Why ngos are effective

If the NGO used these redirected political and financial resources more effectively than the government had, then the villagers should end up with better programs and services than the government had been providing, leaving them happier and healthier. However, if the NGO did a subpar job, then villagers could be left with mediocre new services and weakened government institutions to fall back on, leaving them worse off.

Moreover, the researchers theorized that the effects of the NGO-sponsored services may not be the same for every villager—and that it might depend on whether a villager was in the same political party as the local government. Since governments often implement policies that favor members of their own party, villagers who are not members of the ruling party may already benefit less from the government services.

So if the NGO successfully improved public institutions, and made them more accessible to everyone, as it aspired to do, then members of nondominant parties—who were previously missing out on public benefits—should be better off. On the other hand, if the NGO failed to improve public institutions and crowded out government institutions, then everyone would be worse off, with those who had historically relied more on those institutions—members of the dominant party—suffering the most.

They tracked governance and socioeconomic changes via two rounds of household, community, and leadership surveys conducted five years apart. Both sets of researchers found that the NGOs created unintended negative consequences in the villages they entered, especially when the organization was replicating existing government services. In Uganda, Deserranno and Qian found that the presence of the NGO produced very different results in villages that had previously had a government health worker versus those with no health worker.

In the latter, the arrival of the NGO worker boosted health services and reduced infant mortality. Among villages that did have a government worker pre-NGO arrival, however, crowd-out was common: the NGO hired away that worker in 39 percent of cases. And when these workers moved over to the NGO, it produced severe consequences for villagers: the likelihood that villagers received care from any health worker declined by Strikingly, these villages also experienced an increase in infant mortality after NGO entry.

In total, across all villages, the NGO had zero effect on the provision of health services on average. Deserranno and Qian theorize that these unfortunate outcomes might in part be attributable to the commercial incentives. Previous research by Deserranno and others have found that while government workers devote an average of 10 hours per week to the delivery of health services, employees at this NGO spend an average of 14 hours per week on the job—but only seven of those hours go to free health services, with the other seven going to sales work.

In Ghana, there was reason for optimism that the participatory development NGO would achieve its lofty goals: In villages that began working with the NGO, Karlan and Udry found that villagers became more likely to attend community meetings and contribute to projects, while trust in leaders and perceptions of accountability also improved.

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We use cookies to optimise your user experience and to analyse site usage. Should you change your mind later, you can update your settings and delete previously accepted cookies via your browser. When the case NGOs identify research questions through their service delivery experience that they want to pursue, they are sometimes unable to take these questions forward; they face obligations to undertake research they see as low priority and constraints that prevent desired research being undertaken.

Headquarters offices have a particular influence on research agendas in Marl. Sometimes, the headquarters propose topics, particularly for multi-country studies. Some proposed topics are considered relevant by Malawi country staff and the proposals are invitations that can be rejected; the research coordinator emphasised that they consider suggestions from the headquarters in relation to national priorities:.

However, staff in Malawi appeared hesitant to reject headquarters proposals, even when topics are not their priority.

Most ideas from the Malawi team have been approved. So our Malawi office is able to develop their own links with research institutions, their own research agenda, their own research priorities. This decentralisation increases the potential role of country-level service delivery experience in the research agenda.

In more flexible projects, donors set a broad research agenda within which NGOs can propose topics. One example is research by Flint on counselling needs among young people. The most flexible situations involved NGOs identifying topics and just consulting donors.

This applies to research in Chalk funded by one long-term donor. The research manager and donor both emphasised that the donor does not tell Chalk what research to do.

However, Chalk need to find topics of interest to the donor, and this constrains the agenda. Closely linked with the influence of donors and headquarters, availability of funding affects which research questions are pursued. The effect of funding in determining research agendas varies sharply across the NGOs because of different financial situations. Flint depends almost entirely on donors and provides the clearest example of funding as a constraint.

Several research ideas, some based on service delivery experience, were delayed or abandoned due to lack of funds. The Malawi office receives funding from the headquarters based on annual plans that can include research and additional funds can be requested as needed. Although plans must receive headquarters approval, this internal funding is more secure than applying to donors and approval is likely, as explained in relation to the headquarters influence.

Beyond absolute availability of funds, the amounts available also affect which research questions are followed.

In Chalk, some research funding is secured through a long-term grant, but the limited budget for each study affects topic selection. Some questions of interest to Chalk service delivery staff are judged impractical given available funds.

A final issue affecting the role of service delivery experience in producing relevant research is whether questions originating from service delivery lead to relevant research findings. This is partly because, as explained in the Background, relevance is a debated concept.

