PAPER
Presented at
NGO Study Group Seminar ‘Ethnography of NGOs: Understanding Organisational
Processes’, Oxford, 28 April 2004.
Do NGOs ‘shop around’? A view on donor-recipient relationships from NGO
workers in Nepal
By Celayne Heaton Shrestha
celayne1@yahoo.co.uk
Abstract
This paper is based on 15 months’ intensive fieldwork among the staff of two Nepali development
NGOs. It contributes to the exploration of power in relations between NGOs are recipients of aid
and donors, in bringing to light, through a detailed ethnographic account of NGO day to day life, a
multiplicity of modalities and contexts of INGO-NGO interaction1.
It is very much concerned with the informal dimensions of NGO life, rather than the official or
‘public transcripts’ (Scott 1990) of NGO policy for working with donors.
A second issue the paper addresses is the issue of politics and power within organisations: NGOs
are not treated here as a ‘single’ actor, but rather, a network of actors with overlapping but not
identical interests and agendas.
It is shown that NGO actors at different levels within the organisation will engage with donors in
very different ways and invest in these relationships to varying degrees. Thus, while at times,
actors will identify closely with donor ways and practices, in other contexts, maintaining a strategic
distance between themselves and the donor is a sine qua non of their ability to work effectively
with project beneficiaries and government officials.
The landscape of power emerges from this ethnographic account as far more fragmented and
unstable than many accounts of donor-recipient relations in the international literature or the
critiques of development (eg Escobar 1995, Sachs 1992, Ferguson 1990) surmise.
It is demonstrated that the view that donor recipient relations can be portrayed as ‘an exchange of
deference and compliance for the patron’s provision’ (Crewe and Harrison 1998) and that NGOs
‘shop around’ (eg Watts 2001) both need qualification.
‘The team visit’
July, one monsoon morning. There is considerable excitement today in the office, a mix of anxiety
and amusement too: for several weeks now the field office has been buzzing with the topic of the
[donor] team visit, of where to lodge them, whom among local dignitaries would be met, which
project sites would be toured. It’s just our luck that on the day the team is due to arrive another
leak has been discovered in the water pipe that feeds the road bazaar where the FO is situated.
The water stopped running four days previously and the latest development means the situation is
unlikely to be fixed soon. Water is actually available further down the road but we have no vehicle
at the moment; the beautiful 4x4 Japanese vehicle was a gift from the donor to two of its partner
NGOs working in the region, and is shared between the two organisations; this fortnight, it is not
‘our turn’ to have usage of the vehicle. We have no alternative but wait until the team arrives and
to borrow one of their 4x4s to get the much needed water. Staff muses ‘that way they [the donor]
will know how difficult our working conditions are!’
The field office chief has arranged to have the most eminent team members lodged at the DDC
office’s guesthouse. There are no guesthouses in the bazaar, and hotels in the district bazaar are
small shoddy affairs, catering mostly for truckers and certainly unworthy of the team. Other
members of the team will stay in the FO: some staff share two rooms adjoining the office building
itself, these will be freed and readied for the team.
After the regulation morning tea, Bimala, a lady staff, and myself are called over by the chief. His
1
Power here is understood in both the sense of a coercive ‘power over’ and a tactical ‘power to’ which makes use of status and situations and is
productive rather than repressive (terms from Clegg 1989).
1
room is on the ground floor, and gives onto the bazaar’s main street and the back opens onto the
library and the garden beyond. We sit down. The chief suggests that we leave for Sundarigaun in
advance of the team. The team has just phoned: they have been delayed by bad road conditions
further up and so are now due at 1pm. By the time they have taken their first meal it will be 2pm,
and they will leave for Sundarigaun soon after.
Bimala and I get ready for our trip, take leave with the boss and call to Tilak and Ravindra who are
drawing out large charts for the next day’s presentation to the team. Sundarigaun is a village an
hour’s walk away along the only motorable road in this part of the district, and boasts one of the
largest SCO with the highest level of female representation in the entire project area. A project
‘success story’ and easily accessible, it was immediately earmarked as a ‘showpiece’ for the
team’s visit.
As we walk through the district HQ, we pass two other members of staff, Ratna and Ananda who
are busy purchasing stationery for the presentation. We walk on past the last house in the bazaar,
down the dusty road and past the area’s main temple, until we reach Sundarigaun. The visit is my
first with Bimala alone and is unusual in that it takes us into the houses of individual women
beneficiaries. Formerly, I had gone with a male member of staff and we would never meet women
at home; rather we’d ask a local boy or man to call the women and wait for them to gather in a
given place. We go straight to the project’s NFE teacher’s house; Bimala shouts her name from
outside the house ‘Kamla, ô Kamla!’ and, in gaunle bhasa2, adds ‘is anyone there?’ I am surprised
to note a satellite dish on the tiled roof house; in the courtyard water buffalo are attached to a peg.
Kamla, tall and very thin, comes out wearing a cotton sari and she is holding up her damp sunbleached hair. Bimala: ‘we just want a chat; you know there is a meeting today?’ ‘Come in’, she
tells us. We walk up the steps and she directs us to a room, past a room where a young boy is
watching television. She places two wooden chairs for us and leaves. When she comes back with
glasses of water she has changed her sari and her hair is tied back. She grabs a low stool for
herself. I tell her that we have come to ask her to come to the meeting today and she must tell the
other women too; there are thulo (‘big’) people coming to see them, including a foreign state
representative; all the women must go and say what they think of the SCO. One of Kamla’s
neighbours has arrived and sits on a pile of rugs on the floor. We try to give them an idea of the
kinds of questions the team is likely to ask the women, they listen and reassure us that they will
make the meeting. We then go to the house of a local secondary school teacher. The Madam is
woken by a young child; lazily, she pushes herself up and motions us to sit down. She joins us, readjusting her sari, on the shaded balcony of her large, whitewashed house. We tell her about the
team, and the need to call all women members. She ponders the matter of the team visit an
instant and states she will send off someone to call the women members of Sundarigaun SCO.
She has just been to the dentist and had two upper incisors removed and is suffering from
toothache; still, she’ll get ready for the meeting she tells us, and leaves after arranging for some
tea and fruit to be brought to us. We needn’t go to any more houses now that Madam has sent out
someone and stay in the shade until 2pm. We then make our way to the schoolyard where the
meeting is to take place.
Beside Sundarigaun school is a large open space with a chautara and pipal tree in its centre. A
low wall separates this area from the footpath that continues onto Dhungegaun and beyond. The
other flank is bordered by fields where corn is maturing. By the time we reach the chautara
Ananda and Ratna have been hard at work for an hour or so: there are now benches arranged in a
semi-circle, faced with a row of chairs that run down the low wall on the far side. ‘Are the women
coming?’ asks Ratna. Bimala and I sit on the school benches and look anxiously towards the
footpath: haven’t the women been called? Is there too much work? Will there be sufficient numbers
by the time the team arrives? ‘They have been called’ we reply.
