Accountability, Strategy, and

International Non-Governmental Organizations

By
L. David Brown and Mark H. Moore

The Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations

The Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University

April 2001
Working Paper No. 7

This paper can be downloaded without charge from the

Social Science Research Network Electronic Paper Collection:
http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=XXXXXX

L. David Brown is the Associate Director of International Programs at the Hauser Center
and a Visiting Professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government. Mark
H. Moore is the Director of the Hauser Center and the Guggenheim Professor of Criminal
Justice Policy and Management at the Kennedy School.
 Abstract

Increased prominence and greater influence expose international non-governmental

development and environmental organizations (INGOs) to increased demands for

accountability from a wide variety of stakeholders—donors, beneficiaries, staffs, and

partners among others. This paper focuses on developing the concept of INGO

accountability, first as an abstract concept and then as a strategic idea with very different

implications for different INGO strategies. We examine those implications for INGOs

that emphasize service delivery, capacity-building, and policy influence. We propose

that INGOs committed to service delivery may owe more accountability to donors and

service regulators; capacity-building INGOs may be particularly obligated to clients

whose capacities are being enhanced; and policy influence INGOs may be especially

accountable to political constituencies and to influence targets. INGOs that are

expanding their activities to include new initiatives may need to reorganize their

accountability systems to implement their strategies effectively.

 Accountability, Strategy, and
International Non-Governmental Organizations

by
L. David Brown and Mark H. Moore

I. Introduction

International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs) have emerged as

important actors in two important, interconnected realms. First, at the national level,

INGO's have taken on significant roles in promoting the social, economic, and political

development of the particular countries in which they are operating. Their enlarged

efforts provide disaster relief, deliver on-going social services, build local capacities for

self-help, promote self-governance, and enhance the political and policy influence of

marginalized populations (Fisher, 1993; Clark, 1991; Edwards and Hulme, 1996).

Second, at the international level, INGOs have been increasingly important in creating a

kind of international civil society, animating informal but powerful normative regimes,

and influencing the practices and policies of international institutions (Boli, 1999; Fox

and Brown, 1998; Khagram, Riker and Sikkink, 2000; Florini, 2000).

Increased prominence and greater influence expose INGOs to closer scrutiny and

sharper demands for accountability. Donors demand that the INGOs be accountable for

the integrity, efficiency, and impact of programs that they have funded. Beneficiaries

press INGOs to live up to their rhetoric about fostering locally-determined development

rather than impose their own priorities. Staffs expect INGOs to live up to the high

purposes that drew their commitment to the enterprise. Partners whom INGO's have

recruited in their efforts to achieve their national and international goals (such as other

NGOs, community-based organizations, government agencies, businesses) expect the

1
INGOs to live up to promises they made in forging their partnerships. Even those who

are the targets of INGOs demand a kind of accountability from them; they want to know

to whom the INGOs are accountable and for whom the INGOs speak so that they can

gauge the force and legitimacy of the claims that these organizations are making against

them. In short, many different stakeholders call INGOs to account for their activities

(e.g., Edwards, 2000).

The purpose of this paper is to develop our understanding of the concept of

accountability for INGOs—particularly INGOs focused on development and

environmental protection. We begin by presenting the idea of accountability as an

abstract ideal. In this conception, accountability is morally good, and it is unambiguous

to whom and for what INGOs should be accountable. In the second part of the paper, we

present accountability not as an abstract, fixed moral ideal, but instead as a strategic idea

to be formulated and acted upon by an INGO with the goal of better understanding and

achieving its strategic purposes. In this conception, accountability is both morally good

and practically useful. And, instead of there being one right answer of how best to

structure accountability, one gives a contingent answer. Accountability choices should

advance the strategy an INGO is trying to execute. In the third part of the paper, we

show how three different activities or strategies embraced by INGOs—service delivery,

capacity-building, and political advocacy—require quite different structures of

accountability. This suggests that as INGOs change the balance of their efforts across

these different strategies, they have to change their conceptions of accountability, as well

as the ways they make themselves accountable to their various stakeholders.

2
II. The Concept of Accountability

We say that an actor (whether an individual or an organization) is "accountable"

when the actor recognizes that it has made a promise to do something, and has accepted a

moral and legal responsibility to do its best to fulfill that promise (Cutt and Murray,

2000; Paul, 1992; Najam, 1996; Fox and Brown, 1998).

Because accountability involves a promise to perform, it is natural to think of

accountability as a relationship among two or more actors. In principle, however, an

actor could feel and act as though it were accountable to an abstract purpose. An INGO

for example, could reasonably say that it was accountable for the achievement of some

transcendent moral value such as the advancement of human rights, or the continuation of

dedicated service to the disadvantaged, or for responding effectively to some urgent

human need such as hunger or genocide. They might feel accountable to these moral

goals independent of the demands of funders, partners, or even clients. In this view,

primary accountability is to “the cause,” and expectations of others are important only

insofar as they align with this important duty.

