ABSTRACT
As discussed in the previous chapter, the 'downward' accountability of NGOs to the people they are working with is a factor in contributing towards strong empowerment outcomes for poor women in India. This has the obvious implication that strengthening NGO accountability mechanisms to the aid recipients will lead to better empowerment outcomes in NGO practice. NGOs, however, generally do not directly address the issue of 'downward' accountability, as they see themselves having other sets of accountability requirements which have greater priority. This chapter will look at the reasons behind this. It can be argued that NGOs' values are their primary point of accountability, rather than the people they are working with. As we have seen from Chapter 1, NGOs are primarily values-based public benefit organizations (Kilby 2006; Lissner 1977; Tandon 1995a); however, this is rarely examined by donors or in the contemporary NGO discourse. The exceptions to this are the more radical political NGOs, or those NGOs providing sexual and reproductive health and other contentious social policies, both of which have had their government donor funding cut from time to time. For many NGOs, their values play a central role in their management choices, and the development approaches they take. While I argue in this chapter that it is mainly the NGO's values which will decide the approach as to how it should be accountable to its aid recipients, there is also a complex interplay of relations between NGOs, the communities they work with, the government, and donors. These influence how an NGO can realize its values and empower communities, and I would argue that over time it seems that the accountability pressures from this interplay with government and donors can create a shift in the values of the NGO, which has implications for their work, and how they are accountable to their aid recipients.