We wait. Then one Sundarigauni arrives, then another, and a few more; but by 2.30pm there are
no more than a dozen women here! Even at the height of the agricultural season routine meetings
would attract a minimum of 20 women. Dressed in faded work clothes, their hair dishevelled and
sickle still in hand, they would bring their passbook and savings, and occasionally that of other
fellow villagers too busy to come in person, to the monthly meetings. I look at my watch again. It’s
2.40pm and still no more than a dozen SCO members. Ananda and Ratna are sitting further away
with village men. Then, women start arriving in groups, smiling, laughing, wearing bright saris and
stick-on tika (bindi), one group of women after another. Bimala and I move around the various
groups of women: ‘they will just ask you have done or thinking of doing with your savings’ we say
calmly; we tell the women how much money there is in their SCO and how many members, male
2
Nepali for ‘village language’ i.e. any local dialect not identified with a specific ‘indigenous group’.
2
and female ‘in case the team asks’ Bimala adds.
It is gone 3.45pm by the time the team’s two 4x4s appear on the road leading to Sundarigaun far
above us and very soon, the team is with us! The team settles and Ratna, a senior fieldworker,
takes charge of the proceedings. Men staff and beneficiaries are sitting along the wall, women
beneficiaries and women staff occupies the benches in the centre of the ‘school yard’. All are
asked to stand up, each in turn, and state their name, village, and position if any, in the SCO. One
after the other, the mayor and sub-mayor of the municipality, the donor organisation’s project chief,
two Nepali members of staff of the same organisation, one gender specialist and another
education specialist, a member of another NGO, a representative of the donor’s government
(councillor) and his wife, the FO chief and several NGO members of staff greet the assembly with a
namaste and introduce themselves. The councillor adds in English - his words are then translated
into Nepali by a Nepali member of staff of the donor organisation: ‘we’ve come here to talk and
especially ask you what you think of the SCO and how it could be improved to meet your needs’.
One of the SCO’s executive members stands up and, turning towards the team, speaks on behalf
of Sundarigaun inhabitants. ‘The biggest problem here is water’ – ‘no, fodder’ corrects one of the
seated women members - ‘no, no it’s water, water and latrines are our greatest problems’ the man
frowns at her and pushes ahead with his list of requests. The Nepali members of the donor
organisation then approached the women beneficiaries. Standing in front of them, the gender
specialist, clad in a diaphanous kurta, sporting short hair and conspicuously lacking the auspicious
bangles and tika of married women, quizzes: what do you think of the project? Have you found it
difficult to save? What have you or will you do with the money? How would you like the project
improved?’ No one responds. Then Madam stands up and expresses the women’s satisfaction
with and gratitude for, the project. I overhear approving comments in English made by other,
seated, team members on how outspoken and active local women are.
All too soon the visit is deemed over; Ratna thanks the SCO members for their presence, and
declares the meeting closed. Men, women, beneficiaries, staff, still seated, standing, raising to
their feet, all seem to be seeking out and volunteering opinions and observations on the program,
while the team and a few members of staff plot their next visit. Slowly the crowd disperses as we
begin to make our way back to the bazaar.
Back in the FO, we are greeted by a very unusual sight: our *mess* has been taken over by the
accountant and two messengers, who normally work shifts in the FO. They are preparing the
evening’s fare! In the office, the ground floor ‘library’ has been transformed into a ‘dining room’: it
seems as if the entire building has been raided for dining tables, chairs, laltin3; the disused
bathroom has been cleaned up a steel bucket and soap placed inside and a laltin burning nearby;
the back garden has been cleared up, the vegetable patch weeded, the flower beds relined with
stones. And most unusual of all, all members of staff are hovering around a *mess* they rarely
frequented otherwise.
The team comes back from the DDC office after dark. They and the FO chief head for the ground
floor ‘dining room’ where laltin are burning, giving off a warm, gentle light. Down in the *mess*
below, meat dishes, dal, salad, achar, have been laid out on the *mess* table; the smell of the food
is so overpowering that the smoke given off by the badly burning laltin is no longer a concern; in
one pot after another, the NR50-per-kg-rice - our usual was closer to the NR15-a-kg-mark - is
steaming away on the kerosene stoves brought down from the other *mess*es, and in the heat and
noise of the *mess* we joke about the team members’ healthy physiques and hope they do not
have an appetite to match! One of the messengers shuttles between the *mess* and the dining
room with the food, and gives us regular reports on their eating. Down below, the last stove has
been silenced, and we sit, listening to the laughing and chatter coming from the dining room.
Some members of staff have left the *mess* and are sitting out in the garden; it’s 10pm and we are
getting hungry. Then Tirtha emerges once again from the dining room, beaming: ‘they’ve finished!’
Tirtha begins clearing away the plates and dishes, Krishna brings the leftover rice to the *mess*.
At last! We can fully partake of the feast! Staff crams into the small *mess*, piles food unto plates
and then stuffs it into their mouths, while the last laltin is blown out, up in the dining room: the last
member of the team has decided to retire to his sleeping quarters. Tomorrow, the team will leave
early for a subsidiary field office, and staff there can take over the demanding role of host.
This paper is concerned with the nature and quality of relationships between northern and southern
ngdos. In particular, it seeks to examine critically the view that donor recipient relations can be
portrayed as ‘an exchange of deference and compliance for the patron’s provision’ (Crewe and
3
Kerosene lanterns: electricity supply was fairly erratic during the monsoon, and bad luck had it that it was even more so during the team visit.
3
Harrison 1998). This view, it is argued, does not do justice to the rich engagement of recipients
with donor organisations4. Firstly, because NGOs and INGOs are not only patrons and clients, they
are also, at various times, parents and children, hosts and guests, and, more ominously, dealers
and addicts. Each idiom for construing and constructing INGO-NGO relationships affords different
strategies and possibilities for negotiation, or resistance, to the actors involved5. Secondly,
because many accounts of INGO-NGO relationships, whether they are concerned to draw
attention to the continued dominance of northern organisations (eg Escobar 1995, Sachs 1992,
Ferguson 1990; Crawford 2003), or the ways in which the recipients of aid subvert, resist (eg
Fletcher 2001), or are complicit (eg Li 1999; Harrison and Crewe 1998) in this dominance, treat
NGOs as a unified entity, a single actor.
In this paper I describe some the cultural idioms through which INGO-NGO relationships were
constructed and highlight the fundamental differences between field office (FO) and central office
(CO) in terms of how they related to donors.
