Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed June 4, 2007). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 184-197).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of British Columbia, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 154-170). Also available online (PDF file) by a subscription to the set or by purchasing the individual file.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of British Columbia, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 154-170).

This is an empirical study of a voluntary association with a view to interrogate the theories of civil society and participation and their practice. These theories came to dominate debate on African politics and democratisation following disappointment with structural approaches to development and democracy. Disenchantment with the state whose role was emphasised by the structural approach led analysts and technocrats to turn their attention to human agency; hence the salience of the idea of popular participation in the public domain, and preoccupation with the idea of strengthening civil society. This trend gained momentum after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and demise of the communist block, and was accompanied by anti-statist sentiments on a global scale. Civil society organisations are seen as schools for democracy and agents of democratic consolidation, and are accordingly expected to perform two major tasks, namely instilling and disseminating a democratic political culture in and among participants and society at large, and promoting good governance. The aim therefore is to take advantage of the supposed intrinsic and utilitarian benefits of participation. As evident in a number of policy documents and legislation, the incumbent South African government embraces the idea of participatory democracy. However, not all analysts share this confidence in the capacity of civil society to perform these tasks. For some analysts public participation does not always have positive intrinsic benefits. Public participation may instead lead to a corrupted political culture deriving from the participants' attempts to survive in a public sphere characterised by manipulation and subtle political control, and it is civil society organisations lacking in organisational strength that are particularly vulnerable. The study revealed that unity between practice and theories of participation and civil society is a complex matter fraught with a number of ambiguities and contradictions. It revealed that though participation in the voluntary association in question does have educative benefits, those benefits do not extend to all the participants. In addition, the quality of that education is contingent upon a number of factors, some internal, others external. The internal and external factors reinforce one another. The internal factors pertain to the organisational dynamics of the voluntary association itself, and the external factors to the nature of the relationship between the voluntary association concerned and public authorities and other civil society organisations. / KMBT_363 / Adobe Acrobat 9.54 Paper Capture Plug-in

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The idea that the development of people's capabilities lies at the heart of all community and social development has gained support internationally over the past decades. This reflects a significant shift in community and society development thinking, addressing the broad spectrum of social upliftment, human rights and poverty alleviation needs that gained ground during the different historic economic phases of the past two centuries. Historically development thinking progressed from a centralised, structured and systemic approach as, for example, espoused by Adam Smith and Karl Marx, to Maynard Keynes’s more people-centred approach, and more specifically the Capability Approach advanced by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. In the world of liberal democratic capitalism, the mainstream view of development holds that civil society is a key role player in both deepening democracy and enhancing forms of development through various programmes and practices. In turn, the professionalised Non-Governmental Organisations sector, as opposed to more localised community-based organisations or social movements, tends to receive most donor funding to deliver high impact interventions. In sum, the development of society’s capabilities relies significantly on NGOs to deliver capability enhancing services to the needy in society. A key consideration in development debates has been how to efficiently operationalise the development of capability enhancing activities based in the context of the Capability Approach, the focus of my study. This study recognises that NGOs are major delivery agents of development work, both in South Africa and internationally. Their operations focus on delivering quality impact on their beneficiary communities, and on raising funds to sustain their operations. The current methods to assess the impact of NGO operations, both by NGOs and their donors, primarily address past performance of the organisation in delivering external programmes as measured against the objectives stated in NGO concept and roll-out proposal documents. These assessments are customised for every NGO, making it impossible to standardise assessments for comparative and rating purposes and focus on external delivery. When problems are uncovered, this approach results in proposing corrective recommendations during or after completion of a funding round. This study argues that a gap exists in techniques to assess NGO internal performance to improve external delivery before and during NGO operations. Furthermore, it will contribute to assessing the merits of NGOs' internal capacity to deliver on the promises made in funding proposals - before and during NGO operations. In practice the assessment of an NGO for funding purposes currently consists of consideration of a project proposal in the form of a concept and roll-out document of what the organisation intends to achieve, accompanied by historic record data. The assessment