ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the leadership’s attempts to professionalise and turn Tearfund into a serious relief and development non-governmental organization (NGO) that could sit at the table with the likes of Oxfam, Save the Children, and Christian Aid. By the 1990s much had changed in both the mainstream development sector and in the evangelical missionary world. The mainstream development field had largely secularised. The desire to professionalise and enter the mainstream brought up more complicated issues on the humanitarian side of the organisation. Operational humanitarian relief work grew very rapidly throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, and by 2002 disaster work made up the highest proportion of the International Group’s activity in terms of expenditure. However, institutional donors did have a set of requirements for their NGO grantees. New networks were formed, such as the Active Learning Netw.
