Support Organizations and the Evolution of the NGO Sector

Support Organizations

Brown, Kalegaonkar

Support Organizations and the Evolution of the NGO Sector L. David Brown Harvard University Archana Kalegaonkar Institute for Development Research This article focuses on the emergence of support organizations that play strategic roles in the evolution of development nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) as a sector of civil society. We begin with a discussion of sector challenges from outside (such as public legitimacy, relations with governments, relations with businesses, and relations with international actors) and from inside (amateurism, restricted focus, material scarcity, fragmentation, and paternalism). We describe the rise of agencies to serve critical support functions, such as strengthening individual and organizational capacities, mobilizing material resources, providing information and intellectual resources, building alliances for mutual support, and building bridges across sectoral differences. Then, we examine how those organizations have solved critical problems for NGO communities, and we develop some propositions about the creation and establishment of support organizations, their strategic position, the choice to take strategic action, and how external assistance can support their strategic roles.

Civil society in general and development nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in particular are increasingly recognized as important actors in social, political, and economic development (Clark, 1990; Edwards & Hulme, 1992; Riddell & Robinson, 1995). Increased interest in NGOs is in part a response to growing awareness of the limitations of the state as an agent of development (Hyden, 1997; Lindenberg & Dobel, 1999). This trend also reflects increased Note: Earlier versions of this article have been discussed at the International Conference on Non-Profit Sector and Development at Tsinghua University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China in July 1999 and at the Works in Progress Seminar at the Hauser Center on Nonprofit Organizations, Harvard University, December 2000. The article has been supported, in part, by a grant to the Institute for Development Research from the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation. The authors express their appreciation to Mark Moore, V. Satyamurti, Alan Fowler, and members of the Support Organization Network for comments on earlier drafts, and we are indebted to several anonymous reviewers and to Steven Smith, editor of NVSQ, for help in clarifying and focusing the arguments in the article. The authors, of course, bear full responsibility for remaining errors.

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 2, June 2002 Š 2002 Sage Publications

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awareness of local civic activism as a critical ingredient for political and economic change (Putnam, 1993; Woolcock, 1998). Attention to the sector is also a consequence of the dramatic successes of some development NGOs in improving the quality of life of grassroots populations (e.g., Krishna, Uphoff, & Esman, 1997; Paul, 1982).

The evolution of civil societies—or subsectors like development NGOs— has been a topic of debate across disciplines for decades. Some analysts focus on macro-level forces to explain the composition and character of civil societies. Political scientists, for example, frame civil society evolution as a response to the state and its power over citizens (e.g., Berger & Neuhaus, 1977; Bratton, 1989). Economists analyze the evolution of the sector in terms of response to unmet demands or market failures (Hansmann, 1987; Weisbrod, 1988). Other analysts have focused on the central roles of values and ideological commitments in mobilizing resources and action on civil society issues (Lohmann, 1992; Tandon & Naidoo, 1999; van Til, 2000). Still others explain the character of the sector as consequences of complex interplays between social, economic, and political forces during long periods of time (Putnam, 1993; Salamon & Anheier, 1998, 1999).

At the meso-level of analysis, other analysts argue that the evolution of nonprofit, nongovernmental sectors can be understood in terms that focus on shorter periods and more narrowly defined actors. It has been argued, for example, that NGO organization and programs can be understood as the local proliferation of models created by national organizations (Skocpol, Ganz, & Munson, 2000). Others have argued that experience with development initiatives leads to successive “generations” of NGOs that carry out increasingly sophisticated activities (Korten, 1987) or that learning cumulated across countries can be used for more effective efforts to strengthen NGO sectors (Carothers, 1999; Smillie & Hailey, 2001).

We agree that the evolution of NGO sectors is subject to the interplay of political, economic, and social forces that operate in the long term. Increasingly, global forces and national contexts influence that evolution. But experience in many countries suggests that some actors play particularly important roles in social and sectoral change and development processes. Khandwalla (1988) has argued that some organizations emerge as “strategic” to achieving national development goals, whether by virtue of their position at a sectoral apex, as officially sanctioned pioneers on critical issues, or as self-authorized change agents (pp. 27-28).

In this article, we focus on support organizations as agencies that play important, and sometimes central, roles in NGO sector evolution. We argue that these agencies assist the sector to face challenges posed by national and global contexts and by the nature of the sector itself. We suggest some initial propositions for understanding the emergence of support organizations and the circumstances under which they may play strategic roles.

The article develops this argument in several sections. We begin with a discussion of the challenges that face development NGO sectors. Then, we

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describe support functions that help NGOs deal with these challenges, and we discuss examples of specialized support organizations that have emerged to carry out those functions. We draw on those examples to discuss the contributions of support organizations, and we articulate some propositions about their roles, the circumstances in which they become established, their position as strategic actors, their choice of strategic actions, and the ways in which external assistance can support their development.

CHALLENGES TO DEVELOPMENT NGO SECTORS We focus on the experience of development NGOs in this analysis, although we hope to contribute to understanding how civil society evolves in more general terms. In many developing countries, NGOs are among the most important civil society actors, so their experience may be quite relevant to the evolution of civil society. However, caution is appropriate to extending this analysis to other aspects of civil society.

Many challenges confront NGOs promoting social, economic, and political change in developing countries. Some emerge from contextual forces, as NGOs interact with actors outside the sector. Others are internal to the sector, in the sense that they grow out the nature of development NGOs and the civil societies of which they are a part.

CHALLENGES FROM OUTSIDE THE SECTOR

The contexts in which civil societies operate and evolve are likely to have fundamental impacts on their capacities and performance. We focus on the challenges posed by four external constituencies: (a) legitimacy and accountability with the general public; (b) relations with institutions of the state, such as government agencies; (c) relations with institutions of the market, such as businesses; and (d) relations with international actors, such as development agencies that provide funding support to many development NGOs. Public legitimacy and accountability. In some countries, NGOs of various kinds have been working on social problems for centuries, so there is substantial public support for their activity. In many other countries, however, there is little public understanding or recognition of the legitimacy of civil society organizations. For development NGOs in countries where civil society is an emerging phenomenon, lack of public legitimacy can increase the sector’s vulnerability to attack from many sources. Lack of widespread public understanding and support can be exacerbated by problems of accountability. The beneficiaries of development NGO activities are typically different from those who provide material support, so NGOs are accountable to multiple constituents. These multiple accountabilities are further complicated by the difficulty of measuring development impacts in clear and simple terms. So the sector

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remains vulnerable to questions about accountability or responsiveness to their primary constituencies (Herman & Renz, 1999; Najam, 1996).

