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FORUM DISCUSSION PAPER : MEASURING
AND CONVEYING THE ADDED VALUE OF
INTERNATIONAL VOLUNTEERING
Benjamin J. Lough & Lenore Matthew
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
FORUM
DISCUSSION PAPER 2015
BALANCING DONOR PRIORITIES
AND THE CIVIL SOCIETY FUNCTION:
A CHALLENGE FOR MODERN IVCOS
Benjamin J. Lough, PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Photo: Lance Cash, Volunteer Service Abroad
volunteer in Honiara, Solomon Islands, 2014.
Source: Volunteer Service Abroad.
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
Table of Contents
Foreword ....................................................................................................................................3
About Forum ............................................................................................................................. 3
Abstract ......................................................................................................................................4
Introduction ...............................................................................................................................4
The Multiple Missions of IVCOs ............................................................................................. 5
The Civil Society Mission ....................................................................................................... 7
The Service Delivery Mission ................................................................................................9
Additional IVCO Missions ................................................................................................... 10
The Influence of Donor Priorities............................................................................................11
New Managerialism ............................................................................................................. 12
Changes to the Civil Society Mission in Historical Perspective ...........................................13
1950s-1960s .......................................................................................................................... 14
1960s through the mid-1980s ............................................................................................. 17
Late-1980s to mid-1990s ..................................................................................................... 19
Late-1990s to Today ............................................................................................................ 20
Consensus and Confrontation Strategies .............................................................................22
IVCOs and Membership-Based Organisations .................................................................... 23
Recommendations .................................................................................................................. 25
Working with Funders .......................................................................................................... 25
Working with Membership-Based Organisations .............................................................26
Conclusion ...............................................................................................................................27
Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................29
List of Acronyms ......................................................................................................................29
References ................................................................................................................................30
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
Foreword
This is the fifteenth in a series of discussion papers produced by the International Forum
for Volunteering in Development (Forum), which follows on from our research work on
trends in international volunteering and cooperation in recent years.
The paper examines ways that modern donor practices may challenge the alignment
of international volunteer cooperation organisations (IVCOs) with the interests of civil
society in partner countries. Taking into account the history of IVCOs since the late 1950s,
it discusses key challenges within this context and also oers recommendations on
how modern IVCOs can balance donor priorities while maintaining alignment with the
sometimes oppositional role of civil society as a transformational driver of social change.
The views expressed in this paper are not necessarily those of Forum or its members, or of
the organisation for which the author works. The responsibility for these views rests with
the author alone.
Chris Eaton
Chair of Forum
About Forum
The International Forum for Volunteering in Development (Forum) is the most significant
global network of International Volunteer Cooperation Organisations (IVCOs). Forum
exists to share information, develop good practice and enhance cooperation across the
international volunteering and development sectors. It promotes the value of volunteering
for development through policy engagement, mutual learning and by sharing innovative
and good practices. Forum is a “virtual” network, with a global membership that includes
a range of organisations involved in international development, including non-government
and state organisations.
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
Abstract
This paper examines ways that modern donor practices may challenge IVCOs’ alignment with
the interests of civil society in partner countries—particularly in circumstances where a strong
focus on service delivery and poverty eradication limit support for grassroots movements aimed
at transformational structural and social change. This thesis is presented within a wider context
of IVCOs’ historic development beginning in the late 1950s. Discussion and recommendations
focus on how modern IVCOs can balance donor priorities while maintaining alignment with the
sometimes oppositional role of civil society as a transformational driver of social change.
Introduction
In 2014, the International Forum for Volunteering in Development (Forum) and the
United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme commissioned a study on International
Volunteering and Governance [1]. A key method used to inform this study was a review
of Forum member reports and other published literature—the majority of which were
published between 2004 and 2014. Following the review of Forum member reports, a
few key questions arose for further research and discussion including: What qualities of
international volunteer cooperation organisations (IVCOs) and volunteers allow them to
be eective at strengthening co-productive relationships between governments and civil
society? Under what circumstances might IVCOs decide to take a confrontational role, in
partnership with more localised civil society organisations, to promote social change?
