NGO Forum

From 1993 to 2012, 39 of the world’s 153 low and middle-income countries enacted restrictive laws on foreign funding to civil society organizations, both domestic and international. In some cases, these governments banned overseas funding for local actors outright, while in other instances, they imposed new rules restricting which locally-operating NGOs could receive aid, and for what purpose.

Both activists and experts have been sounding the alarm about efforts to roll back civil society. New research, recently published in the journal World Development, sheds light on the crackdown’s triggers and possible remedies. Using original data on the new laws, our statistical analysis suggests that higher levels of foreign aid inflows are associated with higher chance of legal crackdowns. Moreover, the risk of a crackdown increases when the country faces nationally competitive elections.

The skills and commitment of humanitarian aid workers would be useless if they were unable to deliver services directly to the neediest places. That’s why vehicle management is so important to the humanitarian sector. Indeed, it’s estimated that the global humanitarian fleet exceeds 100,000 vehicles, representing an annual spend of approximately $1 billion, the sector’s second-largest expense (after personnel).

Investments of this magnitude would appear to demand dedicated, systematic and informed oversight. However, over nearly a decade of working closely with international humanitarian organisations under the aegis of the INSEAD Humanitarian Research Group (HRG), we saw that unlike for-profit companies, these organisations have slim to no precedent for viewing fleet management as a standalone concern. Most devote few specific resources to it, over and above the hundreds of other logistics-related issues commonly delegated to staffers in the field.

by Kimberlee Morrison

The internet, and social media in particular, has powerful tool for raising awareness for social causes and charity events. Non-government organizations (NGOs) have also adapted to the digital age and use technology to communicate with supporters and donors.

However, according to a report from nonprofits Tech For Good and Public Interest Registry, there is a gap between the use of internet and social platforms by NGOs in Western nations and those in developing nations.

Click here to read more.

By Sneha Johari

Snapdeal has partnered with 9 non governmental organisations (NGOs) to launch Snapdeal Sunshine, a platform where users can make donations to causes under education, health, sports, women empowerment, disaster relief and old age care. These organisations include Magic Bus, Akshaya Patra, Care India, Teach For India and HelpAge India, which will list required products for ongoing projects.

At face value, it doesn’t look like Snapdeal is charging a fee for this service, but the products needed by the NGOs are from Snapdeal’s inventory and currently include cooking, education, sports, study, clothing, stationery, housing and other miscellaneous supplies.