Relations with government. Governments establish the legal and political contexts within which development NGOs work, and their relations with the state may take many forms (Tandon, 1989). In many countries, governments have created tax provisions that exempt NGOs from taxation or encourage public contributions. In some countries, governments are deeply suspicious of NGOs as competitors in delivering services, as agents of international donors, or as critics of state programs (Bratton, 1989). In such circumstances, governments may curtail the space within which NGOs act: The NGO Bureau of Bangladesh, for example, sometimes decertifies NGOs and so cuts off their access to external resources. In other cases, government agencies and NGOs cooperate to expand the impact of joint programs (Brown & Ashman, 1996), although some question whether NGO priorities have been replaced by government goals in the process (Bebbington, 1997). In still other situations, NGOs have carried out policy influence campaigns to influence governments on behalf of grassroots constituents (Bratton, 1989; Miller, 1994). Relations with state agencies are increasingly recognized as a major concern for development NGOs that seek to scale up impacts or sustain programs.

Relations with business. The rise of the business sector and its potential role in economic development has been highly visible to many civil society actors.

Some NGOs have challenged business practices that exploit marginalized groups, as in the campaign against Nestle’s marketing of infant formula to clients without access to safe drinking water (Johnson, 1986). Although this critical focus continues to dominate some business-NGO relations, other relationship possibilities have emerged in recent years. Some NGOs have mobilized resources from business to implement programs that provide outputs valued by both NGO and business. Commercial bank support for NGO educational innovations in Brazil, for example, has enhanced the reach of the NGO and the reputation of the bank (Fischer, 1999). Other partnerships have produced “strategic alliances� that advance core goals of both parties. The initiatives of the Philippine Business for Social Progress, for example, have promoted political stability for the business community and sustainable development for grassroots groups (Tan & Bolante, 1997). Experience suggests that such alliances are difficult, but not impossible, to create and maintain (Ashman, 2001).

International relations. For many NGOs in the developing world, international actors can be the sources of ideas, financial resources, and political legitimacy. Alliances with international actors enable activities and impacts, including influence with their own governments or with actors like the World Bank (e.g., Florini, 2000; Keck & Sikkink, 1998). Such alliances may also subject NGOs to being seen as agents of foreign cultural, political, and religious interests (Bratton, 1989), and it is easy to become dependent on resources that

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cannot be sustained locally. Dependence on external resources and values can undermine NGO identities and legitimacy in their own eyes as well as in the eyes of skeptics and so undermine their effectiveness as catalysts for development.

CHALLENGES FROM WITHIN THE SECTOR

The strengths of a sector are often related to its weaknesses. Some NGO problems may be inherent in the institutional characteristics of the sector.

Development NGOs have special strengths from attributes like their grounding in value-based missions, their close ties to local constituencies, and their organization around issues that can mobilize voluntary support. However, these strengths are also the source of weaknesses that undermine the sector’s ability to foster large-scale sustainable development (see Brown & Kalegaonkar, 1998; Salamon, 1987). We can identify five challenges that grow out of the characteristics of the development NGO sector itself: (a) amateurism, (b) restricted focus, (c) material scarcity, (d) fragmentation, and (e) paternalism.

Amateurism. Although voluntarism is a central asset of civil society, the technical competence of volunteers does not always coincide with NGO program requirements. Development NGOs may not be able to attract professionals who are qualified to carry out technically demanding activities or manage increasingly complex organizations. Even if the NGO has the resources to pay professionals at market rates, the reward discrepancies with other staff may create serious morale problems. Many founders of successful civil society initiatives are gifted entrepreneurs or visionaries who have little experience in organizing and managing organizations that grow past the point of informal coordination. Many NGO leaders lack the financial, managerial, and organizational skills required by organizations that are scaling up their operations.

So both technical and organizational amateurism can undermine the performance of successful NGOs. Restricted focus. NGOs are diverse, each articulating its own core values and serving particular constituencies. The capacity to create agencies that respond to many different interests is one of the great strengths of an active civil society.

Nevertheless, NGO particularism can also be a sectoral weakness when NGOs fail to respond to interests outside their narrowly defined constituency (Salamon, 1987). Particularism can make it difficult for NGOs to see a larger picture. An NGO road-building program in the Dominican Republic, for example, helped some villagers get to the market but also created erosion problems for neighboring villages not involved in the program. A restricted focus may also result in the inefficient use of scarce resources, as many small organizations provide similar services without achieving any economies of scale. Commitments to particular values may encourage NGOs to denigrate

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others with different perspectives and so remain blind to possibilities of mutual gains.

Material scarcity. Civil society mobilizes resources on the basis of commitments to values and visions for a better world. Such commitments can generate dedicated service and persistence in the face of great hardship. However, scarcities in material resources also constrain capacities for large-scale or long-term initiatives. Expanding and continuing small-scale initiatives, for example, often requires resources from government agencies or international donors. Lack of material resources can pose difficult choices: For instance, NGOs that accept state funds may be required to follow bureaucratic procedures and standards inconsistent with their service objectives (Lipsky & Smith, 1989-1990), and support from international sources may be accompanied by foreign priorities and burdensome accounting requirements. Heavy reliance on donors can also constrain NGO criticisms of donor policies (Edwards & Hulme, 1996) and threaten NGOs’ autonomy to pursue their own agendas.

Fragmentation. The rise of civil society actors organized around diverse values and visions can create a sector of great richness and complexity. Sector pluralism, however, can also lead to mutual misunderstanding, destructive competition, missed opportunities for coordination and synergy, and failures to articulate shared strategies required for influencing larger actors. The capacity of development NGOs to carry out campaigns to influence national-level policies, for example, can be seriously undermined by fragmentation among civil society constituents. Strongly value-based NGOs often perceive other NGOs with slightly different perspectives as fundamentally alien, even when external observers might regard their differences as trivial. For instance, development NGOs in the Philippines for years regarded their ideological differences as a bar to cooperation and so missed opportunities to press for policy changes that might have been achieved by a united front. The problem of scarce resources can exacerbate fragmentation, as agencies compete with one another for limited resources.

Paternalism. It is tempting for NGOs and NGO leaders who work with poor, marginalized, and otherwise disadvantaged populations to make decisions on behalf of those constituents, particularly when resources, expertise, and time are short. This is particularly common when charismatic NGO founders are accorded great respect by staffs and beneficiaries. But paternalism is problematic when the agency is delivering services and actively counterproductive when it promotes empowerment and capacity building, because paternalism undermines local responsibility and capacity, long-term sustainability, and authentic political representation. World Bank studies indicate that local institutional capacity is a key ingredient in sustainability in its projects (Cernea, 1987). The challenge of paternalism, especially in NGOs that serve marginalized populations, can be insidious and seriously debilitating.