More often, however, we think of accountability as a concrete relationship among

two or more parties. We say that one party is accountable to another for the execution of

some duty promised by the former. For example, an INGO may be accountable: a) to

donors for the proper handling of donated resources, b) to clients and beneficiaries for

the delivery of high-quality, responsive services, c) to staff for continued support of the

mission that drew them to the organization, or c) to partners and allies for living up to

commitments for action made in the course of developing and executing a joint project.

3
 The idea of accountability as a moral ideal may also include a requirement that an

actor make it easy for the stakeholders to monitor the extent to which it has lived up to its

promises. We can say, for example, that one actor is more accountable than a second is if

the first actor provides more information about his performance, or is more responsive to

stakeholder expectations and demands.

Obviously, the concrete structures and processes through which one actor

becomes accountable to another can vary on several different dimensions (Moore and

Gates, 1986). For example, the substantive terms of the agreement between two actors

can be more or less general, and more or less exacting. “Grants,” for example, typically

create substantive terms that impose only very general demands on the organizations.

"Contracts," on the other hand, are typically far more exacting. The substantive terms

can also vary as to whether they focus on desired end results (outcomes), or on the

activities that are expected to produce the results (activities or outputs).

Similarly, the accountability relationship may specify more or less onerous

reporting procedures. Some systems of accountability demand weekly accounting of

many detailed events; others work well with annual reporting on only a few dimensions.

Whatever the initial structure of the accountability, the terms can change over

time. Often, in the early phases of development initiatives when the tasks remain

unclear, it is hard to set clear expectations to which actors can be held strictly accountable

(Brown and Fox, 1998; Jordan and van Tuijl, 2000). Moreover, when relationships rest

on a general sense of shared purpose in which the partners trust each other’s good

intentions and capabilities, a more general “political responsibility” may be more

appropriate than detailed contracts (Jordan and van Tuijl, 2000). As more detailed

4
strategies evolve and specific responsibilities are accepted, however; or as trust is eroded

by misunderstandings and disappointed expectations; creating more specific terms of

accountability can become important.

The idea that accountability defines a relationship is important not only morally

and theoretically, but also as a practical reality, for the existence of the relationship is

important in enforcing the agreement. Commitments made to others create agents who

have stakes in enforcement. Of course, other attributes of the relationship – such as

power differences or degrees of trust – affect the extent to which the parties can hold each

other accountable. In some cases, organizations can ignore their accountability to

stakeholders who are not powerful enough to enforce their claims. But they do so at their

moral if not practical peril.

Much of the literature on accountability assumes two parties in a morally and

legally asymmetrical relationship. “Principal-agent” theory, for example, focuses on how

principals can hold agents accountable for performance that meets the principal’s

expectations (Fama and Jensen, 1983; Zeckhauser and Pratt, 1985). The normative

assumption in this formulation is that it is the principal's purposes that ought to be

faithfully realized through the partnership, not the agent's. Defections from the

principal’s purposes in the interests of the agent threaten both the moral integrity and

efficiency of this relationship. The practical challenge is to devise incentive schemes

(structures of accountability) that reliably motivate the agent to advance the principal's

interests.

For INGOs, however, we believe it is misleading to assess accountability in

principal-agent terms. The reasons are essentially two.

5
 First, INGOs are accountable to many different stakeholders, and it is not entirely

clear as a moral or legal matter which one of these stakeholders should be celebrated as

the principal whose preferences ought to be given the greatest weight. When one is

thinking in principal/agent terms it is natural to think that an INGO's principal is the

donor whose contributions sustain the INGO's activities. After all, they are the ones who

are providing the funds. They ought, as a moral and legal matter, to be able to say what

purposes the INGO should achieve. They are the ones who look most like the owners of

a firm that provided the implicit model for the principal/agent model.

Yet, it is not at all clear that INGOs should, as a moral or legal matter, give their

donors this pride of place. Organizations such as Oxfam, Amnesty International, and

CARE do make promises to donors. They say at the time that they solicit funds that they

will advance particular purposes and aid particular beneficiaries. In making such

promises, they make themselves accountable to the donors for the efficient and effective

pursuit of these aims. This poses no problems as long as the donor's purposes are closely

aligned with the organization's mission and its obligations to particular clients.

But in the course of executing their mission, organizations like Oxfam, Amnesty

International, and CARE, make additional promises. They promise clients and

beneficiaries that they can count on their assistance. They promise partners that they will

live up to specific agreements they made in joint projects. In making these promises they

become accountable to many stakeholders other than donors. Again, when all these

different accountabilities align, there is no difficulty. When, however, the expectations

and claims of the different stakeholders are not aligned, the INGO has to decide which of

the claims should be honored.