1. Method:
This paper is based on research carried out for a doctoral dissertation among national NGO
workers in Nepal (Heaton 2001). It focused on the ways in which NGOs in Nepal negotiated
difference, and in particular the efforts of NGO fieldworkers to develop more inclusive personal and
work styles as they went about the everyday business of ‘development’ (Heaton 2001).
Fieldwork for this project was carried out over a period of 15 months (October 1996-December
1997). It involved intense fieldwork in the headquarters and field sites of two national nongovernmental development organisations (NGDOs) in Nepal. In total, research took me to around
18 field sites across three districts in the first NGO and 20 field sites across two districts in the
second.
During this time, I also held discussions with representatives of a total of 30 NGOs, both local and
national, government officials, beneficiaries, and other ‘locals’ as well as 9 donor organisations,
and I attended numerous INGO/NGO seminars and workshops. I was able to witness donor-NGO
relationships in a variety of settings, during seminars as well as field visits by the donor, the
occasional visit to COs.
I collected a variety of documents from the NGOs approached: annual reports, brochures,
newsletters; and in the two NGOs selected, project proposals, evaluations, administrative rules and
regulations, and the NGOs’ constitution.
Observations were also carried out in the two NGOs’ CO, which I attended during normal working
hours, in the field offices, as well as in project sites, which I visited along side field staff during their
scheduled visits. I also spent a considerable amount of time with staff outside of ‘work hours’ in
FOs, taking meals and spending the best part of my leisure time with them.
My access to the donors of the NGOs selected for in-depth study on the other hand was limited: in
one case my conferring with donors was discouraged by the NGO’s director; and my desire to
avoid identification with the donor in the second case meant I kept aloof from donors and donor
representatives, or at least attempted to spend as much time with donors as with NGO staff. The
study is therefore very much based on the NGO’s understanding of INGO-NGO relationships.
2. Background of NGOs:
The study focused on ‘elite’ or ‘power NGOs’6. These were (for the most part) Kathmandu-based,
middle-class run, ‘non-membership’ development organisations. They were national in scope, with
operations across several districts of Nepal. Relatively few in number, they enjoyed a high degree
4
Following common usage in the research setting, no distinction is made between different types of donor. There were several terms used to
refer to donors. The sanskritic term data, literally, ‘donor’ was used by NGO staff and management in the presence of outsiders to the
organisation when speaking of one’s own donor. Most commonly, the Nepali expression bideshi sanstha (literally ‘foreign organisation’) or the
English term ‘INGO’ were employed by NGO members as well as persons outside the NGO sector. Both were used to refer to government
organisations, bilateral and multilateral donors, international non-governmental.
5
By ‘idiom’ I mean to refer to ‘ways of talking’ as well as ‘ways of doing’. In this I follow De Certeau’s (1990: 171) suggestion that narrative can
be seen as a form of practice - narratives of place do not only transpose walks in the domain of language, they organise walks, they themselves
make the trip before the feet do - and Bourdieu’s point that a given practice and the discourse on that practice are both products of the same
principles (eg 1991).
6
The term is from Frederick (1998).
4
of visibility and wielded considerable influence on the NGO sector as a whole.
Most had evolved from the various development consultancies and private research organisations
providing services to international donor agencies which proliferated during the 1980s, and like
these, but in contrast to other types of organisations, eg traditional organisations or human rights
organisations, they were heavily involved with foreign donors. Unlike traditional, indigenous or
human rights organisations, too, NGOs were generally manned by a core of well paid, professional
staff. At field level, the day to day operations of NGOs were run by a contingent of paid field
workers, frequently assisted by a range of paid volunteers, such as Non-formal Education
facilitators or Community Health Volunteers.
As was the case in the Indian third sector in the 1990s, NGOs in Nepal were becoming a viable
source of employment and increasingly, a career option for young middle class people (Sen 1998).
This was not, however, the case for all of the job opportunities created by the booming NGO
sector7. Fieldwork was considered a poorer option, and, for the middle-class job seeker, little more
than a stepping-stone towards better paid employment in near-urban or urban offices. For the
better off, eventually, fieldwork experience would buy a desk job. Not all NGO employees were so
fortunate, lacking the social capital that would take them from field to office work. This meant that,
on the whole, staff employed at field level differed markedly from staff in the CO, socially.
Suzuki (1998) points out that, in the case of northern ngdos, NGOs tend to be differentiated
functionally, with the headquarters (HQ) generally oriented towards funding and policy and the field
offices towards the field. Here, while both CO and FOs had dealings with representatives of donor
organisations at various times, the distinctiveness of field and ‘core’ work was acknowledged: NGO
members recognised that fieldwork demanded skills and competencies that few in the CO could
boast.
Fieldwork competence and the ‘local knowledge’ required by fieldwork were not guaranteed
through formal education - nor in fact training in the NGO’s CO - but were, rather, inculcated
through prolonged field presence and taught by other members of staff or local people. They
would include knowledge of the local customs, and behaviour as well as the local kuro (literally
‘talk’; factionalism, quarrels among villagers, etc) and the local language and idioms; knowing how
to talk, how to convince or ‘mobilise’ people; knowing how to negotiate the physical terrain of the
field, how to walk in the hills for instance, and finding one’s way to fieldsites along routes for which
no map existed. Revealingly, while discussing the progress of one of the organisation’s project,
the director of one NGO commented on INGOs’ lack of knowledge of ‘local ways’:
We have received complaints from [district], when [donor] sent a team from Kathmandu to
carry out a baseline survey. They were wearing trousers, short, tight blouses, their bellies
out and the villagers were seeing them as foreigners! The villager dress is a simple one; we
should be integrating instead, they got discriminating behaviour. The team did not speak
their language, dress their way so community people thought they did not belong to that
place. In rural communities one must behave as they are…
While here the organisations concerned were an INGO and an NGO, field competencies
constituted just as powerful a boundary between field office and central office.
As mentioned above, FO and CO staff also differed significantly in terms of their social
background, and while for FO staff, living conditions in the FO bore much resemblance to their life
‘back home’, it contrasted considerably with CO staff’s lifestyle. Sumitra, a member of CO staff, for
instance, was taken aback by the reality of the field: ‘it was not romantic at all, not like trekking’ she
confided. Lower status NGO staff would comment about higher status NGO staff or local
contenders for the posts occupied by NGO staff – ‘they are educated people, they can’t mix like we
can’.
The relative social distance between CO and FO staff also meant that the loyalty of fieldworkers
was always felt to be tenuous. Management in the central office never presumed to have ‘control
over’ its field offices. Management sought to secure the loyalty of its field offices, first, by ensuring
they were in regular contact with them: by weekly phone calls, where there was a phone; through
7
In the 1990s, a more favourable policy environment, an increased interest in NGOs on the part of international donors, a growing middle class,
led to a phenomenal growth of the sector in Nepal. Numbering a mere 250 prior to 1990, the numbers of NGOs across the country rose to
5,976 in 1997 and by 2001, Nepal’s Social Welfare Council counted a staggering 12,600 NGOs.