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SUMMARIZING THE CHALLENGES

Table 1 summarizes these challenges for development NGOs by forces internal and external to the sector. These challenges vary in importance across national and regional boundaries as well as across economic, political, and social contexts, but they affect NGOs to some degree in most countries.

These challenges are often exacerbated as NGOs become more important actors in development processes. As long as they work on the margins of important problems or at a small scale, NGOs can operate largely undisturbed by their limitations. When they become central players in important or large-scale social, political, and economic transformations, as development NGOs recently have in many countries, their limitations become increasingly salient to a wider range of audiences.

The challenges may also shift in character quite rapidly as contextual forces change. The roles and challenges of development NGOs in South Africa, for example, shifted radically with the election of a democratic regime: Many leaders from NGOs were recruited to government positions, and many funders of NGOs shifted their support to government agencies, creating a crisis for the sector in terms of both leadership and financial resources. Even comparatively minor changes, such as a shift of government decision making to local levels, can create major challenges and opportunities for NGO sectors. When India and the Philippines devolved power and responsibility to local governments, it opened up significant new development roles to NGOs who would work with local government actors. The challenges facing the development NGO subsector can change rapidly, posing both new problems and new opportunities.

THE RISE OF SUPPORT ORGANIZATIONS Civil societies include many diverse organizations, and cataloguing them is not simple. Even focusing on development NGOs yields a range of types (e.g., Edwards & Hulme, 1992; Padron, 1987; Vakil, 1997). Vakil’s (1997) analysis classes NGOs by functional orientation—welfare, development organizing, advocacy, development education, networking, or research—and by level of operation—community, national, regional, or international. NGOs may combine functions and levels of operation. Vakil does not explore how NGOs as a sector evolve or respond to sector challenges.

Vakil’s networking/research category reflects the growing need for certain kinds of support functions that enable NGOs to achieve otherwise unattainable goals. Support functions can help NGOs deal with challenges that limit their effectiveness. A successful NGO may scale up its programs when its leaders acquire needed managerial and organizational skills, an innovative NGO program may be nationally disseminated if NGO leaders are introduced to the right government officials, and NGOs may shape public opinion if they build alliances with many other actors.

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Table 1.

Challenges Internal Amateurism

Challenges to Civil Society Basis of Problem

Implications for the Sector

Staff mobilized by values, beliefs Activities demand technical skill Organization, managerial needs

Low-skilled human resources Limited organizational capacity Limited operational efficiency, impact

Restricted focus

Focus on single group or issue Value frame polarizes differences Tendency to stereotype outsiders

Blindness to larger context Hard to expand beyond initial concept Limited cross-project work

Material scarcity

Resources mobilized by values Beneficiaries have few resources Other sectors have more resources Donor dependence reduces autonomy

Voluntary services limit capacity Programs hard to scale up Poor beneficiaries remain dependent

Fragmentation

Diverse values, goals, strategies Competition for scarce resources Ideological stereotyping of others

Blindness to shared interests Little mutual influence or synergy Little voice on large-scale issues

Paternalism

Leaders control key resources Emphasis on charismatic founders

Dependence on leaders Failure to empower constituents

Publics do not recognize sector Low accountability to stakeholders Limited legal and cultural support

Little popular support under fire Vulnerable to misuse of resources Small basis for long-term investment

Relations with government

Alternative sources and critics Competitors for donor resources Sources of innovation and service

Stereotyping and antagonism Success increases political sensitivity Political constraints reduce impacts

Relations with business

Alternative sources of services Criticize business shortcomings Reject cooperation as co-optation

Stereotyping and antagonism Business philanthropy minimized Lack of cross-sector alliances

International relations

Foreign resources and models Foreign priorities shape action

Questions on NGO identity, autonomy “Brain drain� to international NGOs

External Public legitimacy and accountability

Note: NGO = nongovernmental organization.

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Some NGOs have developed specialized units to carry out key support functions, such as management training units or research centers. Such specialized subunits are most common in NGOs large enough to generate substantial internal demand for their services. But most NGOs cannot afford such specialized resources, and in many countries, support organizations have emerged to play specialized roles in the sector, providing services and support to many different civil society actors (see SAARC Forum on Capacity Building, 2000).

To define these actors specifically: Civil society support organizations are valuebased agencies whose primary task is to provide services and resources that strengthen the capacities of their constituents to accomplish their missions.

Support organizations are value-based agencies in that they are organized— like many of their constituents—around social values and missions. They are part of the broader movement of voluntary development NGOs . . . they have a world view of their own; they have a vision of a new society and they share some of the philosophical and ideological underpinnings which guide the voluntary development NGO movement. (Brown & Tandon, 1990, p. 5) This perspective differentiates them from commercial service organizations, whose assistance is based on economic exchange rather than shared ideology.

It also distinguishes them from universities, whose services often revolve around research and teaching concerns rather than development NGO values and interests.

Support organizations have the primary task of providing services and resources that help their civil society constituents accomplish their missions. They may provide training and staff development services, research and information resources, networking and alliance-building support, financial resources, or policy analysis and advocacy support. An agency that serves many NGO clients can often develop more specialized expertise than a subunit of an NGO whose focus is on other work.

This definition emphasizes value solidarity with, and support services to, a wide variety of civil society organizations. Some analysts have argued that a membership base is essential to support organizations (e.g., Osborne & Tricker, 1994; Stremlau, 1987). The membership form of organization is helpful for some support services, such as networking, but it is problematic for others, like organizational capacity building, that cannot easily be delivered equally across all members. Other investigators have emphasized support to grassroots groups as an essential characteristic (e.g., Carroll, 1992; Fisher, 1993; Padron, 1987). Whereas a grassroots link may be crucial to building local capacity, organizations that support actors beyond grassroots organizations can be central to large-scale programs or to policy influence at the national or international level. We would require neither an exclusive grassroots focus nor a membership-based organization in the definition of support organization.

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Several support functions have emerged as important to NGO communities in many countries. Support organizations often serve more than one of these functions, although most start as providers of one or two kinds of support. We identify five broad support functions: (a) strengthening human and organization capacities, (b) mobilizing material resources, (c) providing information and intellectual resources, (d) building alliances for mutual support, and (e) bridging to other sectors. Below, we briefly describe and illustrate organizations that serve these functions in different countries and regions.