6
 In an important sense, it is that question that is answered when one of the

stakeholders is described as the principal, and the others simply as stakeholders. What it

means to be the principal is to be the stakeholder with the strongest moral and legal claim

on the assets and activities of the organization.

In the case of INGOs however, it is not clear which of the stakeholders should be

so honored. Should those who have the gold make the rules? Or, should those for whose

benefit the organization exists call the shots? And what room should be made for the

claims of those comrades in arms with whom one shares the responsibility for the larger

cause?

Note that one way to decide which of many stakeholders should be viewed as the

principal whose aims ought to be honored is simply on the basis of power. The more

powerful the stakeholder, the stronger the claim to be a principal. Prudence might well

support this judgment, since, by definition, there are important prices to be paid for

resisting the claims of powerful stakeholders. Yet, the difficulty is that many INGOs are

committed to changing the existing power relationships. They are, there at least in part,

to give their clients and beneficiaries a more powerful claim against the donors; to insist

that the funds available to the donor be used for the benefit of the clients in ways that the

clients think are best. To decide that the principal is the most powerful stakeholder

would be to sacrifice this important purpose of INGOs.

Of course, it is not easy for INGOs to challenge the power of those who provide

the funds they need to operate. In doing so, they run the risk that they will alienate

important sources of support, and lose their capacity to help the clients and beneficiaries

they seek to aid. Yet, many INGOs run these risks because they believe that their

7
mission requires them to do so. Oxfam-America, for example, refuses to take

government money on grounds that the government may insist on advancing its purposes

rather than those of Oxfam’s clients. It then uses the freedom it gains by relying on less

exacting donors to make its programs responsive to clients rather than funders. Other

organizations have emphasized the importance of remaining accountable to transnational

INGO alliances and the political and operational capacities such alliances represent rather

than yielding to the demands of particular donors.

The facts that INGOs have many different stakeholders to whom they might owe

some accountability, that the different stakeholders have different amounts of effective

power to insist that their expectations be satisfied, and that the INGO's often seek to re-

balance power relationships, lead to the conclusion that the decision about which

stakeholders should be viewed as the principal is hardly a straightforward question. With

this analysis, we can see that describing one stakeholder as the principal represents an

important judgement about the ordering of the stakeholder claims on organizational

performance. But it is not clear what principles or criteria one should use to order these

claims.

One could make such a judgment on a moral or ethical basis. That is, one could

decide that one stakeholder is more deserving than another; that a donor's claims deserve

to be taken seriously because he paid for them. One could also decide that a client's

claims should be emphasized because their satisfaction is the whole point of the

organization's efforts, or that a partner's claims should be met because they have earned

the right through faithful service.

8
 Alternatively, one could make the judgment on a legal basis. That is, one could

look at the law and determine which of the claims against the organization would be

given priority, if a court were asked to resolve the dispute. This would tend to give the

greatest weight to those with whom one had signed contracts, probably privileging

donors and partners over clients.

One could also decide the matter on a prudential basis. That is, one could look at

the consequences of honoring or resisting a claim on the survivability of the organization

in the future.

Or, finally, one could decide the matter as a matter of strategic judgment. That is,

one could decide how to balance moral, legal, and prudential concerns in a way that is

calculated to allow the organization to define and achieve its mission.

In the next section of this paper, we will argue that it is best for INGOs to think

about the issue of accountability not simply as an abstract, moral and legal issue, nor

simply as a prudential question about whom it is safe to ignore. We will instead argue it

as a key strategic issue that will help the organization define and achieve its highest

value.

III. Organizational Mission and Strategy in INGOs

INGO “accountability” must be understood partly as a legal and moral imperative,

but more importantly as a strategic choice. The issue of accountability arises because

various INGO stakeholders believe they have the moral and legal right (as well as the

effective power) to make claims on what the organization does with its bundle of assets.

The problem of accountability arises because the claims of the various stakeholders are

9
not necessarily coherently aligned with one another. Nor do they necessarily align

perfectly with the purposes of those that lead and staff the organizations. As a result, the

INGO’s leadership must make choices to embrace or resist particular stakeholder

demands.

These decisions about which stakeholder demands for accountability should be

embraced and which resisted can have a profound impact on the INGO’s mission,

strategy, and operations, since demands for accountability are potentially important

drivers of organizational behavior. If INGOs’ structures and systems of accountability

are aligned with the mission of the organization, as the leadership now understands it,

demands for accountability will neither reduce autonomy nor alter purposes. If, however,

the demands are at odds with organizational purposes (as defined by the current

leadership), the INGO may have to shield itself from those demands to pursue its “true”

purpose.

The difficulty, of course, is that resisting demands for accountability from specific

stakeholders can weaken their support. Funders may withdraw support to INGOs that are

seen as unwilling to be accountable for the efficient use of resources. Newspaper stories

that question the use of funds by child sponsorship INGOs like World Vision or Save the

Children, for example, can seriously harm their ability to raise funds from private donors.