Proponents of international volunteering have long argued that IVCOs provide a number
of comparative advantages over technical approaches and strategies implemented by
other mainstream development actors [2]–[4]. These proponents assert that IVCOs
oer viable “development alternatives” based on assertions of close alignment with the
goals and priorities of civil society—thereby refocusing the nature of development from
strict economic growth to the enhancement of relational and human abilities [3]. While
some critics assert that nearly all international organisations threaten the development
of indigenous and grassroots civil society organisations [5], advocates rebut that IVCOs
maintain deep roots in civil society via volunteers who live and work in partnership with
local communities—operating within a relationship-oriented approach that recognises the
importance of innovation through mutual communication and idea-sharing [2]–[4], [6].
With their closer connections to civil society, IVCOs can hypothetically maintain greater
accountability to community groups, and may be less subject to political capture and
upward pressures than many other international development organisations [7], [8].
Despite IVCOs’ theoretical advantages over other state and market actors in civic space,
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
an analysis of the contemporary reports from Forum members raises questions about
the extent to which IVCOs have the capacity to genuinely align with civil society interests.
In some instances, donor practices that constrain the organisations’ focus to service
delivery and poverty eradication may inadvertently cause them to neglect broader support
for grassroots civil society movements necessary to drive transformational structural and
social change [9], [10]. This concern is especially poignant for government-funded IVCOs,
which may deliberately divorce themselves from contentious politics between the state
and civil society in order to maintain government funding. While this may make good
market sense, engaging with contentious political movements is sometimes necessary for
maintaining alignment with civil society interests and priorities.
This paper seeks to unpack IVCOs’ relationships within contentious civic spaces by first
discussing the various missions of IVCOs, with a particular emphasis on their compound
accountabilities to donors and local actors in civil society. It situates these multiple missions
and accountabilities in historical perspective, reviewing how these missions have changed
over time in response to the interests and demands of multiple stakeholders. Within this
historical context, contemporary examples are used to illustrate how an environment of
results-based management, which has increasingly dominated foreign aid over the past
two decades, often drives IVCOs to focus their agendas in areas that may not necessarily
be in the best interests of civil society.
The final sections of this paper suggest implications and recommendations for navigating
contemporary trends, including how IVCOs can maintain accountability to multiple
stakeholders—supporting the needs of civil society and empowering marginalised groups,
while still appealing to donor priorities, and being accountable to donor results [11]. These
questions have important implications for IVCOs working on governance and other
sustainable development priorities as they work to “…promote access to justice for all and
build eective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels” [12, Para. 18], [13].
The Multiple Missions of IVCOs
IVCOs are a specialised type of development organisation that operate within a range of
sectors, from corporate and non-governmental to governmental and quasi-governmental
organisations [14]. Across these dierent forms, 90 percent of Forum-aliated IVCOs
have reported that national governments are their primary source of funding [15]. In
fact, many of the largest IVCOs are operated and managed as state agencies and would
technically qualify as public sector organisations—though many also have complex funding
relationships in the private sector. Other IVCOs are technically private or voluntary sector
organisations but have a long history of collaboration and core funding from the state. Still
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
others receive minimal to no funding from the state but rely primarily on contributions
from non-governmental sources. IVCOs’ sectors of operation and sources of funding are
significant factors in this discussion because these variables likely influence their missions
and the flexibility of their relationships with civil society.
Compared to other development actors, both public and private IVCOs claim advantages
of closer alignment with local civil society organisations, people-centredness, participation
and partnership-building as their raison d’être [16], [17]. These advantages are theoretically
more relevant to non-governmental IVCOs. One of the traditional functions ascribed to
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) is to act as a countervailing weight against
powerful forces, including the hegemonic state and the unfettered marketplace [18]. While
governmental IVCOs may not necessarily carry the same obligations to civil society as
non-governmental IVCOs, the issues discussed in this paper are relevant to all IVCOs that
claim alignment with civil society as an important added value or comparative advantage
that they bring to development programs and projects.
Depending on the nature and type of IVCO, their activities will span a full gamut of missions
and priorities from sector-specific service delivery to advocacy and campaigning [19]. In a
2011 report published by UNV and the World Alliance for Citizen Participation (CIVICUS),
the authors pose the question: “Is it more eective for volunteers to focus on filling
gaps (e.g. supplementing inadequate public social services) or should they concentrate
their energies on holding governments accountable for inadequate service delivery and
demanding improvements?” [20, p. 11]. In reality, there are many additional activities that
volunteers can engage in beyond these two options. For instance, capacity building and
supporting consensus movements are central to many IVCOs’ missions. Consensus
movements emphasise multi-sector institutional support, and cooperation rather than
conflict [21], [22]. Indeed, the most functional approaches to mobilising civil society typically
aim to work co-productively with the state to improve governance through collaboration
and mutual accountability [23], [24]. In many circumstances, government action supports
mobilisation and civic action [24]–[26].