5
central office staff visits, which were opportunities for core staff to ‘motivate field staff’ and also in
the words of one director, to ‘show the field office that we in the central office support them’; and
inviting field staff to the central office for training or for the organisation’s yearly anniversary
festivities, for instance. Management also sought to secure staff loyalty to the CO through their
systematic policy of posting staff outside of their ‘home’ areas. Another strategy consisted in
posting staff known to be more loyal to the CO (by virtue of kinship with a senior member of CO
staff for eg) in FOs; these persons would then report informally to CO and act as a check on FO
staff.
CO insecurity in relation to its FOs rendered the CO all the more jealous of the closer relation it
enjoyed with the donor. In one instance, Rita, a lady staff, was warned by senior NGO members
‘not to go to the donor again’ after she’d complained of the lack of support for the women’s project
activities to a member of the organisation’s donor; and one FO chief was refused the protocol for
interacting with the local branch of the NGO’s donor organisation by that NGO’s central office. It
was not uncommon for NGOs to fragment, and the concern was that the FO or members of the FO
would secede from the CO and become an NGO itself. The situation of the CO was more
precarious than that of the FO, the former acting as a broker between the donor and the field. A
factor in this precariousness was the considerable similarity, social and cultural, between the CO
and the INGO, and the sense that the latter could easily substitute for the former. Not only did the
CO careful guard its relationship with the donor; it also acted as a gateway, regulating access to
‘the field’. For instance, my own shift from the CO to the FO in both NGOs studied was a
complicated and protracted affair; I was advised to wait until the FO boss’ regular visit to the CO,
before finalising my travel and living arrangements and research agendas in one case. On the day
of his arrival, I was directed to him by the CO director, in my preparation for the field. The COordinator offered timetables, destinations and bus change-overs, alternative routes and listed items
I might need in the field. I booked the trip according to his counsel; still the NGO director was
reluctant to let me go to the FO alone. He instructed the FO chief to spare one of his staff to
accompany me from the change-over point in the Tarai8, to the FO.
For the CO, the field represented just as important a resource as the donor, and access to it, just
as prized. In official NGO discourse, and in contradistinction to the low value placed on fieldwork
and the field as places of work by staff, the mastery of ‘the field’ represented a seal of the
authenticity and worthiness of an NGO (see Heaton 2001; 2002). Lack of a field presence, indeed,
was synonymous with ‘paper NGOs’, corrupt or incompetent non-governmental organisations, and
failed or failing government projects. Visiting dignitaries, evaluators and colleagues or students on
placements, were encouraged by NGO management to ‘focus on matters of the field’ rather than
‘research[ing] and mak[ing] strategies from documents’ – under the guidance of members of the
NGO in question.
3. NGO identity and the importance of the INGO connection
The significance of donors for the NGO sector was inestimable. The financial contribution of
foreign donors to Nepali NGOs, first of all, was considerable: in 1997, it was estimated that the
total funds channelled through NGOs amounted to US$150 million while the total official
development assistance to Nepal totalled US$391.8 million (The Rising Nepal Friday Supplement
7th November 1997). Despite the absence of hard data, most NGO specialists agreed that the
vast majority of Nepali NGO were almost wholly financed by INGOs. Ridell in a 1994 report placed
the percentage of foreign funds in the overall NGO budget at 88%, and the contributions from local
and governmental sources at 8 and 4% respectively9.
Secondly the link with INGOs was perceived by staff to be central to the identity and the standing
8
The lowland region bordering India.
9
This applies mostly for the larger, more professional NGOs that are the subject of this study; smaller, local NGOs, such as youth clubs, on
the other hand, have long been raising funds locally through organising games or ‘lucky draws’ during the main festive season, (bhailo magne),
giving private tuition to high school students, or in one case running a small shop in the bazaar and putting the profits into the NGO’s fund. In
other cases, the NGO would generate some resources through GA membership fees or donations or money saved from regular project grants
through keeping low ‘overhead costs’ (mostly salaries). The projects implemented with these locally raised funds, I was told, were necessarily
less ambitious than INGO funded schemes. Typically, they would consist of literacy or other kinds of educational programmes, as, for
instance, environmental awareness campaigns in local primary and secondary schools. In the case of one wealthier NGO, internally generated
resources were routinely used to carry out surveys or small pilot projects in order to appear attractive to donors. The NGOs in the study
received funds from a variety of sources both bilateral and non-governmental.
6
of their organisation (see also Hamilton in Georgia 2000). Kishor, a fieldworker, explained: ‘if a
donor gives money the community has the misguided belief that we have made progress; and if
donor stops funding the community may think we are broken (khatm)’. The director of another
organisation, which had successfully established itself without donor support, expressed that ‘[not
having a donor] is difficult for management and from identity point of view. People from NGO say
we’re not an NGO because we don’t take money from donors, and government say we are a
business’. His organisation did not label itself an NGO but a ‘Social Development Organisation’.
Often too, in project areas, little distinction was made between ‘NGOs’ and ‘bideshi sanstha’
(‘foreign organisation’): Generally, a Nepali-managed and staffed organisation would earn the
designation ‘bideshi sanstha’ if it was known to be supported by an INGO. Further, Nepali staff
working for bideshi sanstha themselves were marked with the national identity of the sanstha’s
directors; a Nepali lady staff working for GTZ would be called ‘the jarman bahini’ (German younger
sister), staff in a CECI funded Nepali NGO the kanedyan walla (the Canadian folk)10.
The identification of donor and NGO in the popular imaginary was not unjustified: materially and
culturally, these organisations were remarkably similar. This was more particularly the case for
COs, its staff and day to day practices and was all the more striking when contrasted with
governmental offices (GOs). For instance, whereas NGOs would have white washed walls, grey
carpets, green plants and wicker chairs, a jeep or hero Honda parked outside modern, cement
‘villas’ which housed INGOs and NGOs, government ministries were located in large Rana
buildings with long corridors and austere décor. The armchairs and cushions clad in white, locally
stitched, cotton covers, that furnished Kathmandu-based departments and local government
offices alike were all but absent in NGO offices. In NGO offices, INGO-compatible software and
computers with ‘qwerty’ keyboards, faxes and photocopiers, replaced the manual typewriters, one
set with roman lettering and another with the devanagari script, found in GOs. Topi11 were
remarkably absent in NGO premises, while the place was replete with fashionable ‘jean pants’,
‘sweaters’, or shirts, on rare occasions, suits; ladies would wear fashionable women’s clothing,
either recognisably Western or Indian (suruwal kurta) and saris on occasions which called for a
more formal outfit. In the field, ‘baseball caps’ with backpacks in some synthetic material were the
norm. While GOs stressed the local, handmade and traditional, NGOs used modern, machine
made materials. Where NGOs did have recourse to ‘traditional’ materials and designs, this was
generally is less public areas of their organisational life – for eg, the more remote field offices,
which were occasionally made with local labour, materials and design.