Committed staff can stop working hard if the INGO fails to embody the values and

missions that brought them to the organization. Program partners may stop cooperating if

their expectations are not met. Losses such as these could hurt the INGO more than the

threatened deflection from its goals or purposes. Such losses could be large enough even

to threaten the organization’s survival.

10
 The implication, then, is that crafting an INGO mission and strategy is at least

partly a decision about structuring its accountabilities. The INGO effectively trades

accountability for support; by making itself accountable to the expectations of particular

stakeholders, the INGO earns their continued support.

The relationship between accountability and strategy becomes clearer if we use

the “strategic triangle” developed for positioning nonprofit organizations in dynamic

funding and task environments (Moore, 2000). Figure 1 presents the strategic triangle.

The points of the triangle are meant to focus attention on three crucial calculations

leaders must make if their organizations are to survive, produce socially valuable results,

and successfully adapt to changing circumstances.

The circle labeled “value” reminds INGO leaders that the INGO exists to

accomplish some public purpose. INGOs might have many purposes—improving the

lives of poor children, or building rural self-help organizations, or reducing

environmental pollution, or combating violations of human rights. The point is that the

INGO needs to tell a plausible story about the value it seeks to achieve and how it will do

so. The story provides a sense of purpose, helps mobilize and sustain support, and

creates a focus for developing and deploying the organization’s operational capacities

(Moore, 1995:Ch. 3).

The circle labeled “legitimacy and support” reminds INGO leaders that they must

be able to mobilize the political, legal, and financial support needed to achieve their

goals. In the for-profit sector, customers who buy the products and services a firm

produces confer both legitimacy and financial support. The customer's decision

11
 Figure 1: The Strategic Triangle

Support and Legitimacy

Value

Operational Capacity

to spend money on the organization's products and services simultaneously provides a

revenue stream that allows the organization to remain in operation (support), and

provides evidence that the organization is producing something that individuals value (a

kind of legitimacy). In the not-for-profit sector, however, the idea of “legitimacy and

support” is somewhat more complex (Moore, 2000). To a degree, “support” in the

nonprofit sector means the same thing that it does in the for profit sector: namely, a flow

of money and material resources that allows the organization to stay in operation.
Typically, however, only a small portion of INGO support comes from sales to paying

customers. Instead, INGO financial resources come from financial “contributors”—

individuals, or foundations, or governments—who are willing to pay for delivering

services to beneficiaries who cannot pay for the services themselves.

Dependence for financial support on “contributors” creates some important

accountability dilemmas for INGOs. First, it creates the possibility that differences

between the preferences of donors and clients might arise. Second, to the extent that

these differences do arise, the INGO faces the difficult ethical, legal, and strategic

question of to whom the INGO should make itself most accountable. The convenient

integration of accountabilities in the private sector concept of customers is dis-integrated

for INGOs who face potentially conflicting obligations to contributors on one hand, and

to clients on the other.

In the INGO context, the idea of "legitimacy and support" includes flows of other

needed resources beyond money. Many INGOs rely on voluntarily contributed time and

effort, both from volunteers and from staff paid less than market value for their talents.

Many INGOs also benefit from contributions of food, medicine, equipment, and other in-

kind goods.

Finally, the concept of “legitimacy and support” focuses on the political and

social recognition of the organization’s right to exist, to operate for particular purposes in

particular locations, and to press claims on others. The narrowest conception of

legitimacy, of course, is the right of the organization to exist at all. In many countries

INGOs have to work hard to gain the right to exist and to operate, and they may need to

create alliances with other actors to carry out their programs. When PLAN International

13
sought to begin a child sponsorship programs in India, for example, the Government of

India required it to work in partnership with Indian NGOs rather than start its own

branches. INGOs can seek to expand this kind of “legitimacy” by associating themselves

with universally popular goals, or by acquiring a reputation for expertise, or by

representing important constituencies. Without such legitimacy, it can be very difficult

for INGOs to carry out their programs.

The third circle of the strategic triangle – “operational capacity” – focuses the

attention of INGO leaders on their ability to deliver program results. It is here that one

confronts the familiar, demanding technical and operational questions of how best to

deploy available financial, material, and political resources to produce desired results.

We use the term “operational capacity” (rather than “organizational capacity”) to

emphasize that, for many INGOs, the capacity needed to deliver results lies outside their

organizational boundaries. Many INGO aspirations—sustainable development in poor

communities, or international regimes that protect human rights—must be “co-produced”

with partners who are not subject to the INGO’s authority. Many INGOs must focus

mobilize and sustain partnerships and coalitions rather than attend exclusively on their

own organizations to produce results (Uvin, Jain and Brown, 2000).

