ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the strange phenomenon of a multi-billion dollar international endeavour that is poorly understood and, despite fast-growing interest in the subject, very poorly evaluated: the work of Northern nongovernmental organisations (NNGOs). It draws in part on an extensive, twelve-country study in which the author participated, conducted by the Development Centre of the OECD in 1993 (Smillie and Helmich 1993), but focuses specifically on the case of Canada, where NGO evaluation is considerably more advanced than in most other OECD countries. The OECD study observed that NNGOs are in trouble. Collectively they spend an estimated US$9 to $10 billion annually, 1 but live with a level of financial insecurity that would drive most private-sector firms into bankruptcy. Increasingly criticised by governments for their lack of professionalism, they are accused of bureaucratisation when they do professionalise. With very few exceptions, governments refuse to contribute seriously to financing professionalism, insisting on unrealistically low overheads, and on putting NGOs through long, inefficient approval processes. Many governments are locked into an out-dated project approach which also works against professionalism. Despite the fact that they spend tens of millions of dollars annually through their NGO communities, few governments have taken evaluation seriously, with the result that NGO survival has been almost completely delinked from performance. 2 Perhaps most fundamentally, NGOs have a growing identity crisis in relation to their increasingly effective Southern counterparts, most of whom want money rather than interference, and support rather than second-hand rules and regulations passed on from government donors in the North.