STRENGTHENING INDIVIDUAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL CAPACITIES

Many NGOs face human and organizational limitations that constrain their ability to improve or expand their services to take advantage of new opportunities. Support organizations have emerged to help develop the human and organizational resources needed to improve or expand the services offered by NGOs. Examples include the PRIP Trust in Bangladesh, ACCESO in Costa Rica, the CDRA (Community Development Resources Association) in South Africa, and the Center for Community Change and the Highlander Research and Education Center in the United States. They provide training and consulting services to development NGOs and other civil society actors. Consider the following examples: • The Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) began as a small

NGO in India concerned with promoting participatory research and training to support grassroots organizations. The demand for its services grew explosively in its first decade, and it developed a network of regional support organizations throughout India and alliances with other support-building organizations throughout South Asia. Over time, it has emphasized capacity building for areas like NGO management, organization development, policy advocacy, and intersectoral cooperation. The Indian government has asked PRIA and its network of regional support organizations to play a central role in helping women and low-caste citizens take larger roles in local government during the next decade as central and state governments decentralize decision making and resource allocation to local governments. • The Eastern and Southern Africa NGO Reflection and Development Centre (MWENGO) emerged from consultations among leaders of African NGOs about the needs for sector development in the region. MWENGO provides programs on program and organization development, NGO identity and strategic thinking, financial resources and sustainability, policy advocacy, leadership development, and other topics of concern to NGOs in the region. It has worked closely with national associations to identify capacity-building needs and organize programs and resources to meet them, and it has become a key regional actor in helping NGOs to think through their roles in regional development initiatives.

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Some support organizations focus on strengthening the human resources of their clients, addressing a range of issues like strategic thinking, leadership skills, community organizing, adult education, and financial management (Fowler, 1997). Others emphasize organizational capacity building, through organization development and other forms of technical assistance. As providers of capacity-building assistance, human and organization development support organizations are often catalysts for innovation and sector development that bring experience from other countries to bear on local concerns.

MOBILIZING MATERIAL RESOURCES

Financial resource organizations provide financial support to NGOs and other civil society organizations and at the same time often cultivate national public awareness of, and contributions to, the existence of an active voluntary sector. The dependence of many development NGOs on external resources, the continued concern with “donor fatigue,” the periodic threats of government restrictions on external resources, and the growing skepticism about the sustainability of local initiatives all attest to the importance of mobilizing local financial resources to maintain and expand NGO programs. National or local financial resource organizations may amass and distribute national funds, such as Child Relief and You (CRY) in India, the Mexican Foundation for Rural Development (FMDR) in Mexico, or the Fundación para la Educación Superior (FES) in Colombia. They may also act as bridges between foreign resources and local actors, such as the Foundation for the Philippine Environment (FEP) or the Kagiso Trust in South Africa, and so improve the targeting of external resources. For example: • Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) was organized by busi-

ness leaders who were concerned about poverty and social unrest in the Philippines. It has provided financial support to many Philippine NGOs working on rural development initiatives and committed significant resources to learning from experience to create more effective initiatives in the future. With its funding base in the business sector and its action arm in the civil society, PBSP has also been an important catalyst for better communications and mutual learning between development NGOs and business leaders (Tan & Bolante, 1997).

• Se Servir de la Saison Seche en Savane and au Sahel (Six-S) mobilizes resources from international donors for use on village improvement projects in several countries in West Africa. Led by cofounders from Africa and Europe, Six-S enables villagers to define and implement their own development projects with outside resources. In the process, they enhance capacity for decision and action on locally owned projects instead of dependence on outside donors to decide what issues will get attention. Six-S has also educated donors about what can be achieved by village groups under the right circumstances (Lecomte & Krishna, 1997).

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Although the initial focus of financial resource organizations is often limited to problems of material scarcity, experience suggests that they frequently branch out into other kinds of support to enhance the effectiveness of their constituencies (see Ashman, Zwick, & Brown, 1998). Many expand their services to include capacity building to increase the effectiveness of initiatives supported by their financial resources. Because many financial resource organizations mobilize resources from state and market institutions, they are potentially important bridges between sectors. Their fund-raising can help establish the legitimacy of the sector and cultivate support among elites and the general public for NGO activities. Their links position them to sound early warnings on emerging problems and to act as third parties in managing intersectoral conflicts.

PROVIDING INFORMATION AND INTELLECTUAL RESOURCES

Research and information institutes can provide ideas, tools, and perspectives that are grounded in civil society values and conceptual frames. Stateof-the-art papers, program evaluations, and policy reports can inform NGOs about their roles and impacts. Examples of agencies that provide information and intellectual resources include the Inter-Africa Group (IAG) in Ethiopia, the Center for Development Alternatives in India, DESCO in Peru, and the International Institute for Rural Reconstruction (IIRR) in the Philippines.

These agencies provide information and intellectual capital on topics ranging from new technology to policy alternatives to bio-intensive gardening. They provide links to ideas, innovations, and frameworks emerging in different regions that might otherwise remain inaccessible. They may also transform new ideas to fit local realities or articulate the wider relevance of local innovations.

• The Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) in Pakistan worked with slum dwellers in

Karachi to construct systems of latrines and sewage pipes that local government sources had long failed to deliver. The project developed ways to construct latrines using local materials and labor at a fraction of the cost of commercially available systems. It organized hundreds of “lane organizations” to construct thousands of latrines and sewage systems to serve long-neglected areas, creating a new paradigm for urban sanitation initiatives and hundreds of ongoing self-help groups while it improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of poor residents (Khan, 1997).

• The Development Resource Centre (DRC) in South Africa took the initiative to propose policy alternatives for the regulation of NGOs under the new democratic regime, which was highly skeptical about their future role. DRC’s proposal catalyzed a national debate on the roles and responsibilities of the sector and how it should be supported as international donors redirected their resources to the new government. In pro-

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posing policies that required increased accountability by NGOs in return for financial support, DRC became the center of a rancorous debate and the target for criticism by angry NGOs. But it also raised public awareness and discussion of issues at the heart of relations between NGOs and the new regime (Lundberg, 1997).

Research and information organizations can be critical actors for generating and disseminating information and ideas for the sector, making available information about program success and failure within the country as well as state-of-the-art ideas from outside. Because NGOs are often skeptical about analyses from other sectors or international institutions, research and information organizations operating from civil society values may be critical sources for new ideas or changing conceptions of sector roles. They are also often in a position to clarify the relevance and value of traditional knowledge grounded in local experience to modern development practice.