of project roll-out focuses on the outputs claimed in the proposal document without paying too much attention to the NGOs internal organisational culture and capacity which is the key to successful external service delivery. In addressing this two part gap of incomplete assessment techniques and overlooked key internal indicators, the study demonstrates, via a series of ten case-studies, that a direct causal relationship exists between the internal organisational capabilities of an NGO, including the motivation, skills and culture of its staff, and its delivery on its external programmes. In essence, an organisation’s internal capabilities will impact directly on the organisation’s ability to deliver externally on its programmes. In spite of this, no standardised organisational capability assessment is used by NGOs or grantmakers, and to date no set of instruments exists to measure the internal capabilities of NGOs. The study sets out to address this gap by offering a methodology for the systemic assessment of internal NGO capabilities, and includes its operationalisation in a toolkit of instruments to measure these capabilities. The instruments presented enable the quantifying of qualitative staff motivational data to develop comparable baseline results between NGOs assessed, thereby presenting qualitative data in a quantitative form that enables a comparison between NGOs’ performances. This capacity addresses a significant shortcoming in the assessment of NGO performance based on purely qualitative assessment that is the current norm, not enabling a measurement against a standardised baseline for NGO performance. In contrast the validity and reliability of the proposed instruments are demonstrated through its application to ten real-world case studies drawn from the SEEDS Consortium. The system proposed in this study is based on Nel and Beudeker's commercial change management and organisational performance improvement model. Nel developed his system over a period of some twenty years whilst working for the then Arthur Andersen Consulting and subsequently as a private change management consultant focusing on the development of high performance organisations, and it has been administered in more than 3000 companies. This model uses key performance indicators, using quantitative methods to develop a standardised internal capability profile for a business based on qualitative data. This study expands on and makes innovative changes in developing new NGO specific metrics to substantially refine Nel's model and thus provides an instrument for measuring the capability profile of NGOs. The modifications were necessitated as Nel's model was designed for commercial change management applications presupposing that all governance considerations are in place and that the business is a running medium or large concern. Nel's proven commercial change management system does not make provision for NGO specific criteria that are critical indicators for both internal NGO performance assessment and for grant-maker capability assessments. The areas added to the instrument relate to internal NGO specific considerations such as internal governance, management, monitoring and evaluation processes that are standard and legislated compliance issues in commercial concerns. This goes beyond the requirements for a substantial commercial concern to include key internal organisation indicators that reflect the opinion of the staff, the people who deliver on the NGO's objectives. As staff are the people who directly impact on the NGO's output, the system does not only rely on the opinion of the CEO of the NGO or the fundraising staff, i.e. the "promise-makers", alone. In order to assess the value of the proposed method, and more specifically the internal capability toolkit, the measuring instruments were administered to the CEOs and staff of ten NGOs/NGO equivalent projects at universities. The responses were quantified and confirmed that in at least ten of these cases, there is a 95% correlation between internal organisational capability and external performance output, both positive and negative. The results also enabled the creation of a baseline internal capability profile for NGOs. Ten international grant-makers from OECD embassies were also interviewed on current methods of assessing funding applications, indicating a 62% confidence level in current systems and an 84% confidence level in the proposed internal organisational capability assessment method. This serves as an indicator of external delivery on promises and to guide internal change interventions to optimise output. This approach reflects the potential value of a shift in assessment thinking beyond a systems approach towards a people-centred approach that focusses on the measurement and development of the organisation and its staff's internal capabilities to meet and exceed its external delivery objectives. My research confirms that a focus on NGO internal organisational capabilities directly reflects the capability levels of staff to deliver externally. The output is a new, standardised, replicable and defendable methodology and toolkit of instruments for assessing an NGO’s current and future operational performance. The toolkit should also provide for the objective comparison of the performance of NGOs and thus be of great use for future grant-maker decision-making. It will also complement existing assessment techniques by focusing on the internal people motivation and capability issues of an NGO. Furthermore, the study provides a method to support organisational self-improvement efforts and grant-making efficiency that can be used in pre-project and during project capability assessment. This goes beyond the more prevalent post-project systemic and summative evaluation methods. In conclusion, the proposed method and toolkit can make a significant contribution to the efficiency of NGOs as the key role-players in enabling the delivery of capability development of communities and societies. All the elements described collectively point to a practical way to operationalise the Capability Approach, an aspect criticised as a weakness in Amartya Sen's work.