In the office, INGO-NGO similarity was also explicit in the office day’s time-tabling. The NGO
working day would begin, as in INGOs, at an early 9am to 9.30am, well before GO staff had
finished their morning meal and made their way to their office for a 10.30am to 11am start. NGO
staff often would forgo the large morning meal of dal, bhat, tarkari, opting for an earlier, smaller
meal at home and ‘tiffin’ during a ‘lunch hour’. ‘Tiffin’ would consist of either a larger meal at a
nearby restaurant or some items bought from a local bakery, cakes, pasties or chocolate chip
cookies.
NGO members also drew attention to their work ethic: ‘look, everybody here is busy; if you go into
government offices, you will find no one is working; they will be chatting, drinking tea’. In the NGO
there was no room nor time for chat; a stroll through the office would find staff bent over their desk,
sitting at a computer, answering business phone calls or running out of one meeting to another. In
GO and semi-governmental corporations, on the other hand, there was ‘hypocrisy, low pay, a
sense of wasting your time’; ‘no discipline, jobs are left until the next day’; ‘people only do their own
work and are not interested in learning other things’; little autonomy in one’s work, low level of
expertise.
In contrast to GO offices, again, visitors would be directed to a reception area; in government
offices on the other hand, visitors would generally ‘wait to be seen’ in the room of the very official
they had come to meet. The ‘reception area’ was a constant feature of all the NGOs I visited
during my stay and was considerably more important in NGOs than government offices; in the
10
GTZ and CECI are the German government’s development agency and the Centre d’éducation et de coopération internationales, a
Canadian NGO, respectively.
11
The traditional Nepali hat, worn by men; it suggests a ‘formal’ dress.
7
latter, ‘reception’ was not assigned a specialised room but took the form of a desk or closed glass
and wood feature positioned to one side of the main entrance hall, where there was one. Often
visitors would wander in and out of buildings, and wait to be ‘seen’ by some senior official sitting in
that official’s room itself.
The commonalities between INGO and NGO work cultures was most palpable in their sharing a
common language: English. A satirical essay on the world of development by Sharad Poudyal
(1997) begins:
Do you speak English very well? Have you heard about today’s development vocabulary and
can you pronounce some of it?’ then, ‘if you are skilled in these matters then rejoice! You are
capable of running a community development NGO12.
Indeed, although rarely used in office conversation, English was the language of NGO writing
culture. NGOs’ written material was almost wholly scripted in English, save documents destined
for GO consumption, such as NGO constitutions. Administrative rules and regulations, contracts,
newsletters, brochures, project proposals and evaluation reports - many of which were produced
for the NGO or INGO public - were all in English. Although some INGOs had begun accepting
proposals in Nepali and considered developing ‘partnership manuals’ for their NGO counterparts in
Nepali, few were the NGOs with a written culture that did not produce the majority of its texts in
English. Generally, status was still attached to English-writing organisations as it indicated a highly
qualified workforce and the promise of competently implemented projects. Many NGOs would
seek out and recruit at least one English graduate to polish their reports. An English language
writing culture was an important element of NGO ‘professionalism’.
Sociologically, finally, CO staff were closer to the (Nepali) project staff of donor organisations than
FO staff. Many members of staff had worked in international institutions, non-governmental
organisations or very occasionally, a multilateral agency, often as consultants in the case of senior
staff or fieldworkers in the case of junior staff. FO staff who had not been able to secure work in
GOs or national NGO projects in their home area nor migrated in search of work, had for the most
part held teaching jobs in local schools. Educationally, as one moved from the CO to the FO,
educational levels decreased; in some cases, not only were the graduates found in the CO alone,
but a position with the same title (e.g. field coordinator) was occupied by a person with a lesser
qualification when the position happened to be in a more remote area. FO staff had also studied in
less prestigious institutions; their formal education usually began in local schools, and was
followed by a period of study in one of the various government institutes (Institute of Engineering,
Institute of Forestry, Institute of Agriculture), Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan University, or one of the
technical schools run by the CTEVT.
It would be inaccurate to read this similarity in terms of INGO hegemony13 or a case of the
‘mimicry’, characteristic of colonial relations of domination (cf Bhabha 1994), of INGO ways by
NGOs. Here I found neither the pain of ‘lack’, noted by Fanon (1967) in coloniser-colonised
relations, nor adulation of INGO ways. If at times NGOs sought to accommodate donor tastes and
habits (as we saw in the opening vignette), this did not amount to an attempt to fashion their own
modes of working along INGO lines. Not only were NGO members critical of INGO ways, they
also denied categorically that they had ‘aped’ their donor. English was not seen as the exclusive
property of INGOs, but rather a lingua franca of the world of development agencies. Similarly,
when NGOs defined or aligned themselves with definitions of ‘NGO’ in the development literature14
12
My translation.
13
Following Gramsci, (1971) the concept of hegemony here refers to a mode of social control which combines both consent and coercion or the
moral and intellectual leadership by a particular group. It finds a local equivalent in a particular mode of relating to persons/groups
acknowledged as superiors described by the concepts of ‘sanskritisation’ (after Srinivas 1966) or its regional variant, ‘nepalisation’. Like
hegemony, this mode of behaviour involves the adoption by a subordinate group the lifestyle, mannerisms, conduct or the language, dress, and
religious beliefs of dominant groups, in particular one’s patrons, in public life (Fürer-Haimendorf 1960; Sharma 1977; Levine 1987).
14
For example, NGO activists and senior staff would often refer to Korten’s influential Getting to the 21st Century: Voluntary Action and
the Global Agenda West Hartford: Kumarian Press, 1990. Cernea’s 1988 Non-governmental Organisations and Local Development
discussion paper, The World Bank’s Involving NGOs in Bank Supported Activities operational directive, and Operational Manual
Statement: collaboration with Non-governmental Organisations, and UNCTAD’s Report of the Meeting of the Role of NGOs in the
Development of LDCs.
8
there was no sense in which this activity represented an appropriation of ‘foreign’ definitions or
frames of reference. Seeing INGO-NGO similarity as a case of mimicry would also be to overlook
the efforts NGOs made, at other times, to maintain a strategic distance between themselves and
donors15. Such a suggestion would also be damaging to the image of NGOs in Nepal.