As described in the Background, some academics and civil society organisations contest this instrumental approach to relevance, arguing for research that addresses wider frameworks and discourses rather than immediate programmatic needs [ 42 , 43 ].

Such different views on appropriate goals for research preclude any automatic link between questions based on service delivery and relevance. Research initiated by an NGO based on their service delivery and seen as relevant by some people may be considered irrelevant by other staff or partners.

Varied ideas within NGOs are a particular issue for Chalk because their broad organisational agenda means staff have diverse areas of expertise, for example, HIV, nutrition or sanitation. Staff are sometimes unaware of research gaps in other areas, and see research on their own subject as more important.

Expertise in specific areas also makes it harder to understand research on other topics, discouraging staff from reading research reports:. This difficulty in understanding can mean staff dismiss studies as irrelevant without even knowing the findings. Some Marl research is considered highly relevant by some external organisations. However, external interest varies between studies and audiences. Describing district government interest in research on a health intervention introduced by Marl, the research officer said there was:.

The link between questions from service delivery and relevant findings is also affected by subsequent stages of the research process after identification of questions, including design, data collection, analysis and writing, and dissemination.

Weak data collection, analysis and report writing can also mean research does not deliver expected outcomes. Quality of data collection and analysis also affects external perceptions of relevance.

Finally, perceived relevance also depends on dissemination approaches, in particular whether findings are discussed with staff to explain their value. In Chalk, internal dissemination relies largely on circulating research reports by email. Even when staff read the reports, they sometimes fail to understand why findings are useful or how they could be applied, particularly given varied expertise. Experiences from the case NGOs suggest relationships between service delivery experience and relevant research agendas are more varied and constrained than suggested by some of those calling for NGO involvement in research.

Research questions are not only relevant when generated through service delivery and questions generated through service delivery are not always relevant; service delivery staff may lack capacity or motivation to identify research questions; NGOs may lack the control and funding to pursue research questions from service delivery; and questions generated through service delivery do not necessarily lead to relevant results.

On the first of these findings, the case NGOs do not see their own service delivery experience as the only relevant input to research agendas; they value other sources of ideas, such as external researchers or policy networks, and consider additional criteria such as existing literature or interest among partners.

While not apparent in discussions of NGO research, this approach of considering multiple criteria and consulting different stakeholders follows guidelines on research prioritisation [ 4 , 47 , 48 ]. Second, involvement in service delivery is not enough to prompt research ideas, and can indeed limit capacity to suggest research questions. Service delivery staff may lack time to identify potential topics or discuss research agendas. They may be so focused on delivering activities or accustomed to organisational models that they do not envisage research to assess current service delivery or pilot alternatives, or consider wider discussions where research could contribute.

Similar challenges are described in literature on NGO learning and innovation, which notes that hectic schedules, socialisation into organisational thinking and a focus on rigid delivery plans characterised by logframes and donor targets can constrain reflection on practice and development of new ideas [ 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 ]. While service delivery staff can identify research questions through their work, this requires conditions such as motivation, time, awareness of organisational assumptions and alternative approaches, knowledge of policy debates and existing literature, and familiarity with research.

The potential absence of these conditions among service delivery staff is supported by experience from other NGOs, with literature noting gaps in time to conceptualise research [ 55 ], skills to define questions [ 7 , 56 ], awareness of existing research [ 57 ], knowledge of wider policy [ 56 ], and in prioritisation of research [ 7 , 56 ].

Supporting input from service delivery staff also requires an appropriate process to gather research ideas such as workshops or meetings that provide time and allow dialogue that enables reflection and creative thinking [ 50 , 54 ]. Third, when service delivery does generate research questions that NGOs want to pursue, NGOs vary in their ability to follow these research priorities.

Research agendas in all organisations consider costs, but for NGOs that rely on donor funding, financial constraints mean greater compromise between research priorities and donor interests.

This influence of donors on research agendas is reported for other NGOs [ 42 , 58 , 59 , 60 ], and follows a wider pattern of donor influence on NGO activities [ 61 , 62 , 63 ], including in Malawi [ 64 , 65 ]. Finally, research questions that are based on service delivery experience and seen as relevant by NGO staff do not necessarily produce relevant research findings.

Priorities vary within NGOs and between organisations. Different interests mean any research, whether or not based on service delivery, is likely to be considered more relevant by some groups than others.

The subjective nature of relevance is widely discussed in literature on the politics of research [ 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 ], but less clearly acknowledged in suggestions that NGOs can identify relevant questions. The perceived relevance of findings also depends on the research process, including design, data collection and analysis, and dissemination strategies. The impact of these later stages on relevance is recognised in the wider international health and development literature, including guidelines on research uptake [ 1 , 66 , 67 , 68 ].