Thesis (MDF)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Local non-governmental organisations play an important role in the development processes of Zimbabwe. However, they face an uncertain future, as they depend on volatile external donor funding which leaves them financially unsustainable. This research sought to determine whether local non-governmental organisations in Zimbabwe were sustainable, and to analyse the main factors that influenced their financial sustainability. Through a mixed methods research design including literature review, secondary data analysis and a survey using a structured questionnaire, this research revealed that local non-governmental organisations in Zimbabwe were financially unsustainable. A regression analysis was employed to determine the relationships between the different factors and financial sustainability. The research focused on four factors of financial sustainability of local non-governmental organisations: sound financial management practices, income diversification, own income generation, and good donor relationship management practices. Data used for the research was from 2009 to 2013. The survey of 52 local non-governmental organisations spread throughout Zimbabwe provided primary data for the research. The research confirmed findings of others that local non-governmental organisations in Zimbabwe were not financially sustainable and depended on external donor funds. The research revealed that most local non-governmental organisations were funded entirely by external donors, had no reserve funds, were not generating own income, and depended on average on about three donors. This meant that if the external donors pulled out these organisations would cease operations. The research revealed that on average donor dependency ratios for Zimbabwean non-governmental organisations were above 93 percent, while survival ratios were very low with 22 days being the maximum. These results meant that if external donors completely pulled out their funding, local non-governmental organisations would operate for at most 22 days before closing down. The research also revealed that most local non-governmental organisations in Zimbabwe were not leveraging their assets to generate income, and most were not engaged in own income generating activities while their funding sources were not diversified enough to be regarded sustainable. The government of Zimbabwe was not funding local non-governmental organisations and local donors were scant. The regression analysis ascertained that sound financial management practices had the largest influence on financial sustainability of local non-governmental organisations in Zimbabwe, followed by income diversification, then own income generation and good donor relationship management. The research recommends that international donors should provide local non-governmental organisations with some unrestricted income to support start-up of social entrepreneurship activities and small businesses to ensure the financial sustainability of the programmes they fund. The government of Zimbabwe must view local non-governmental organisations as partners that complement its work and are therefore deserving of government funding. Non-governmental organisations need to change their mind-set, start social entrepreneurship and small business activities, and refrain from just seeing external donors as their main source of funding. Networks of non-governmental organisations must fundraise to train and enhance the capacity of their member organisations in running social enterprises and small businesses, and hire staff with expertise in running profit-making activities to complement their non-profit work.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

This dissertation examines the efforts of Pacific internationalists in the years during and after World War II to forge private intellectual connections between the West and Asia. One of the most prominent groups in this movement was the Institute of Pacific Relations (1925-61), an international non-governmental organization that nurtured a trans-Pacific community of scholars, businessmen and diplomats through research projects and international conferences. In evaluating the work of these internationalists during the postwar period, this dissertation challenges conventional Cold War historiography that has marginalized such cooperative efforts during these years. Previous scholarship concerning the Institute of Pacific Relations has noted the way in which the organization fell victim to anti-communist politics in the United States, yet no studies have examined the records of its postwar conferences, which reveal an active international agenda well into the 1950s. The support of Asian members for such trans-Pacific ties, moreover, provides a counter-narrative to the story of revolutionary nationalism and third-world solidarity among emerging Asian and African countries during this period. The Institute of Pacific Relations acted as a valuable asset in the struggle for the “mind of Asia,” this dissertation argues, largely because its leadership did not conform to the prevailing Cold War mindset. As a private international organization, the IPR provided a venue for unofficial dialogue among private elites who at once confronted and transcended the geopolitical restrictions of their time. In maintaining private East-West partnerships through such turbulent years, these Pacific internationalists set the stage for regional cooperative ventures to flourish later in the twentieth century. / text