At the time of research, the images of NGOs as ‘dollar farmers’ or again ‘begging bowls’ stretched
out to or handmaidens of international organisations, (and opportunities to ‘make a fast buck’) were
commonly used to denigrate these organisations, and NGO members spent much energy refuting
allegations that they had ‘sold out’ to donors. This was necessary so as to maintain credibility and
smooth relations with GOs, particularly in project areas, as well as project beneficiaries, whose
demands on the project were made in consideration of the foreign status of the organisation and its
purported wealth. Beneficiaries often expressed that NGOs, as ‘foreign organisations’ could easily
pay for beneficiary labour on the organisation’s construction projects. This rendered ‘mobilisation’
a particularly difficult task for fieldworkers, and negotiation over the terms of beneficiary
participation in projects a protracted affair.
NGOs would seek to emphasise this distance from donors in a number of ways. Firstly, by
drawing attention to the quantitative difference that distinguished INGO and NGO material life. For
instance, if both frequented 5 star hotels – members of INGOs did so for lunch on a daily basis,
and NGO staff only during conferences or other special event; if both were housed in cement villas
in desirable areas of the capital – INGOs were generally in the more upmarket areas of Kathmandu
and Lalitpur, NGOs in the less sought after but still desirable Babar Mahal or Naya Baneswore; if
both enjoyed some private means of transportation – INGOs had a fleet of vehicles to ferry their
staff to and fro, while NGO office workers made do with a single jeep. In local evaluative
frameworks, material practice acted not only an indicator of the volume of resources at the disposal
of persons or organisations, but also a marker of their morality. Talk of the fact of INGO wealth
had inklings of INGO extravagance and, in contrast, the frugality, restraint - and therefore
virtuousness of national NGOs. Most NGO managers would remark with some pride that they
gave ‘the lowest wages among all NGOs’, and would, on occasion, comment on the wastefulness
of INGOs.
Secondly, NGO members would seek to distance themselves from INGOs by disclaiming too much
familiarity with INGO languages and ways at various times. One session of an INGO-organised
INGO-NGO conference happened to be facilitated by a member of a private, Nepali, ‘management
consultancy’ organisation. Concluding the first exercise through which he had just guided
participants using both English and Nepali, he commented ‘there is a need to contextualise conshextualise’ he giggled as he sought to play down his all too-correct English usage. ‘It’s my
second language, testai cha’16‘ he added.
In contexts of INGO-NGO interaction, criticism of INGO excess and conceit was not often openly
voiced; however it was suggested, through excessive subservience, obsequiousness. To some
extent too, criticism was implicit when individuals used the term ‘bideshi sanstha’ rather the donor’s
name or the term ‘data’. The term bideshi often bears pejorative connotations similar to the
obsolete term mleccha (‘pagan’ or ‘barbarian’) once used to refer to beef-eating Muslim and
Christians (Höfer 1979).
In the Nepali context, a study by Stewart found that donors had, contrary to NGO claims, ‘exerted
influence’ on the selection of activities and modes of operation of the NGO, in particular,
encouraging ‘unsustainable modes of working’, namely, a reliance on private transportation, high
salaries, expensive technologies (1997). NGOs were, indeed, distinguished from other local forms
of organisation by their plush material life; it was, in fact, part of the appeal of NGOs to prospective
employees. And, to be sure, in some cases this mode of working would not have been possible
without donor assistance. Memorably, one very senior NGO worker, likened entering into a
funding relationship with a donor to ‘taking opium’ or ‘heroin’.
15
‘Mimicry’, Bhabha notes, operates in a similar fashion: it does not aim to harmonise differences, but make similar while retaining at the same
time the distinction between self and other. ‘Mimicry’, writes Bhabha, ‘emerges as the representation of a difference that is itself a process of
disavowal’ and ‘in order to be effective, [it] must continually produce its slippage, its excess, its difference’ (1994: 86). However, the situation
here, differs from ‘mimicry’, in that here intentionality and strategising are at work behind the production of difference. NGO-INGO
difference here is not ‘failure to be the same’(Bhabha 1994: , but success at being sufficiently different.
16
‘That’s the way it is’.
9
We used to work 24 hours; we didn’t know where to eat, where we’d stay; we’d forget
anything other than the community; wherever we went they would welcome us and kill a
chicken. Nowadays we have become big (thulo) and do not go everywhere. If people get
facilities they want more facilities… Then, we were totally ‘volunteer’; we didn’t go by bus
because we didn’t have any money, but we walked everywhere. Nowadays I don’t go if
there is no bus…I myself say I won’t go if I don’t have a sleeping bag. I need bhatta (an
allowance) to eat, a sleeping bag, a motorcycle…Today expectations are a bit high. We say
EEDC aphim khayo (it has eaten opium). It has taken money from the donor and now it
can’t live without it - like heroin.
The view of INGO-NGO relations as addictive, and having promoted a lifestyle – and not just a
mode of working – dependent upon foreign aid and foreign connections, did not apply to NGOs
across the board. It was, in fact, more typical of non-elite NGOs, or ‘indigenous organisations’
such as BASE or FEDO17 that had only recently come to donor attention and in receipt of donor
funding18, rather than the elite organisations that were the focus of the study. On the whole, NGOs
saw themselves and their donors as partaking of a common cultural fund, and their differences a
matter of degree rather than an absolute difference.
Again, materially, as well as sociologically, INGO-NGO similarity was more marked in the CO than
the FO. Like the CO, FOs were rented cement affairs but smaller than COs, and with fewer rooms
- sometimes only one room - usually no reception area and, unlike CO rooms, rooms in the FO
were not assigned to any particular member of staff apart from the boss’ room, and accountant’s
room-storeroom. FOs were less plush than COs in their furnishings; floors were not carpeted,
walls were bare, save for the organisation’s calendar, project area maps, project group and
activities lists, or organisational mottos; the library, if there was one at all, was sparse; tea, drunk in
glasses rather than cups. Office hours less strictly adhered to, eating habits in keeping with the
more conventional two-rice-meals-a-day pattern. FOs, finally, could not always count on private
transportation; staff might have to share a vehicle with or hitch a ride from, other offices,
governmental or non-governmental. In the lowlands, FO staff travelled mostly by bicycle. Buses,
trucks and private vehicles provided motorised alternatives.
4. INGO dominance
If NGO rejected the suggestion they had ‘aped’ donors, they did not deny that INGOs had acted to
impose their wishes and modes of operation in many areas of NGO life.
Much has been written on the notion of ‘partnership’, and many analysts of the NGO sector (eg
Fowler 1998, 2000; Hudock 2000; Crawford 2003; Yukiko 2000) now reject the view that NGOdonor relationships can be accurately described as a ‘partnership’, where this is understood to
involve ‘a working relationship that is characterised by a shared sense of purpose, mutual respect
and the willingness to negotiate’ (Pugh et al 1987, quoted in Lister 2000: 228).