While this article focuses on NGOs, the value of input from service delivery practitioners to research agendas is highlighted more broadly within the health research literature and guidelines on priority setting [ 4 , 47 , 48 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 ]. While in no sense denying the instrumental and ethical value of involving practitioners in research prioritisation, the case NGO experiences suggest that practitioners may face difficulty in identifying research topics, and that they may welcome topics identified by researchers.

Attention to demand may be more effective if it involves support for the practitioners asked to identify questions, and dialogue rather than a one-way flow of requests from policy or programme managers.

Similar conclusions have been reached in the different context of United Kingdom health research, where experiences of research commissioning indicate difficulties for practitioners and policymakers in specifying research needs, and the value of shared discussion between researchers and research users to define questions [ 75 , 76 ].

These findings are based on a small number of NGOs. The case NGOs had diverse organisational contexts, and literature on NGOs indicates similarity between significant characteristics of the case organisations and other NGOs, for example, donor relationships. This suggests the findings may apply more widely. However, further research would be needed to test and review the conclusions in other organisational contexts.

In particular, the findings suggest that ideas from service delivery should be considered alongside other criteria and other sources of research questions and that service delivery practitioners may need support to identify topics from their experience. Further, NGOs need adequate freedom and funds to pursue research agendas they see as relevant, and promoting relevance depends on steps throughout the research process. The feasibility and effectiveness of these recommendations will depend on particular organisational contexts and, in some cases, on wider institutional changes.

For example, steps to encourage identification of research questions among service delivery staff, such as enabling exposure beyond service delivery and providing research training, may be more effective when accompanied by broader measures to support organisational learning. Promoting learning within NGOs is challenging due to the complexity of development as well as the constraints of time, socialisation and project frameworks noted previously [ 77 ].

However, there are documented strategies to support reflection and help staff recognise gaps in current practice or alternative approaches, such as providing senior leadership, space to discuss difficult issues, and time, resources and goals for learning within project plans [ 50 , 54 ]. Wider institutional contexts also affect scope for academic partners to ask NGOs about their research priorities.

There are practical barriers related to time and funding. For example, effective consultation on research questions often requires investment in meetings to develop open relationships and discuss ideas, but funding is often unavailable for this early stage of research design [ 78 ]. For example, academic job security may depend on theoretical contributions, international relevance or a singular disciplinary focus, requirements that do not always align neatly to questions identified by NGO practitioners [ 39 , 79 ].

Academics can also confront the same obligation to meet donor interests faced by NGOs, with research funding calls having pre-set agendas that limit opportunities to respond to NGO suggestions.

Working with NGO staff to identify research questions may be more feasible within the context of long-term partnerships that provide time and trust to discuss potential topics and find relevant funding opportunities [ 78 ]. For example, disagreements often related to the specific focus within a broadly agreed research topic, suggesting some flexibility to adapt the research to NGO interests.

While broader structures will affect possible roles for service delivery experience in research agendas, the following recommendations are proposed as modest steps for NGOs, academics and donors to consider in identifying research questions.

Do not restrict identification of research questions to internal consideration of service delivery experience. External researchers may have useful ideas for possible topics. Consultation with other stakeholders and target audiences, such as government, can help ensure research questions have wider relevance and do not duplicate existing reports.

To support relevance, consider processes at different stages of research, not just identification of questions. Relevance of findings depends on, for example, the specific research design, producing research of sufficient quality to meet research aims, and using dissemination approaches that explain the significance of findings. On the latter, sharing findings with staff through discussion rather than email can help them appreciate the implications. In seeking input to research agendas from service delivery staff, consider what support is required.

Depending on existing capacities and motivation, the following steps may be useful:. Consider using discussion rather than relying on email to ask staff for ideas. Discussion might overcome barriers related to time, motivation and skills to identify possible topics. Given that staff may find it difficult to formulate questions, try asking about problems they are encountering rather than research questions.

Exposure to wider discussions and experiences sometimes helps identification of research topics by challenging assumptions about current practice and supporting awareness of wider debates. Support exposure through, for example, meetings with other organisations or discussions of existing literature. Service delivery staff may be unaware of existing research that could answer their questions, and consequently the topics they suggest might not be research gaps.

Supporting staff familiarity with existing research can avoid duplicating existing research and help fill knowledge gaps. This support could draw on existing resources about evidence literacy, which provide guidelines for identifying and assessing relevant research [ 57 , 81 ]. Research training for example, using workshops and mentoring to plan and implement small studies may help staff to identify research questions, by supporting appreciation of research, providing time to think about research, and assisting formulation of research questions.

Giving programme staff responsibility for identifying research topics may encourage their input. However, depending on existing skills, this may need balancing with support for capacity to identify appropriate topics.

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