What is challenging about this conception of strategy is meeting all of these

constraints simultaneously. If the INGO has value and support, but no capability, it will

not deliver on its promises. If the INGO has value and capability but no support, it will

fail for want of resources or legitimacy. If the INGO has support and capacity, but

produces little of value, it survives, but only at the price of wasting resources.

14
 The need to integrate these three circles brings issues of accountability to the fore

because each of these circles can be seen as demanding a kind of accountability. INGOs

are accountable to achieving some valued purposes encoded in their understanding of

their mission. That concept of mission could have come from the original commitments

and traditions of the organization, or the moral commitments of its current leaders, or the

urgency of the problems the organization now confronts and chooses to take as their own

to solve. The legitimacy and support circle reminds INGO leaders of their accountability

to those who provide resources, authorize its existence, or allow it to speak for them. The

operational capacity circle reminds INGO strategists that it is accountable to the staff and

the partners who carry out programs. In this sense the choice of organizational strategy is

a negotiated deal among the stakeholders to whom the INGO owes accountability. A

successful strategy would be one that aligned these different kinds of accountabilities.

IV. INGO Strategy and Accountability

International NGOs differ from one another in the kind of role they choose to play

in fostering human development, and the strategies and activities they rely upon to help

them achieve their goals. One influential analysis has sorted INGOs into “generations”

that emphasize relief and welfare services, community organization and capacity-building

for self-help, creating sustainable development systems, and catalyzing large-scale social

movements (Korten, 1989). More recently, Vakil (1997) has argued that INGOs can be

classed into five functional categories: welfare, development (in the sense of capacity-

building), advocacy, development education, and networking or research.

15
 We will examine three INGO roles: (a) welfare and service delivery, (b) capacity-

building for self help, and (c) policy and institutional influence. These roles are common

for INGOs. We think they are also best served by quite different structures of

accountability. This means that INGO strategists must decide about organizational roles

before they set up structures of accountability. It also means that INGOs that change

their strategies may have to consider how to change their accountability systems as well.

For some organizations, rooted in an existing structure of accountability, shifting basic

functions may not be feasible.

Table 1 identifies actors relevant to accountability systems for these different

INGO roles. We turn now to exploring the implications of different functions and

activities for accountability.

Table 1: Accountability Stakeholders for Different Kinds of INGOs

Service Delivery INGOs Capacity-Building INGOs Policy and Institutional

Influence INGOs
INGO Mission Deliver goods and Empower and build Foster political voice of
Focus services to less served capacity of clients for self- under-represented
beneficiaries help constituencies
Value Creation Service beneficiaries Capacity-building clients Policy constituents;
Stakeholders Policy Influence targets

Support and Donors and other resource Donors and other resource Donors and other resource
Authorization providers; providers; providers;
Stakeholders Technical service experts Capacity-building experts Policy experts and
and regulators and regulators; regulators;
General public and media
Operational INGO Staff; INGO Staff; INGO Staff;
Capacity Partners or allies in Partners in building Allies in influence
Stakeholders delivering services capacities; campaigns;
Client co-producers of Members represented by
capacity INGO in campaigns

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Welfare and Service Delivery INGOs

Welfare and service delivery INGOs deliver products or services designed to

benefit clients or to improve the state of the world. They are valuable primarily as

producing organizations that 1) mobilize resources, such as money, volunteer time and

energy, and materials; and 2) transform or allocate -those resources higher value uses.

The value contributed by the INGO is high if no resources are diverted to inappropriate

purposes (integrity), some valuable use can be found for each of the resources

(efficiency), and the maximum amount of value is wrung out of the overall stock of

resources (effectiveness).

Boards and CEOs of INGOs will feel accountable to groups who provide those

resources as a matter of prudence (they guarantee the future survival of the

organization!), as a matter of law (there may be some enforceable promises made about

how assets will be used), and as a matter of ordinary morality (it would be wrong to take

money on false pretenses). What the organization owes to these donors is to produce the

maximum feasible return in terms of mission effectiveness.

The service delivery INGO may also be accountable to its “beneficiaries” or

“clients.” In the for-profit sector, corporate law tilts accountabilities in the direction of

the shareholders, though corporations have some responsibilities to their customers. In

the INGO sector, Boards and CEOs also face this dual accountability to financial

contributors and clients. One might think that this tension would be resolved more

decisively in favor of clients when conflicts exist, since the whole point of the INGO is to

benefit its clients. In reality, however, a gap can often appear in the preferences and

desires of contributors and those of the clients. Many INGOs are set up to achieve

17
relatively abstract purposes: to reduce hunger, or prevent AIDS, or protect biodiversity.

In order to accomplish these ends they have to interact with individual clients and

produce results that may benefit those clients. But producing benefits to individual

clients is not the same as achieving the desired social result. The satisfaction of famine

victims may not indicate long-term reductions in hunger; alleviating the misery of AIDS

victims may not signal better prevention; and approval from rainforest residents may not

indicate reduced threat to biodiversity. Client satisfaction may not be a good indicator of

success.