Like Perera (1995) writing about the experience of the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement with
donors, NGO activists in Nepal were critical of the inequality in status of INGO and NGO ‘partners’:
some spoke of a sense of degradation in relation to entering into relationships with INGOs. During
one NGO meeting, for instance, one participant, the director of a Nepali NGO, commented that ‘we
say CO-ordination, CO-ordination [with INGOs] but…’ and pushed his nose down with his hand.
The response from the floor suggested the feeling expressed by the NGO director was widely
shared. I asked my neighbour what the meaning of his gesture had been: ‘to have one’s nose cut’,
I was informed, ‘means one is humiliated. When one does something against one’s caste or
whenever one becomes ‘small”.
Accounts of what NGO members experienced as an infraction of social protocol were not
uncommon. They would recall grudgingly occasions when the INGO representative had been not
17
(Federation of Dalit Organisations) or BASE (Backward Society Education) were examples of highly esteemed NGOs run by,
respectively, untouchables and Tharu people.
18
This is also the case for the other areas of influence identified by Stewart, namely, a decreased accountability to the grassroots as the
distancing of the tasks of resource generation from the beneficiary community means that NGOs become less vulnerable to grassroots
criticism; a corruption of their ideological orientation, as NGOs turn away from political mobilisation and towards the implementation of
politically neutral projects.
10
of equal – but a lower – standing compared with the NGO representative s/he was to visit;
countless times an INGO project officer was sent to meet or would receive an NGO director;
countless times also an evaluation team’s donor representatives would stay in better lodgings,
apart from the team’s NGO representatives; and many a time a donor employee - a volunteer, an
advisor, would be caught ‘putting their opinions everywhere’ and disregard organisational protocol,
contacting staff directly and not consulting NGO management in evaluation exercises, or calling
upon any member of staff rather than an appointed individual.
As often noted elsewhere, NGOs resented the burdensome demands of accounting and reporting
required by the donor: the endless evaluation and monitoring exercises; reports, monthly,
quarterly, annual; field visits by representatives of the INGO; and other ‘rituals of verification’19.
NGO members also regretted the unilateral nature of such rituals; that they could not ask the donor
about such topics as their past experience or their track record in working with local partners.
Another point of contention was the composition of ‘fact finding teams’, and the way evaluation
exercises were carried out. Evaluation missions rarely involved representatives from both the
NGO and its donor. Stories abounded of INGO visitors making rash and uninformed judgements
on the NGO’s activities, sometimes leading to a breakdown in the relation between the NGO and
its donor.
Activists also bitterly pointed to the lack of interest, on the part of donors, in documenting the NGO
sector’s achievements and the role and contribution of the considerable voluntary component of
the local NGO sector. The knowledge generated through monitoring and evaluation exercises
served primarily the interests of donors, underplaying local and non-financial contributions to
development, while highlighting that of donor organisations, building the latter’s ‘name’
(‘reputation’)20 – rather than that of local organisations.
Donors’ influence on the NGOs’ priorities for development were also noted, as elsewhere (Fowler
1991; Bebbington and Farrington 1993a; Crawford 2003), although this point tended to be
underplayed by NGO directors, who expressed confidence in their ability to find donors whose
priorities they shared or negotiate rather than passively accept the terms and priorities set out by
the donor. One director for instance explained that a donor had been alarmed by the NGO’s
proposal to use pesticides in their agricultural programmes. The amendment of the proposal
through the addition of the word ‘judicious’ (use of pesticides) resulted in the project being
approved for funding.
The view of the NGO as relatively powerless in INGO-NGO relationships was a central element of
the discourses of INGO dominance or NGO addiction. In the following section, I outline two
further idioms for constituting INGO-NGO relationships, namely those of guardianship and
hospitality. In contrast to the languages of dominance and addiction, NGO agency in relation to
power features more centrally in the latter discourses.
5. questioning power: guardianship and hospitality in INGO-NGO relations
Guardianship, found to have been characteristic of colonial relations, is not uncommonly
encountered in development settings (Manzo 1995; Gardner and Lewis 1996). It is less negative
in tone than the languages of ‘addiction’ or coercion used to represent INGO-NGO relations of
dependency. Guardianship, Manzo observed, presupposes a view of the weaker party as a
growing child (1995) who will eventually be set free from the government of their parents. Here, it
also featured an element of nurturing, of benevolence, and was used to plead with donors for
continued or enhanced support, reminding them of their responsibilities towards NGOs. In one
instance, during an INGO organised partnership seminar, the leader of one NGO made a very
public plea to the members of the donor organisation that the INGO reconsider their withdrawal of
support. ‘[donor] is like our godfather; we are orphans without [donor]…one development worker
[from the INGO] got a bad impression, there was no representative of [NGO] on the evaluation
team and there were complications. [donor] listens to the DWs too much’.
Like the idiom of addiction, guardianship acknowledged the dependence of NGOs on their donor;
in addition, the language guardianship was also one where, as Pottier (2003) found elsewhere, the
19
The term is from Power (1997).
20
NGO resentment here is understandable when it is realised that the accumulation of symbolic capital, or ‘reputation’, was an important
motivation for founding an NGO (Heaton 2001). An issue here too is difference in how donors and NGOs conceive of the ‘rewards’ of
development work.
11
discourse of control became one of entitlement, questioning the locus and to some extent, the
direction of power. But it was in the language of hospitality that this reversal was most effectively
carried out.
The paper begins with a description of a visit by a team from an INGO to a project it was funding.
In it, I describe the preparation for the visit, in the days leading up to the event and on the day
itself. I write about the way in which we went to site to ensure a good turnout at the meeting and
drew upon the goodwill of several eminent persons (the headmistress of a local school, the ward
chairman amongst others) in the process. As I was making notes of the visit with which I
introduced this paper two points stood out: one, the extent to which, as with most painstakingly
staged performances, the sense of ease, the internal solidarity of the NGO, the closeness of
beneficiary and NGO staff, had been crafted at great effort. Secondly, I was struck by the fact that
this exercise in creating a good impression of the NGO for the INGO was concerned with ensuring
that the team had a pleasant visit. There was no sense that trying to portray a realistic field
situation was the name of the game that day, nor was there ever a sense that we were ‘faking it’. It
all seemed as though the facts of the project, in spite of the stated visit aims, were not what the
visit was about. The concerns on everyone’s lips had to do with how best to receive the team and
causing them as little hardship as possible. This involved creating an environment with which,
NGO members felt, the foreign members of the team would be familiar; in the case this meant
serving pre-packaged foods (biscuits, cartons of fruit juice) and higher quality locally available
foodstuffs (fruit, rice), and arranging for each member of the team to have his/her own individual
room. In this setting, hospitality provided the main idiom through which NGOs conceived and
constructed their relationship with their donor. The status of visitors/evaluators as guests, as
persons-to-be-entertained was at times even more explicit: during my time in EEDC, it was not
uncommon that my stay in remote project areas would turn into one extended fête, with culture
show following welcome party following being dragged to partake of local festivities, wherever they
happened to be. In all this, the NGO’s local staff acted as our enthusiastic hosts, and without
having to secure approval from the ‘centre’.