In broad terms, IVCOs have both political and developmental roles in relation to civil society
[9]. Political roles often involve an element of conflict directed against powerful forces,
and include activities such as lobbying and campaigning, mobilising social movements,
helping to build coalitions and supporting activism. In contrast, IVCOs’ developmental
roles are typically consensus oriented and include activities such as service delivery,
capacity building, and emergency/humanitarian aid and relief. These activities are not
mutually exclusive but fall on a spectrum of overlapping priorities. For instance, IVCOs’
political and developmental roles intersect when their activities and missions are focused
on empowerment for marginal peoples and social change—such as combating corruption,
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
promoting human rights and strengthening social justice for the politically disenfranchised
(See Figure 1).
Consensus
Conflict
Figure 1: Spectrum of IVCOs’ political and developmental missions
Scholars that research the various roles of development organisations often circumscribe
political activities as fulfilling an organisation’s “civil society” mission, while development
activities are typically lumped with an organisation’s “service delivery” mission [27]. This
typology is somewhat problematic for IVCOs. For instance, capacity building—a common
development strategy among modern IVCOs—would not fit squarely within the typical
definition of service delivery. Likewise, many IVCOs would consider their non-political
activities as nonetheless supporting civil society. Despite the limitations of these broad
categories, however, they are used in this paper to situate the discussion within the larger
context of organisational theory as it relates to social and economic development.
The Civil Society Mission
The civil society mission defines an organisation’s work to strengthen and support “the
arena, outside of the family, the state and the market, which is created by individual
and collective actions, organisations and institutions to advance shared interests” [20,
p. 8]. While both public and private organisations can ostensibly embrace a civil society
mission, it is most commonly the mission of non-governmental organisations. Linkages
Political Role
Lobbying
Campaigning
Coalition building
Mobilizing
Activism
Development Role
Capacity building
Service-delivery
Poverty eradication
Emergency relief
Combat
corruption
Promote human
rights
Strengthen
social justice
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
between volunteers, ordinary citizens and larger social and political institutions fortify an
organisation’s position to help represent the voice of citizens, to protect their rights, to
provide channels for citizen participation in governance, and to help hold the state and
market accountable when the interests of vulnerable populations are compromised [1], [9],
[20]. Because of this distinctive position, an organisation’s civil society mission is seen as
particularly important for promoting structural change, particularly when tackling issues of
power and inequality.
As discussed above, the majority of IVCOs maintain a strong civil society mission—
despite the fact that many are governmental or government-supported organisations.
This focus is largely attributed to the role of volunteers along with their person-to-person
approach and repeated engagement with individual citizens. This personal approach
theoretically distinguishes the work of IVCOs from other governmental development
programs that tend to focus on providing technical aid, delivering services and planning
macro-structural interventions.
In their 2007 discussion paper, Plewes and Stuart listed the “civil society strengthening
model” as one of the three key rationales for sending volunteers abroad—recognising
that this goal is often overlooked or misrepresented [28]. Further characterising this
model, the recent Valuing Volunteering research conducted by VSO and the Institute
of Development Studies (IDS) emphasised the importance of social reform as a core
value of volunteers’ contributions—beyond merely creating spaces for participation. As
one example cited in this research, the secretary of the Philippine National Anti-Poverty
Commission asserted that:
The most important of the areas for volunteering would be helping to organise the poor,
providing intellectual resources and confidence for negotiating this new terrain. Helping
the poor is not just helping them to participate eectively into invited spaces. It is about
supporting the poor developing the capacity for collective action. The more capacity the
better, especially because poverty reduction is not a picnic, there are many contentious
issues. The poor have to have capacity in those contentious spaces [29, p. 35].
It is important to note, however, that the civil society mission does not always equate with
contention, subversion or opposition to the state or market. Although IVCOs rarely take
a direct political role in contentious spaces, some may work as advocates to enhance the
political participation and activism of local civil society actors [19], [30]. Concerns about
the civil society mission can arise in any situation where the Paris Declaration principles of
ownership, alignment, harmonisation of donor actions and mutual accountability are not
truly honoured [31]. In this regard, the civil society mission can also be neglected during
partnership approaches whenever IVCOs are more concerned about meeting the interests
of the state or donor than in meeting the interests and needs of civil society.