The problem grows potentially worse when clients do not pay for INGO services.

Donors may say that their purpose is to benefit clients, and allow the clients to define

what it is that they want. In the more ordinary case, however, donors seek results that

may or may not make individual clients better off in their own subjective terms.

Programs to reduce population growth offer birth control education and materials, even if

the clients would prefer food or income assistance.

Because there is a distinction between achieving social results desired by

contributors and satisfying clients, INGOs face tensions between satisfying donors and

keeping clients happy. Prudentially, the interests of the donors will weigh heavily with

INGO leaders, since the INGO cannot continue without their support. Legally, donor

interests will also count, particularly if resources were conveyed via contracts rather than

grants or contributions. Morally, however, the interests of the clients often take

precedence.

These tensions can produce serious dilemmas. For example, auditors in one

INGO summarily ended a program when they found a Southern NGO partner had

18
engaged in padding an expense account. The fact that this decision would end a large

children’s program, since no alternative partners were available, was never discussed, so

impacts on constituencies other than donors were never considered in the decision.

For service delivering INGOs, the claims of employees, partners, and co-

producers are ranked lower than those of donors and clients are. The reason is that these

stakeholders are viewed as instruments for achieving the organization’s objectives—not

as ends in themselves. Consequently, their claims are often seen as detracting from the

INGO’s ability to deliver the maximum value to contributors and clients. Of course, the

INGO might benefit from paying a fair market price for supplies and work from

employees, and it might be more effective if it treated employees well. But if the value

added by the organization is conceived primarily in terms of delivering services, then

both management and committed staff are likely to resist diverting resources away from

those services. Both management and staff will be inclined to privilege the claims of the

donors (who want the most value delivered to clients), and clients (who want the most

value they can get) over the claims of employees and suppliers. This ordering of

priorities and accountabilities also helps to explain why INGOs tend not to invest

resources in staff development and capacity-building, even when it might serve the long-

term interest of the organization to do so.

Capacity-building INGOs

Capacity-building INGOs focus on working with clients to enhance their abilities

to help themselves rather than providing services for clients in a potentially paternalistic

way. Oxfam-America, for example, has long sought to create partnerships by which local

19
actors can pursue their local aspirations and solve their own problems (e.g., Offenheiser,

1999). A recent study found that most U.S. development INGOs were working in

partnership with Southern NGOs to carry out some programs and saw capacity-building

as an increasingly central feature of their work (Leach, Kalegaonkar and Brown, 1998).

A great deal changes in organizational accountability once it commits to working

with rather than doing for clients. The capacity-building focus implies a commitment to

strengthening clients’ abilities to carry out their own purposes and aspirations, rather than

achieve those purposes specified by the INGO or its contributors. Capacity-building

INGOs commit themselves to more accountability to their clients. This means not only

that they will allow their clients to influence the means used to accomplish goals, but also

that they will reconsider ends that are challenged by clients. If an INGO offers training

in financial management, and the clients say they need help with political advocacy, then

capacity-building INGOs might shift from training in financial management to training in

advocacy.

There are several reasons why accepting this degree of accountability to clients as

compared with other stakeholders makes sense. First, as a moral matter, it shows respect

for the clients’ interests in defining their own development needs. Second, as a practical

matter, capacity-building initiatives focused on problems relevant to the clients are more

likely to produce impacts they will value. Third, clients who care about the problem are

more likely to invest in building capacity to deal with it. Fourth, success in dealing with

locally recognized problems builds client capacities that can be used to tackle other

problems.

20
 Placing a high value on client concerns, however, can create dilemmas when other

powerful stakeholders have strong interests. A capacity-building INGO in Asia provides

its diagnostic assessments to NGO clients but not to the donors that fund those

assessments, on the theory that clients will speak more frankly about problems if they are

not worried about donor evaluations. Some donors have accepted this logic; others refuse

to fund work that they cannot easily oversee.

A persistent difficulty for capacity-building INGOs responsive to their clients is

that results are hard to predict. Outcomes depend in large part on what the clients want

and are prepared to do, not on what the INGO plans. Even with agreement on goals,

clients may choose methods and technologies that do not seem right to either INGOs or

their supporters. Traditional tribal or clan elites who reject suggestions made by women

or marginalized populations may dominate local decisions. Responsibility and resources

may be allocated by criteria that the INGO disapproves. Indeed, different priorities have

been apparent in recent discussions at the International Forum on Capacity-building.

Northern actors think of “capacity-building” in terms of managerial skills, such as

accounting, that enable good use of donor resources, while Southern clients want to

strengthen their abilities for policy advocacy, coalition building, and fostering large scale

social change (IFCB, 2000).