BUILDING ALLIANCES FOR MUTUAL SUPPORT

Another form of support organization provides opportunities for NGOs to share information and ideas as well as organize collective initiatives. Networks, alliances, or coalitions provide structures that facilitate discussion, promote shared understandings of development issues, and enable coordination where joint action is needed. They can foster broader perspectives on development issues and cohesive strategies to influence government agencies and donors through cohesive voice impossible to single agencies. For example, • In Ecuador, the Council of National Indigenous Associations of Ecuador

(CONAIE) is an association of indigenous peoples’ organizations that represents the voices of three quarters of the indigenous population. In addition to providing opportunities for information sharing and collective reflection, CONAIE has represented its members in negotiations with government and international agencies about policies that threaten indigenous rights and resources. CONAIE built alliances for collective actions that brought the country to a standstill when development plans threatened indigenous land holdings and negotiated new plans that safeguarded its members’ interests (Treakle, 1998).

• The Association of Development Agencies of Bangladesh (ADAB) is the national association for hundreds of development NGOs. It enables information sharing and mutual education for its members. When deadlocks among political parties created national paralysis, ADAB organized a nonpartisan voter education campaign, stressing the need for candidates who are responsive to their constituents, who are not obviously corrupt, and who do not advocate violence against women. The campaign, supported only with member resources, eventually reached 10 million poor and rural voters during a 6-week period. The next elec-

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Associations, alliances, and networks may be organized around many issues. National associations of NGOs, such as the National NGO Council (NNGOC) of Kenya or the Congress of Development and Environment Organizations (CODE-NGO) in the Philippines, bring together members to discuss issues facing the sector, such as national regulatory legislation. Regional networks, such as the Latin American Association of Development Organizations (ALOP), enable civil society actors from the region to discuss matters of shared concern. Issue-focused organizations, such as the Campaign for Popular Education (CAMPE) in Bangladesh, enable organizations with shared tasks to learn from each other and coordinate their initiatives. Because NGOs are often limited in size and capacity, multiorganization initiatives that mobilize many actors around common concerns can be critically important to expanding NGO impacts on national or regional problems.

BRIDGING TO OTHER SECTORS

Some support organizations act as bridges between NGOs and other actors who can play critical roles in development: other civil society actors, government agencies, businesses, donors, international agencies, and so on. Such bridging organizations can be crucial to effective action on complex problems, and civil society organizations may be well placed to catalyze interorganizational initiatives (Brown & Ashman, 1996). Relations between NGOs and the state are critical to many development initiatives (Evans, 1996; Sanyal, 1991), so support organizations that can make these connections can be key. Examples include the Institute for Development Policy Analysis and Advocacy in Bangladesh, the Institute for Development and Cultural Affairs (IDAC) in Brazil, and the Bank Information Center (BIC) at the international level. Cooperation with business actors is increasingly seen as a way to expand and sustain development (e.g., Ashman, 2001), so agencies that build better understanding across the civil society-business gulf, such as the Partners for Development in India, the Center for Studies in Administration in the Third Sector (CEATS) at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, or the Prince of Wales Business Leaders Foundation in the United Kingdom are important bridges. International bridging organizations can also span key constituencies, such as the International Forum for Capacity Building or CIVICUS: the World Alliance for Citizen Participation. Some support organizations help NGOs to do advocacy and other forms of policy influence: Others foster multiparty cooperation to support development initiatives.

• The Institute for Social and Economic Research, Education and Informa-

tion (LP3ES) is an NGO of development-oriented social scientists in In-

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donesia, which has worked as a bridge between civil society and state actors in devolving control of irrigation systems to organizations of water users. The institute helped organize and assess pilot projects that tested user participation in irrigation system management and then provided training to farmers and government officials to implement new policies that delegated decision making to water user organizations. The project demonstrated the possibilities of participatory development strategies to a government highly skeptical of local organization and powersharing programs. (Brown & Ashman, 1996).

• The Savings Development Movement (SDM) in Zimbabwe developed a process by which clubs of illiterate village women could save money together for improving agricultural productivity. SDM organized the dissemination of training through cooperation with the Ministry of Community Development and Women’s Affairs, with support from a fertilizer company interested in expanding markets. They also arranged for technical support from Ministry of Agriculture staff so the money could be used to improve crops. The program generated local savings to improve agriculture in thousands of villages (Bratton, 1989).

• FES in Colombia began as a financial resource support organization that funded development NGOs in rural areas. Its success at providing financial services rapidly expanded its capacity to support NGOs. Because of its links to, and credibility with, government agencies and businesses, it also became a bridge for promoting understanding across sectors. Although it was not designed to be an intersectoral bridge, its success as a financial support organization positioned it to link government, business, and development NGOs in many situations (Ocampo, 1997).

As the interdependencies among civil society organizations, government agencies, and businesses grow, the importance of support organizations that translate interests and coordinate initiatives across sectors will increase. It is not yet common for support organizations to be constituted specifically for such jobs, but credibility from prior activities is an important base on which intersectoral bridging organizations can be constructed.

SUPPORT ORGANIZATIONS AND NGO SECTOR EVOLUTION Are support organizations “strategic” to the evolution of the NGO sector?

Support organizations could deliver valuable services to NGOs without ever having “strategic impacts” on the sector. Strategic impacts go beyond support services to significantly alter conceptions of the sector, its roles, and its capacities. Support organization services that enable effective response to the challenges facing NGOs and other civil society actors contribute to the normal evolution of the sector; support organization activities that catalyze fundamental changes in sector identity and self-perceptions, in its development roles, or its

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relations with other sectors may have long-term strategic impacts. In this section, we will explore how some support organizations have influenced the sector as a whole and then articulate some propositions about support organizations as strategic actors in sector evolution.

STRATEGIC-SECTOR IMPACTS

Not all support organizations play strategic roles. We focus here on a few that do seem to have had strategic impact on the evolution of development NGOs as a basis for beginning to identify some of the factors involved. We will focus on each of the different forms of support organization in turn.

Human and organization development agencies are usually organized to build NGOs’ capacity to carry out their development missions, dealing most directly with the problem of amateurism. PRIA has provided training and consultation to hundreds of NGOs in India and South Asia, and MWENGO has worked with national associations in countries of southern and eastern Africa to provide capacity-building programs for many NGOs in that region. PRIA’s initial programs in capacity building for participatory development were so successful that it created a network of other support organizations to meet demand and subsequently fostered the development of regional and international networks to promote capacity building as well. Its work helped to reshape the concepts of necessary development NGO capacities in India, and its work as the Secretariat of the International Forum for Capacity-Building of Southern NGOs has expanded its impact to influence civil societies around the world. MWENGO has played a similar role in eastern and southern Africa.

These two examples suggest that the initial impact of human and organization development support organizations, as might be expected, is in building technical and organizational resources to deal with the problems of amateurism.

