximize profits (business organizations) or maximize intended output (governmental organizations). Event though management principles do not vary with the types of organization, implementation of those principle could vary with the objectives of NGO.

David

NGOs play political role keeping their own agenda whereas they really do not asses the needs of that developing country particularly if I take a case of Pakistan, Investment in environmental control is useless when we are rank 162nd country in the releases CO2, as compared to need of drinking water.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this interesting and wide ranging discussion - let's keep it going! My new book NGOs, Management and Development is now out, so I'd welcome any comments, critiques, reviews etc ... all the best, David

Congrats David, I look forward to reading your latest book.

Dear David Lewis

These types of organizations in different countries have the same condition. Rules and regulations of this organization is the same in all countries. The name of the NGO's and other organizations such conditions suggests that public managers should behave according to local conditions. I think these organizations should develop a strategic analysis done by Weber formulated strategies worked. Of course it depends on what the next development will be considered. Than the organization (number of employees), the extent of activity and ....

Dear David:

Your question has many aspects. I will talk about two that are important for the discution according to me. First thing, management IS a discipline that can be used in any organization. That is so because the way to deal with an organization, no matter its origin, is the same. At least so says Fayol who is the founder of the discipline. His experience was as manager of a comercial mining company.

However ONGs have a different kind of clients, that makes the people who work in them worry about social matters and not economic ones. As a consecuence, it´s difficult to make a ONG be efficient and care about their ressouces because their employees follow a different mental "pattern" than comercial organizations.

That I would say is the main difference.

Gustavo Concari

There are about 20 lakh non-government organisations(NGO) are functioning in every nook and corner of India.Some NGOs are doing good job, taking up serious issues such as protection of human rights and animal rights,environmental protection,women rights etc.But the few good ones gets heavily out numbered by the bulk which do not do good job. It is necessary to do proper tracking is done in the way tax payer money, and also funds given by various organisation from India And abroad,are used or misused.Now it is important to total revamp of the sector.

There are millions of NGOs around the world and they do vary in size, goals, administrative systems and many other features. Painting the all is the same brush is not fair. However, when it comes to good management I believe that the same principles apply to all organizations. Of course some NGOs do have large numbers of volunteers and those have their own principles of management.

Managing a development NGO is quite different from managing other types of organizations.

1) All non-profits have problems with strategic planning (deciding main action lines) and how they are going to fulfill their mission). This happens because they have different stakeholders and "owners" with different needs and interests. For profit organizations do not have this problem because they know that they should seek profit and-whenever possible-growth. So a huge portions of NGO managers/ leaders time is devoted to participatory decision-making and negotiations.

2) Another problem that NGOs have is how to measure progress, because many indicators are qualitative and/or subject to interpretation and negotiation. And development NGOs have a harder time on this one because "development" is difficult to measure and subject to cultural bias. Also, development efforts are strongly affected by both local/regional politics and policies, and by trends on a bigger scale (such as increasing/ decreasing food prices, fads, donors policies, etc.) and it is difficult to establish attribution (that is, to link and effect or result to a particular NGO action or project).

3) NGO management implies managing diversity of different types, and developing policies to deal with this diversity in a way that different actors and stakeholders may find acceptable and appropriate to fulfill the organizational mission.

4) Development NGOs are created to solve complex social problems. In order to do this they need to develop ways to deal with complexity. And the first step is "seeing" and appreciating complexity by developing a complex system mindset.

I found this book to be quite enlightening for NPO,NGO.

Managing Nonprofits by Peter F, Drucker

The groundbreaking and premier work on nonprofit organizations

The nonprofit sector is growing rapidly, creating a major need for expert advice on how to manage these organizations effectively. Management legend Peter Drucker provides excellent examples and explanations of mission, leadership, resources, marketing, goals, and much more. Interviews with nine experts also address key issues in this booming sector.

I think there have been some very interesting responses to this question in terms of views, experiences and opinions, but it still seems there is very little research out there that moves the debate forward.