Shifting primacy in accountability from donors to clients tests the generosity and

commitment of donors. Clients may challenge their assumptions about effective practice,

good governance, and fiscal accountability. Many donors—especially those accustomed

to service delivery roles—may agree with capacity-building commitments at the outset

and later find that these commitments are difficult to keep. Sometimes donors and INGO

21
staffs seek to preserve or re-institute service delivery accountabilities, even at the risk of

increasing program costs, eroding trust, and reducing innovation and flexibility. Thus,

some of the gains of shifting from a service delivery to capacity-building approach may

be undermined by accountability relationships that fail to reflect the shifts required by the

capacity-building strategy.

Policy Influence INGOs

A third kind of INGO helps individuals and organizations press their claims

against national and international institutions (Keck and Sikkink, 1998; Fox and Brown,

1998; Jordan and van Tuijl, 2000). Some policy and institutional influence INGOs speak

on behalf of populations that are otherwise without a political voice. Amnesty

International, for example, challenges violations of human rights in many countries on

behalf of prisoners of conscience. Others seek to reform political and institutional

contexts that harm marginalized populations. Transparency International, for example,

seeks to reduce corruption that undermines sustainable development and economic justice

around the world, and the Environmental Defense Fund challenges practices that harm

the natural environment in different settings.

Policy Influence INGOs resemble service delivery and capacity-building

organizations in that they mobilize and deploy resources to accomplish their missions.

They are organizations with inputs and outputs. What distinguishes policy influence

INGOs from service delivery or capacity-building organizations, however, is that their

goals are to produce effective political demands for action on others. They seek to make

22
other organizations recognize problems or to be accountable to commitments they have

already made.

Policy influence INGOs engage in many activities. They make arguments for the

importance or justice of their causes. They conduct research to show the size and extent

of problems. They organize demonstrations to mobilize support. They gather evidence

about compliance with existing laws and policies. And they press for laws and policies

that further their goals. Policy influence INGOs organized the international campaigns to

regulate Nestlé’s sales of infant formula, for example (Johnson, 1989). Other policy

influence INGOs campaigned to change the World Bank’s indigenous peoples policy

(Gray, 1998). While still other campaigns seek to influence public awareness as well as

policies, such as the environmental campaigns against global warming or the Jubilee

2000 campaign to reduce developing country debts (Keck and Sikkink, 1998; Pettifor,

2000).

Policy influence INGOs are also accountable to many stakeholders. They have

boards, financial contributors, and others who authorize them to take action. They have

volunteer and paid staffs that carry out their programs, and organizational allies in policy

campaigns. They rely on two kinds of clients to create policy influence results: the

constituents they represent and those policy-makers and implementing organizations that

are the targets of their campaigns.

INGOs’ influence over those whom they target, and from whom they demand

accountability, depends on many factors. These include the target actor's vulnerability to

public opinion and sanctions, the extent to which external campaigns can affect the

availability of strategic resources, and the degree to which the values of the targeted

23
organization are aligned with those that the INGO represents. Many INGO campaigns

rely heavily on appealing to widely held values and challenging the actions of

institutional targets that violate their own publicly announced standards. The Jubilee

2000 campaign for debt relief drew on Judeo-Christian traditions to advocate debt

forgiveness (Pettifor, 2000), while the campaign against India’s Narmada Dams

emphasized the project’s failure to develop a resettlement plan that met the World Bank’s

own standards (Udall, 1998).

Credible challenges to target accountability, however, require that INGOs be able

to answer questions about their own accountability. Their targets, and the wider

audiences they need to help them press their claims against the targets, both want to know

why INGOs are legitimate voices in these debates.

Some policy influence INGOs can ground their legitimacy in their service to

widely-held values, and argue that their legitimacy is rooted in nothing more than the

commitment to these transcendent values. The Campaign to Ban Landmines, for

example, appealed to widespread concern about innocent victims of landmines (Goose,

2000), and the campaigns to reduce violence against women reflect changing values

about gender differences around the world (Keck and Sikkink, 1998). This basis for

accountability puts a premium on access to the media and to wider publics whose views

can validate and support pressure on key actors.

Other INGOs influence policy through their access to expertise and information

that is important to policy formulation and implementation. When INGOs can establish

the validity of their information and its relevance to policy-making, their credibility as

actors in the process increases. The Environmental Defense Fund, for example, was able

24
to demonstrate the World Bank projects in Brazil were not living up to the Bank’s own

policies for requiring grassroots participation, and so influenced the disbursement of

Bank funds (Keck, 1998). Accountability for INGOs that rely on information and

expertise may be exercised through assessment of their data collection and analysis by

technical criteria and experts.

A third basis for accountability of policy influence INGOs focuses on the extent

to which they represent constituents for whom the political influence is mobilized. If the

INGO claims to represent local constituents, then they are most accountable to those

constituents.