In the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, many indigenous communities further their struggles for greater political and cultural autonomy by working with transnational non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Communication technology (what I call comtech) is increasingly vital to these intersecting socio-spatial relations of activism and advocacy. In this dissertation, I examine how comtech offer indigenous individuals and organizations with the means for visualizing their political-cultural agendas. Approaching the access and use of comtech, especially video technologies, as a partial and situated technoscience, I inquire into how and why these activities reconfigure the production and evaluation of authoritative knowledge about indigenous peoples, places, and practices. More specifically, I undertook an organizational ethnography of a small intermediary NGO comprised of individuals who self-identify as indigenous and others who do not, Ojo de Agua Comunicacin Indgena, which endeavors to place communication technologies (especially video equipment) at the disposal of indigenous communities. Through participation-observation and interviews, I explored this groups everyday strategies of networking in the name of assisting indigenous actors access and appropriation of visual technologies. I also pursued interpretive analyses of video-mediated articulations of indigenous knowledge and identity that were enabled by Ojo de Agua. My research indicates that Ojo de Agua has selectively built upon the ambitions and the socio-spatial connections of a government program that emerged from the initiatives of academic advocates, who sought to open new spaces of participation for indigenous peoples. Members of Ojo de Agua have, however, found their goal of service somewhat stymied by a situation that positions them within a flexible labor force of knowledge workers. Their livelihoods as media makers did not allow them (the time or money) to pursue as much altruism and advocacy as they would have liked. Nonetheless, Ojo de Aguas corpus of videos established the group as an alternative and yet authoritative source of visual knowledge of indigenous peoples, places, and practices. This relocation of advocacy is symptomatic of the creative destruction fueled by the neo-liberal economic policies that, for the last thirty years, have been reconfiguring spaces of cooperation and conflict in Latin America.

Abstract Title: Nonprofit transparency in practic. A study concerning how transperancy is motivated in fundrasing organisations. Author: Julia Heiming & Alexandra Strand Tutor: Josef Pallas Purpose: The purpose with this thesis was to examine whether transparency exists and how it appears in nonprofit organizations, first and foremost in their fundraising. Moreover, the investigation display a more thoroughly and complex image of transparency compared to the external, which is more requested nowadays. The key questions to be answered are; How does nonprofit organizations consider themselves to be transparent?, What sort of transparency exists within the participating nonprofit organizations?, Does the collaborators have an insight in the operation managers’ decisions?, Do the operation managers have an insight in the work of their employees’, concerning their collection processes?, Does the collection organizations have an oversee concerning their branch and what is said about them?, Does external stakeholders have an opportunity to get insight in the organizations’ collecting processes? Method/Material: The results are based on a qualitative study built on nine different semi structured interviews with three nonprofit organizations. The interviews are based on a model made by Esaiasson, Gilljam, Oscarsson and Wängnerud which later on was analyzed with Heald’s four different types of transparency. Main results: The primary result of the survey proved that all the four different types of transparency more or less exist within the participating organizations. Transparency inwards is the type that the organizations proved to focus on the most. However, the organizations did also focus on the remaining three types. In account of this survey a broader picture of transparency has been disclosed, not only the public view has been displayed. As a nonprofit organization one should be aware of all four different varieties of transparency when openness towards different types engender trust towards the nonprofit organizations, which in return can generate donations. Number of pages: 65 Course: Media and Communication studies C University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University Period: Fall 2014 Keywords: Transparency, Nonprofit sector, Nonprofit organizations, Non-Governmental Organizations, Collection processes.