Managing NGO needs to have different parameters, especially in my country Nepal, which is a developing country, NGOs are blamed for not producing output with maximum input, and a blame is put on donor country that, more than 50% of the resources that is given to a nation for development is taken back in terms of operational overhead; what I am coming to is NGOs are a different entity than regular business, thus the management treatment it should receive should be different - it accountability parameters should be different, and the kind of planning, organising, motivating and controlling should be different as well!

Concerning microfinance, the question about how efficient NGOs are is very important. There are several papers by Gutierrez Nieto, Mar Molinero and Serrano Cinca. One you can look at is: "Social Efficiency in Microfinance Institutions", from the authors cited, year 2006.

Regards

Gustavo Concari 

Have you looked at the book by Henry Hansman - "The Ownership of Enterprise"? The author has some good insights into all forms of ownership from Corporate to not-for-profit organisations - this overlaps with your NGO research request and it is a good foundation to start with.

My answer to this question is yes, it's different. Why? The goals are different, the stakeholders also. Motivation of staff, company structure and hierarchy is not the same as in normal business organisation.

There are differences but also similarity. P. Drucker argues that most of management innovation in 90's came from the NGO sector.

Thanks Spartak. Could you tell me where Drucker has said this?

Dear David, In the Drucker''s book Managing for the future thare are two papers about NGOs. From them you can extract this idea.

NGOs are no longer non-profit organisations. Gone are the days of volunteerism. Many NGOs have become "corporate NGOs"  and this is true for many NGOs in Bangladesh. Many NGOs are currently managed following the principles of corporate management which has become very hierarchical and bureaucratic though NGOs claim that they believe in bottom up approach. 

NGOs are not any homogeneous  rather heterogeneous entity having different mission, vision and objectives requiring context specific management strategy. However, let me say that we can definitely discern some common features from the NGO management strategy which I would argue "commonality within diversity". My friend David Lewis has made significant contribution  and written a lot on these and other related issues. Therefore some of us may even go back and look regarding what he has written in this regard.

In the end let me say that Bangladesh has the largest, vibrant and most innovative NGO sector in the world. The world has a lot to learn from Bangladesh. This is inspite of the fact that NGOs in Bangladesh are not above criticism. David knows about this I guess..

I think it is true that in many contexts NGOs, as my friend and colleague Nurul Alam has mentioned, organizations have become over-professionalized, 'for profit' in some sense, and corporate.

Maybe someone should do a study that compares these corporate and non-corporate NGOs in terms of management style and organization and motivation -  to see whether and how this factor has positive or negative implications, for their work, their sustainability, their identity, their values and their relationships?

NGOs manage the organization with scare resources that's why its vision, mission, culture, values etc will be different from other organizations. Thus, organization cannot sustain without any income of the organization, therefore these organizations turned into professionalization. Now-a-days the organizations move pillar to post to avail funding for various projects, as a result of this the Ngos took attempt of  running in this mode.

Thanks David for your question.

To answer the question, we need to define first what is a development NGO & what are other types of NGO’s.  And within the context of development, we probably need to be more specific about what type of development NGO we are referring to?

In the development arena, I have come across different type of development NGO’s, such as political development, cultural development, environmental and others. I have also seen, in my country Yemen, a highly professional NGO which concerned with education & health focused on women & children.

I firmly believe within the context of development NGO’s, different types will necessarily require different skills and different styles of management.

good greeting:Non-governmental organizations can be successful in countries where government organizations are witnessing. For example, in Iraq, we have a problem with the work of government organizations, but they have an impact on the state budget, while small non-governmental organizations have created very large and useful jobs. I think this is a well-established answer

Development NGOs are organizations that must be accountable for the funding that they receive. Donors usually impose/request some sort of Results-Based Management (or Management for Results) and Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation for development projects. This usually implies using methods such as Outcome Mapping, Most Significant Change (MSC), Logframes, Theory of Change, Collective Impact, etc.