Policy influence INGOs that represent political interests might need a governance

structure that differs from that of service delivery organizations. Effective service

INGOs may have small boards of trustees and a few large donors, but keep beneficiaries

largely outside governance structures. Influence INGOs, in contrast, might widen their

structures of accountability. They might recruit many small donors as members to widen

their political as well as their financial bases. They might expand their accountability by

bringing clients on their boards or by making them members rather than treating them as

external clients or beneficiaries. At the extreme this trend blurs the boundary between

organization and clients, incorporating clients into organizational governance. In essence

this transforms the “other-serving” organizational form of service delivery INGOs into

the “member-serving” form of advocacy INGOs.

The problems of accountability for influence INGOs then shift to relations with

the constituencies the INGO claims to represent. Often these accountabilities are difficult

to define, given the social and political distances between INGOs and grassroots

25
constituencies, and even more difficult to enforce (Brown and Fox, 1998; Jordan and van

Tuijl, 2000). Accountability becomes dependent on arrangements for consultation,

information exchange, and dispute resolution across large differences in wealth, power,

and culture. As INGOs focus more on political influence, they may need to construct

consultative mechanisms to develop strategies, set agendas, and make decisions.

V. Conclusion: Fitting Organizational Strategy to Structures of Accountability

Table 2 briefly summarizes this comparison of INGOs in terms of accountability

relationships and priorities. The Table describes relatively pure types, of course, and

these types are seldom so clearly delineated in reality. Many INGOs perform multiple

functions and carry out multiple activities. It is important to clarify these underlying

differences, however, since they have important implications for which stakeholders and

accountabilities should take priority.

Table 2: Comparisons of Accountabilities for Different Kinds of INGOs

Service Delivery INGOs Capacity-Building INGOs Policy Influence INGOs

INGO Mission Deliver goods and Empower and build Foster political voice of
Focus services to underserved capacity of clients for under-represented
beneficiaries self-help constituencies
Accountability to Beneficiaries have moral Clients participation Credibility with targets via
Stakeholders in claim to services but may essential to define and values, information, or
Value Creation be passive recipients build capacities representation;
Constituents voice key to
representation
Accountability to Donor resources are vital Donor resources are Donor resources from
Support and to delivery; important; many and members;
Authorization Technical bodies assess Regulators have legal Legitimacy grounded in
Stakeholders service quality sanctions values, information, or
member voice
Accountability to Staff and partners are Staff and partners support Staff and allies critical to
Operational Co- means to service delivery capacity; influence campaigns;
Producers goals Capacity co-produced Membership co-produces
with clients influence

26
 For service delivery INGOs, while beneficiaries have a moral claim to good

services, much of the power for sanctioning departures from INGO responsibilities rests

with: 1) donors who underwrite what are often high costs, 2) technical bodies who assess

the quality of services; and 3) regulators that negotiate terms of service delivery.

Capacity-building INGOs face many of the same pressures. Their world is

complicated by the reality that building local capacity for self-help requires active

participation by local clients. Local clients may be passive recipients of services, but

passivity strikes at the heart of effective capacity-building. The nature of capacity-

building programs encourages clients to play more active roles in holding INGOs

accountable. If terms of accountability that favor client aspirations over those of donors

cannot be negotiated, it will be very hard for organizations that start off as service

delivery organizations to make the shift to capacity-building roles.

The mission of policy influence INGOs depends on their ability to make powerful

claims on their targets. Being committed to transcendently important moral values can

generate that power. Essential expertise or information about public problems can also

generate it. Perhaps most importantly, it will come from enabling the political voice of a

constituency that needs to be heard. To ensure authentic voice of some political

constituency, the INGO must engage with it as a political constituency rather than as a

service client. At the limit, the INGO could become a membership organization with a

governance structure that gave the members the power to use the organization’s voice as

their own.

What this Table makes clear, we think, is that the concept of accountability is not

fixed; there is no single accountability structure that is right for all organizations. All

27
organizations have to be accountable, but how they structure their accountabilities will

have a decisive impact on the strategies they can execute. If an INGO leader inherits the

accountability system of a policy influence INGO, he or she will find it very difficult to

sustain a service delivery focus. The old structure of accountability will tend to anchor

the organization in its political work and to hamper its efforts at service delivery. In this

sense, accountability must be aligned with the strategy that guides the organization.

These challenges are particularly relevant for INGOs that face a globalizing world

that calls on them to do more with less, to act as catalysts for rapid change, and to foster

sustained improvement in intransigent problems of sustainable development, economic

justice, and political democratization around the world (see Edwards, Hulme and

Watkins, 1999; Florini, 2000). INGOs around the world are increasingly in the global

spotlight as they experiment with evolving strategies, changing functions, and new

structural forms (Lindenberg and Dobel, 2000). The challenges of re-framing and

reorganizing their accountabilities will be central to those efforts.

28
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