NGOs should rethink donor syndrome

By Badru Walusansa

Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) in Uganda play a critical role in influencing socio-economic and political development. 

The year 1980 arguably marked the evolution of NGOs in Uganda, that time, many NGOs sprouted out to address fundamental issues like HIV/AIDs, orphaned children and poverty. 

In the years that followed, other organizations emerged and enjoyed the NGO space by focusing on issues of human rights, environment, governance, corruption, emancipation and education. 

Since time immemorial funding of local NGOs has to a large extent been underpinned by donations which continue to be same. 

Every single day, a new NGO is started, with or without a cause, yet donor support is shrinking at a faster rate.  The last five years have been witnessed by withdraw of major donors out of the country followed by donor cuts hence affecting the operation of many local NGOs. 

An NGO sector that is purely dependant on donor support is a recipe for absence of NGO power and diminishing local ownership. 

According to Micheal (2004), NGO power is the ability of local NGOs to set their own priorities, define their own agendas and exert their influence on the international community, even in the face of opposition from government, donors, international NGOs and other developments. 

More still, local beneficiaries attach little or no ownership to donor support projects. Such beneficiaries think donor money benefits individual interests' more than collective interests. 

Sometimes the conditionalities on donations are far reaching and can contradict with the ethnos of the beneficiaries. 

In 2006, a Danish artist Kristian Von Hornsleth initiated a project in Buteyongera village in Mukono district and supplied livestock to the impoverished people in the event that they would legally drop their names for his, "Hornsleth". Such disdain should propel a rethinking into the donor syndrome. 

For me this should be the time for local NGOs to confront the most pressing questions and offer practical alternatives to such. Can NGOs thrive without donor support? And how can NGOs break the donor syndrome? 

NGOs with membership platforms possess potential for self-sustenance through raising subscriptions. Such membership platforms create local ownership, however, need to be strengthened. 

Ugandans have passion for voluntarism and enjoy contributing towards a cause, whether it directly affects them or not. In the recent past we have witnessed fundraising drives on which people contributed resources to better the lives of others. 

Fundraising of local resources can work for NGOs as long as they don't compromise the accountability question- a challenge for many local NGOs as Arthur Larok (2013) argues in his working paper, "Climbing the Credibility Ladder; Civil Society, Donor Support and the Accountability Challenge in Uganda". 

NGOs should forge partnerships with private enterprises through corporate social responsibility. The NGO sector in Uganda should take advantage of the growing private sector to support their outreach programmes. 

We need to advocate for the culture of "reciprocity" and this should intrinsically be inculcated among the people. For example, we have so many successful persons whose education was supported by organizations; if we challenged such persons to support such organizations, a long lasting impact would be created in society without necessarily waiting for donor monies.  

Writer is a commonwealth correspondent