In these cases, the initial focus on capacity building also had impacts on problems of paternalism, through their emphasis on participatory development, and on NGO relations with international donors who were concerned about technical and organizational capacities of NGOs to use their resources.

Financial resource organizations are typically created to deal with resource scarcities and particularly scarcities of financial support. Thus, Six-S was created to mobilize resources to support village-designed development projects in the Sahel region, and it created networks of village elders to administer project funding and support—in the process articulating a new paradigm for donor-project relations that emphasized empowering grassroots decision making and implementation. PBSP was organized to invest resources from Philippine businesses in development initiatives, and it pioneered the combination of business resources and expertise with commitment to grassroots development that has inspired many similar initiatives in the past decade.

Both Six-S and PBSP began with concern about the material resources of

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development initiatives, and both quite quickly expanded their activities into work on other problems as well. It quickly became clear that the effective use of new resources would turn on helping partners build needed capacity for development NGOs or for village organizations carrying out funded projects.

These financial resource organizations also found that improving relations with international donors (for Six-S) or market institutions (for PBSP) were critical to ensuring continuing supplies of financial resources, and they also both needed to foster public understanding and support for local development initiatives. So financial resource organizations often quickly expand their activities beyond their initial concerns with funding.

Research and information institutes deal with information, ideas, and perspectives on critical topics, from technological innovations to policy alternatives, and so potentially help to expand the restricted focus of NGOs. The OPP, for example, developed an inexpensive technology for urban sewage systems and a process to organize lane residents to build those systems. Their approach helped residents and other NGOs fundamentally shift to a self-help perspective in place of dependence on government services to construct urban sanitation systems. With support from international agencies, OPP has helped many others to combine participatory decision making with technological innovations and so liberate new energies and capacities for development. The DRC identified NGO-government relations as a critical issue in newly democratic South Africa and catalyzed national discussions of NGO accountability and financial support as one of its initial projects. The resulting debates demonstrated the importance of having informed civil society perspectives joined in the policy debate, although the DRC’s role in raising the issue remained controversial with many other NGOs. Both OPP and DRC initiatives focused initially on expanding the restricted focus on development roles of NGOs. Their activities not surprisingly quickly raised other issues as well: OPP’s work involved building local capacity and relations with the state, market, and international actors, whereas DRC’s proposed policy involved relations with the public, the state, and international actors. So, for research and information institutes, like other support organizations, pursuit of initial specializations in information, ideas, and perspectives may lead into many different kinds of support for NGO clients.

The creation of NGO networks, alliances, and coalitions is often grounded in widespread recognition that some issues require multiparty action, despite NGOs’ notorious concern with autonomy and independence. Alliances deal with the problems of competition and fragmentation among their members that undermine their abilities to deal with key issues. The challenge to agrarian reform policies by the Ecuador Mobilization for Life, launched by CONAIE as a federation of indigenous people in cooperation with dozens of NGOs and other civil society actors, not only led to revisions of the proposed land law but also set the stage for a larger role of indigenous actors in future policy making

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with the government and the Inter-American Development Bank. ADAB’s voter education campaign in Bangladesh signaled a new commitment to the political dimension of development among Bangladeshi NGOs and a new willingness to foster grassroots political voice. Both initiatives built alliances across many civil society actors despite national problems of fragmentation and competition to respond to issues with the government sector. Both also found in the course of their initiatives that they needed to expand the perspectives and the skills of members as well as deal with issues of public legitimacy and international relations.

Intersectoral bridging organizations are organized to work across important social gulfs between parties whose differences can obscure their potential for joint work. Bridging roles are often taken up by organizations created for other purposes. LP3ES, for example, came to its bridging role as a consequence of its credibility as a research and information institute with Indonesian government agencies as well as grassroots groups. Its research and training activities in formulating and implementing policies to enable water user control over irrigation systems contributed to empowering small farmers and to providing a new paradigm for Indonesian NGOs, grassroots groups, and government agencies for improving policy implementation. FES in Colombia and SDM in Zimbabwe started as financial resource support organizations and moved into bridging activities because they had credibility with civil society and with other sectors whose resources could multiply development NGO impacts.

SDM mobilized government and corporate resources to support village initiatives; FES generated resources and cooperation to support civil society initiatives that might otherwise never have happened. All these organizations built bridges to other sectors, including government agencies, businesses, and international donors. All three also took follow-up initiatives to work on problems of restricted focus and material scarcities.

Figure 1 summarizes the impacts of these forms of support organizations on the challenges discussed earlier. The solid arrows in Figure 1 indicate the problems around which these different forms initially organized. Their “strategic impacts” on sector development typically had substantial impacts on these initial problems. But most of these cases also suggest that support organizations take on roles beyond their initial emphases. The dashed arrows describe support organization impacts on other problems, as illustrated by the cases described. PRIA’s work on human and organization capacity had implications for paternalism and international relations, and CONAIE’s campaign to influence fragmentation and state policies also had implications for market and international relations.

These examples suggest that support organizations can have strategic impacts on sector evolution. PRIA and MWENGO have reshaped concepts of capacity building in their regions. Six-S and PDP have provided dependencereducing paradigms for relations between civil society actors and resource

Support Organizations Internal Challenges

249 Support Organizations

Amateurism

Human & Organization Dev’t Agency

Restricted Focus

Research & Information Institute

Material Scarcity

Financial Resource Organization

Fragmentation

Alliance, Network or Coalition

Paternalism

Inter-Sectoral Bridges

External Challenges

Public Legitimacy & Accountability

State Relations

Market Relations

International Relations

Primary impacts Secondary impacts Figure 1. Support Organizations and Challenges to NGOs Note: NGO = nongovernmental organization.

providers. OPP and DRC have demonstrated that research institutions can catalyze revolutions in grassroots development work as well as national conceptions of NGO roles. CONAIE and ADAB have had strategic impacts on how NGOs and civil society actors understand their roles in national governance. LP3ES, FES, and SDM have significantly altered NGO perceptions of what can be done across sectors in their countries, making possible larger development roles for NGOs. PRIA’s work to build citizen capacity to participate in municipal decision making may reshape civil society’s role in local governance, ADAB’s voter education campaign may alter NGO and grassroots roles in Bangladeshi politics, SDM’s creation of multisectoral alliances for agricultural development in Zimbabwe’s villages has demonstrated the possibilities of cooperation with other actors, and Six-S has created a model for empowering village development that emphasizes local initiative and resources. Support organizations can contribute to the development of NGOs

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and catalyze strategic changes in the sector’s capacity for fostering sustainable development.

STRATEGIC ROLES: SOME PROPOSITIONS

How can we explain the emergence and long-term viability of support organizations as important actors, and when do they become strategic actors?

