Willem Elbers

Keeping body and soul together: southern NGOs’ strategic responses to donor constraints

Most Southern Non-Governmental Organizations (SNGOs) depend on donor agencies for their survival. To qualify for donor funding, SNGOs typically have to meet a range of funding conditions. Critics argue that donor requirements may have undesirable consequences. Based on qualitative research involving 41 SNGOs in India and Ghana, this article explores (1) the (potentially) adverse effects of donor conditions on SNGOs and (2) the strategies that SNGOs employ to deal with these conditions. We demonstrate that certain donor conditions are difficult to reconcile with a view of development that emphasizes local ownership and a strong and autonomous civil society. We also show that SNGOs employ a multitude of strategies to deal with adverse donor conditions, highlighting that they are not powerless in their relations with donors. Yet, these strategies are not always available to all organizations and may have undesired consequences. Points for practitioners Private development aid is increasingly characterized by pressure for accountability and a tightening of funding arrangements. Donors supporting SNGOs need to take into consideration that their funding conditions may have a range of undesirable consequences. Our study offers an overview of these consequences, enabling donor agencies to systematically review their conditions in the light of their potentially adverse effects. In addition, our study shows that – when confronted when unworkable donor conditions – SNGOs employ strategic behaviour. This is particularly problematic when SNGOs resort to manipulating the perception of donors resulting in the creation of a paper reality.

Decision Making in Partnerships for Development Explaining the Influence of Local Partners

This article examines decision making in the partnerships between three private aid agencies and their local partners in Ghana, India, and Nicaragua. Drawing upon a mixed methodology, the article maps the relative influence of these partners vis-à-vis the agencies and reveals the processes underlying decision-making outcomes. Three main findings are advanced: (a) Institutional rules regulate per topic the extent in which partners can participate in the decision making, ranging from exclusion to full decision-making authority; (b) four clusters of decision-making topics were identified reflecting the different degrees to which partners are allowed to participate in the decision making; and (c) while partners’ ability to influence decisions above all is affected by the institutional rules, some have more influence than others depending on their organizational capacity and their respective project-officer.

Chapter 2 The impact of Utz certification on smallholder farmers in Uganda

Sustainability standards like Fair Trade (FT) or Utz certified are widely regarded as a promising way of improving smallholder coffee farmer welfare. As yet, the impact of certification remains poorly understood. The current chapter presents the findings of the study regarding the impact of Utz certification in Uganda.15 The study is based on two waves of data collection carried out in 2009 and 2012 with farmers belonging to two cooperative organisations that received support from the Dutch Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) Solidaridad: Kulika (located in Kamuli district) and Ankole Coffee Processors Ltd. (located in Ibanda district). This study aims to provide a broad comparison between farmers and their organisations selling Utz certified or conventional coffee. In line with this objective, the guiding research question is: What is the impact of Utz involvement at producer and producer organisation level?

Optimizing WebPage Interest

In the rapidly evolving and growing environment of the internet, web site owners aim to maximize interest for their web site. In this article we propose a model, which combines the static structure of the internet with activity based data, to compute an interest based ranking. This ranking can be used to gain more insight into the flow of users over the internet, optimize the position of a web site and improve strategic decisions and investments. The model consists of a static centrality based component and a dynamic activity based component. The components are used to create a Markov Model in order to compute a ranking.