The ‘child-parent’ idiom for constructing INGO-NGO relationships was far more visible in INGONGO encounters in the Kathmandu-based or ‘partnership meetings’, 5* events, generally, events
that took place on the INGO’s ‘territory’. In the context of NGO-INGO conventions, NGO members’
a little-too-obvious enjoyment of the luxury of these conventions contrasted with INGO ease and
betrayed their unfamiliarity with the setting, their own lack of savoir faire. This was all the more
striking in the case of members from ‘indigenous’ organisations and field staff, as opposed to CO
staff from ‘elite NGOs’.
Hamilton, commenting on the overwhelming power of northern organisations in relation to the NGO
sector in Georgia argued ‘the NGO sector is a cultural world of its own, shaped by rules and
practices determined by donors…It is the world of grants, proposals, projects, plans and reports
that emerge from and are embedded in the norms, values and ways of working of the donor
community’ (2000: 51). In the Nepali case, the world of NGOs was more than a world of projects
and proposals: it was also a world of fieldwork.
Materially, physically, INGO members could hardly disguise their discomfort when ‘in the field’.
Their ‘high living standards’ was also their weakness. As I suggest in the opening vignette, INGO
staff were thought accustomed to a ‘high living standard’, unable to go for long without facilities
such as electricity, running water, motorised transport, cutlery, luxury items such as fruit, packet
biscuits and bottled water. Prior to the arrival of the team in ‘the team visit’, staff toyed with the
idea of ‘making [donor representatives] see what difficult conditions we work under’ - and demands
for wage increases were firmly lodged at the back of staff minds here. But if they could not bring
themselves to put their guests through any form of hardship, they were clearly aware of their
position of strength in relation to the donor in such instances. In the field, then, the direction of
power seemed reversed – or at least, more easily reversible – as lack of INGO competence was
highlighted. The ‘parent’ had become the child, or rather, the parent had become the guest and
the child, the host. In the language of hospitality, the INGO-as-guest was still in a position of
relative superiority in relation to the host; the complicity of the NGO in the constitution of the INGO
as powerful, in a manner described by Scott (1990), was more obvious to field staff and this power
more fragile than that experienced as ‘addiction’.
12
I became aware of instances where an NGO had capitalised on the relative field incompetence of
donors to loosen the grip of their donor. One of the NGOs in the study moved their headquarters
out of the large bazaar in which it and the offices of numerous INGOs and GOs were located, and
to a more remote village site. Difficult of access – on the first visit, at least – and uncomfortable of
sojourn – because of the very ‘basic’ facilities (no running water, electricity etc). This was
accompanied by more explicit strategies of evasion – simply not informing the donor of visits or
plans by senior management. But the basic nature of the facilities in the CO also acted as a
deterrent for INGO representatives who expressed a dislike for ‘roughing it’. After the move, most
important meetings took place here. Here, in effect, relative poverty of INGO staff in the cultural
capital necessary to adapt to the rigours of the field had contributed to a partial reversal of the
direction of power, and INGO staff (and frequently, CO staff) found themselves the weaker party.
6. Concluding remarks
DSA: explore the notion of power in relation to relative positions of northern and southern NGOs as
well as individuals within NGOs; understand the political nature of relations between and within
organisations, including the many different factions within the NGO itself. (nature of relations
between hq and FO).
In this paper, I sought to develop, through ethnographic material collected among NGOs in Nepal,
a more nuanced view of development NGOs and their relations with donors.
First I tried to fragment the NGO, highlighting the differences between FO and CO, social, material,
as well as functional. I described the CO as a broker in some of the NGO’s most important
relationships, poised between field office and donors, rather than the apex of series of
hierarchically ordered offices and field sites. I also showed the CO to be less ‘in control’ than
management would have liked or claimed. While the negotiations and compromises needed for
the ‘accomplishment of rule’ (Li 1999) are increasingly being acknowledged in relation to donorrecipient relationships in development settings, I suggested the same obtained in the case of FOCO relations.
I described the various skills, capacities, knowledges and ‘savoir faire’ required for engagement in
development work in Nepal and their distribution in NGO space; I argued that CO staff generally
possessed greater amounts of the cultural capital needed to engage the donor (eg writing skills,
English language, familiarity with the world of 5 star hotels), while FO staff as a whole was
generally better endowed with the capital necessary for field practice (knowing how to walk, to
mobilise etc).
Second, looking at relationships with donors, and noting the importance of links with foreign
organisations for the sector, I considered the case for INGO cultural hegemony and NGO mimicry.
I sought to bring qualification, here, to the view that NGOs ‘shop around’ for discourses and
practices on the donor circuit (as expressed by Watts 2001), showing that NGOs had to maintain a
delicate balancing act between being close and too closely identified with donors.
I then sought to highlight differences between the FO and CO again, in terms of how they related
to donors.
I tried to show how FO and CO as ngdo settings afforded very different material and symbolic
resources for the construction of INGO-NGO relationships. I showed that both FO and CO were
engaged with donors, although they did so in different capacities and a different level of intensity.
Economically, and in terms of time, engaging the donor represented a greater investment for the
FO than the CO. However, interaction with the donor did not occur with the same frequency as in
the CO, neither did it require the same kind of emotional investment, the ‘loss of face’ frequently
experienced by CO members in their interactions with donor representatives.
I also argued that certain cultural idioms drawn upon by actors as they constructed relationships
with donors were more salient in certain settings than in others; specifically, that idioms of
guardianship prevailed in CO-donor relationships while idioms of hospitality prevailed in FO-donor
relationships. It was in particular the fact that the NGO world was a ‘world of fieldwork’ and not just
one of ‘proposal writing’ that gave the FO the upper hand, to some degree, in NGO-donor
relationships.
Finally, I sought to show that if donors were generally in a position of power in relation to NGOs,
13
this power was not always and everywhere experienced as irreversible or ineluctable.
To return to the concern expressed at the beginning of the paper, then: I hope to have shown that
the view of NGO-donor relationships an ‘exchange of deference and compliance for the patron’s
provision’, is inaccurate if it assumes a single modality for INGO-NGO relations of power and
overestimates the internal coherence and unity of organisations.
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