We focus here on three issues: the establishment of support organizations, their positioning to be strategic actors, and the choice to take action on strategic issues. We will propose preliminary propositions to explain each of these issues.

Support organization creation and establishment. How can we explain the creation and long-term viability of support organizations? The need for support services may be obvious to many, but from where do the technical, political, and economic resources to create and maintain support organizations come?

Economic analyses suggest that nonprofit organizations emerge in response to unmet demand from their clients, who will commit resources to purchase their services. But most development NGOs lack the resources to pay for such services even if they are aware of their need. Other analyses suggest that support organizations emerge to provide public goods that are worthy of government support, although in many developing countries, governments perceive NGOs as competitors or threats rather than resources worthy of support.

Explanations for civil society that emphasize its bases in shared values focus on the commitments of support organization leaders and staffs to development visions. But the reach of value commitments is limited if they are not supplemented by other resources. Analyses focused on international explanations emphasize the role of donor agencies and international NGOs in the creation of support organizations, which may in consequence be grounded in interests rooted outside the country.

Experience suggests that many factors can contribute to the creation of support organizations. Almost all of the support organizations described above were started by indigenous leaders, motivated at least in part by values and visions for development. They articulated missions in terms that appealed to civil society and to other important constituents. PRIA and SDM, for example, were founded by nationals who combined voluntary commitments with external resources to launch their programs; the founders of Six-S and ADAB included indigenous and international leaders committed to development visions. DRC’s founder was an expatriate, but the organization was supported from the start by many civil society leaders. Most of these support organizations have used financial support from international sources, many have drawn on government resources, and a few have also mobilized resources from the private sector. Indigenous leadership and international support are common features of the initial creation of support organizations.

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Their establishment and maintenance requires building legitimacy and a reputation for creating value between NGO and civil society clients, many of whom are skeptical about resources from other sectors or countries. Building capacity for the sector requires cooperation and coproduction by support organizations and clients, so legitimacy with clients is essential. Technical expertise, lavish funding, government approval, and organizational capacity are no substitute for NGO participation and commitment to joint work. Most of the support organizations described in this article have established their legitimacy with NGOs in years of work that demonstrates their commitment to civil society values and visions. Promising support organizations that do not establish such legitimacy have difficulty in establishing an ongoing role. A well-funded effort to create a human and organizational development resource organization in Kenya, for example, foundered on questions about its credibility (Bratton, 1990), and the DRC in South Africa endangered its future role by taking controversial stands on government regulation of the sector before it had established a firm base of support within the NGO community.

So the long-term viability of support organizations turns on their ability to create a civil society constituency for their services—often a significant challenge when civil society actors are not aware of shortcomings that limit their effectiveness but are highly sensitive to conflicts of interest with state, market, or international resource providers.

Proposition 1: Creating and establishing support organizations. Although the initial resources for creating support organizations can come from many sources, their chances of long-term viability and impact increase as they construct a legitimate role with NGO clients as well as with resource providers and sector regulators.

Many NGOs are concerned about maintaining their legitimacy across several constituencies, but support organizations in particular must worry about articulating and delivering value for NGOs and for the sector as a whole if they are to become institutionalized in their roles.

Strategic position. In what circumstances do support organizations play strategic roles in sector development? Some support organizations deliver services to NGOs and other civil society actors for many years without having dramatic impacts on the evolution of the sector or on critical issues. What distinguishes those that become strategic organizations on major issues? What factors position support organizations to play strategic roles?

Work as a support organization fosters the development of a broad perspective on the sector. Building long-term viability requires that support organizations build relationships with many constituencies—the NGOs they serve, the national and international sources of their resources, the governments that regulate them, the professional communities whose resources they adapt for

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NGO use, the larger publics that observe the sectors work. As we have seen, support organizations that initially focus on one set of challenges frequently find that they need to provide support on other problems as well, so the developmental pressures of the support role may also press for a broad perspective on sector challenges. So both the range of constituents and the diversity of problems posed by the support organization position encourage them to look at a broad perspective rather than to engage in narrow specialization.

The work of support organizations also tends to endow them with reputations for leadership and authority. Successful support organizations often have technical expertise that is needed and not widely distributed in the sector, so they have deserved reputations as authorities in those areas. Six-S staff members are experts on village organization, SDM leaders are knowledgeable about financial matters, and PRIA trains people in organization development.

Their constituents are often prepared to see them as experts and authorities in other realms as well, particularly when problems are related to their expertise and require urgent action. PRIA can develop local capacity-building programs, although it has less experience in building new systems for local participation in governance, and ADAB can mount a national education project, although it has not tried to influence national political culture before. So support organizations are sometimes positioned for leadership roles by constituents’ perceptions as well as by capacities for authoritative decisions.

The position of support organizations also may be strategic for creating multiparty coalitions on emerging problems. The range of contacts that helps them have broad perspectives, and the credibility with many constituencies required by their role can also be the basis for convening diverse constituencies, and articulating compelling values and visions needed to mobilize them.

ADAB’s ability to work with many actors was central to its ability to mobilize hundreds of NGOs for the Bangladesh voter education campaign, and PRIA’s credibility with Indian government agencies, international donors, and a network of regional support organizations was key to mounting a national program to support local participation in governance. In contrast, DRC’s lack of history with South African civil society organizations undermined its effort to build consensus on legislation to shape government regulation of the sector.

Position to play strategic roles in sector evolution is not automatic, of course. But the nature of sector support work tends to endow effective support organizations with positions to have strategic impacts. More generally, Proposition 2: Strategic position. Support organizations are more likely to play strategic roles when their positions foster wide contacts and broad perspectives on sector problems, endow them with broadly defined expertise and authority, and position them to create and maintain coalitions relevant to sector problems.

Strategic action. Not all organizations in strategic positions decide to take strategic action. Under what circumstances do established support organizations

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take advantage of their positions to act on strategic problems? Action on such problems usually poses significant challenges and often entails some risk to ongoing work and established status. ADAB’s leadership split over the appropriateness of its engagement in a political initiative like the voter education campaign, and PRIA’s leadership struggled over how closely they should work with government agencies to support the national decentralization program. At least three factors may be important to choosing to undertake such initiatives.

A key element of the choice is framing the issue as a compelling threat or opportunity for the support organization and for the sector. In Bangladesh, ADAB’s voter education campaign was framed as a nonpartisan effort to build a political culture to support effective democracy, at a time when than democracy was seriously threatened by political deadlocks and corrupt political behavior. In the Sahel, Six-S’s creation of a new model of international donor relations with local villages was a response to widespread disappointment with the failure of existing development programs. In South Africa, the transition to democracy transformed relations between NGOs, the government, and international donors, and DRC’s effort to articulate new legislation sought to prevent further deterioration in government-NGO relations. The support organizations’ choice to act in each of these situations was seen as risky, but the problems were seen as compelling by their leadership. So recognizing an opportunity emerging from the historical interplay of social, political, and economic forces for support organization initiatives is a critical step in strategic action.

A related element is the perception that the support organization’s resources—its expertise, contacts, legitimacy, and alliances—are problemrelevant. Most support organizations face an overwhelming array of problems, and their always limited resources press them to choose issues carefully for problems they can affect. ADAB’s membership combined expertise in adult education, experience in developing materials and workshops, hundreds of trainers, access to millions of voters, and a reputation for nonpartisan and independent action that made them uniquely suited to carry out the voter education campaign. Six-S drew on its founders’ experience with many development programs, villager willingness to contribute time and work to village improvement projects, and a growing network of village elders committed to supporting locally owned and controlled projects. Recognizing support organization capacities that can be used for effective work on strategic problems is also central to strategic action.

A third element is a kind of organizational readiness to take on the risks of engagement in strategic action. In part, this readiness reflects leadership preferences. But organizations at different stages of their life cycle may vary in their willingness to take risks: New organizations and organizations in decline or transition may be more prone to framing issues in terms that encourage risk taking than those that are growing or mature (Jawahar & McLaughlin, 2001).

From this perspective, new organizations, like DRC in South Africa or Six-S in

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West Africa, may be more likely to take on risky strategic initiatives than well-established colleagues. Older support organizations, like PRIA in India and ADAB in Bangladesh, may be more likely to take on strategic initiatives if they are in decline or transition—and both these organizations underwent significant leadership transitions around the time of their decisions for these initiatives.

Proposition 3: Strategic action. Support organizations are more likely to take action on strategic opportunities when they see the issues as compelling opportunities or threats; they frame them in terms that make their capacities relevant, and their organizational characteristics (leadership, lifecycle stage) encourage risk taking.

The evolution of civil societies in many developing countries is powerfully shaped by international forces. The increased flows of information, resources, and people characteristic of globalization processes are having large impacts on civil society actors (e.g., Edwards, Hulme, & Wallace, 1999). Almost all of our examples of support organizations draw on international resources and work closely with international partners. In many countries, international agencies explicitly invest in building civil societies and support organizations to strengthen development and budding democracies (e.g., Carothers, 2000; Carroll, 1992). MWENGO’s capacity to facilitate NGO reflection and development initiatives in Africa, LP3ES’s efforts to organize and institutionalize irrigation systems management by water users, and SDM’s program to enable village savings clubs to improve agricultural productivity all drew substantially on ideas and resources from outside the country and often the region.

The ways in which resource providers carry out their programs is particularly important as support organizations seek to build the legitimacy and credibility with other civil society actors that is essential to their long-term viability. As donor agencies come under pressure to produce concrete “results,” the temptation is to define outcomes of their support in terms that leave little space for support organization innovation or independence. Support organizations that are seen to be dependent minions of foreign donors have little legitimacy in the eyes of their other constituencies. PRIA established legitimacy with Indian NGOs by negotiating with funders of NGO organizational capacity-building projects to make NGOs their primary clients rather than the donor agency that supported the work. In other circumstances, international support may be central to preserving support organization independence in the face of other powerful constituencies. The ability of CONAIE to influence Ecuadorian government and business interests turned in part on support from international NGOs and the Inter-American Development Bank. The OPP continued its participatory work in part because of support from the World Bank and the World Health Organization. International support is sometimes as important for political protection as it is for financial and informational resources.

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International support can play critical roles in helping support organizations reinvent themselves in the face of emerging demands and new challenges. The controversy about the roles of NGOs in South Africa reflected the national political transformation, and the Ford Foundation’s support to DRC was fundamental to its effort to create a new role for a support organization in that context. Even less dramatic changes may press support organizations to carry out new roles. Economic challenges in Indonesia created an irrigation system crisis, and support from an international foundation enabled LP3ES to take a new role in helping water users and government actors renegotiate system management. Support for mutual learning among actors from similar contexts, such as the South Asian support organization conferences organized

by PRIA, may be particularly valuable in helping agencies with similar challenges create new perspectives and options.

Proposition 4: Supporting support organizations. International initiatives are more likely to strengthen support organizations to the extent that they increase support organization technical capacities and organizational learning without compromising their national independence and legitimacy.

SUPPORT ORGANIZATIONS AND DEVELOPMENT Support organizations, like other development NGOs, are not universally effective or constructive. The roles that position them for constructive influence can also position them to do substantial harm. Support organizations that lack competence or credibility for work on key sectoral issues, for example, can create skepticism and distrust for future efforts (e.g., Bratton, 1990).

Support organizations that work across sectors and other conflicted boundaries are often accused of being co-opted by powerful actors with little commitment to development. Such accusations can undermine support organization credibility regardless of their truth—and not all such accusations are false. The expanding resources available to NGOs have drawn many entrepreneurs to the sector, and accusations of NGO malfeasance or corruption have become increasingly common (see Constantino-David, 1992). Support organizations may be founded by leaders who are careless or corrupt—and their shortcomings undermine the reputation of the sector as a whole.

Nevertheless, the sins of some support organizations should not obscure the achievements and possibilities of others. Many support organizations have contributed to effective sector response to internal and external challenges; some have provided new perspectives and institutional innovations with widespread and strategic impacts; still others have expanded sector legitimacy with larger publics, government agencies, business communities, and international actors. The evolution of institutional sectors like civil society may occur within constraints and possibilities set by the interplay of large-

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scale historical trends and forces (e.g., Putnam, 1993; Salamon & Anheier, 1998), but the ideas and institutions of the future are at least in part constructed by actors who are strategically positioned to influence events. Support organizations increasingly play strategic roles in the rise of the NGO sector in many countries and regions, and work with such organizations may yield large impacts from relatively small investments.

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L. David Brown is the director of International Programs at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations and a lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government, both at Harvard University. He was a professor of organizational behavior at Boston University and president of the Institute for Development Research, a not-for-profit center for research and consultation on institution building for development, prior to coming to the Hauser Center. His research has focused on organizational and institutional aspects of social change and transformation in national and transnational arenas.

Archana Kalegaonkar was a research associate at the Institute for Development Research (IDR) when this article was written. While at IDR, she worked on issues of nongovernmental organization (NGO) capacity building and civil society collaboration with state and market sectors. She is currently independently affiliated.