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
That said, contention is quite common in civil society movements, and marginalised
populations do need capacity to engage eectively. The potential for IVCOs to strengthen
civil society movements was highlighted in the most recent CIVICUS State of Civil Society
Report [32], wherein UNV qualified that advocacy and campaigning are important modes
of volunteer activity. This report cited a study of 843 diverse protests worldwide, which have
increased in frequency each year from 2006 to 2013. The main grievances arising from
these protests were economic injustice, denial of human rights, lack of true democracy,
and failure of political representation, which validate the important role of social dissent in
contexts when policymakers fail to prioritise the needs of their citizens [33, p. 14].
For many IVCOs, strengthening civil society to participate in advocacy and campaigning is
a key strategic goal. However, it is rare for modern IVCOs to explicitly support potentially
contentious movements that emerge as civil society priorities (e.g. activism, mobilising,
coalition building etc.). More often, IVCOs’ activities focus on encouraging participation,
inclusion and dialogue in governance-related activities [30]. As one example, the Uniterra
program “approaches governance from a perspective of strengthening civil society, both
in terms of players working together and of the establishment of political dialogue” [34,
Para. 1]. For other IVCOs, they may register governance as important, but do not explicitly
work to strengthen civil society due to unsupportive political environments in the regions
in which they are operating [1]. Still other IVCOs do not count strengthening civil society as
an overt or important objective. For these and other reasons detailed below, service delivery
(construed broadly) remains the dominant mission for many contemporary IVCOs.
The Service Delivery Mission
It is now widely acknowledged that the state alone cannot address all social needs—
particularly when the state is weak or under-resourced. Even in well-developed states, the
increased flexibility, innovation, responsiveness and people-centred nature of voluntary
and private sector organisations arguably carve a comparatively beneficial role in service
delivery. A typical IVCO service delivery model uses volunteers to provide education,
health care, humanitarian aid and other social and developmental services. IVCOs are
also increasingly using volunteers to build greater capacity among local populations to
more eectively deliver services. Service delivery is often viewed as an extension of the arm
of governments that are unable or unwilling to provide services (via grant and contract
mechanisms to the voluntary sector) [35].
While the work of volunteers in service delivery can certainly be highly beneficial to achieving
development goals, critics have raised a number of concerns with focusing too exclusively
on the service delivery mission. Common critiques assert that service delivery tends to
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
reduce state obligations to provide services and has the potential to create dependency
[36]. Less common critiques allege that providing temporary relief and social services tends
to calm social unrest and discontent; however, this comes at the price of stifling social
movements that are needed to stimulate true transformational social and political changes.
Many examples in the literature highlight how voluntary sector organisations have explicitly
misdirected or dampened social movements because of governmental and other donor
agendas that aim to provide services at the expense of social change [36], [37]. According
to these arguments, pressures from governments and other donors may enable IVCOs to
excel in providing services but possibly at the expense of true alignment with civil society
interests—particularly when activism is inconsistent with donor interests.
Even in situations where service delivery is not used to pacify social discontent, the focus
on service delivery may counteract principles of ownership and mutual accountability,
as objectives are often defined by donors’ top-down priorities. As quoted in the
summary report of the Valuing Volunteering research, “In Kenya, residents of Shanzu
and Kongowea in Mombasa [Kenya] did not consider the possibility of taking collective
action. They perceived development as something that was done to them rather than
something they would direct themselves… [29, p. 42].” As this case example illustrates,
because the residents did not feel a sense of ownership or control over the development
process—being recipients of services—they never legitimately entertained the idea
of collective action as a viable method to meet their needs. As IVCOs negotiate the
requirements and rules of the development marketplace, they need to carefully consider
whether a focus on service delivery allows them to harmonise their activities with true
civil society interests and needs [27].
Additional IVCO Missions
As mentioned at the beginning of this section, the categorisation of IVCO missions into
civil society and/or service delivery functions is not a comprehensive description of their
actual work. For instance, while many IVCOs historically began with service delivery and
humanitarian aid as primary objectives, they have increasingly moved toward capacity
building activities, networking to enhance resources, and other innovative methods and
interventions. In addition, not all IVCOs are secularly oriented; many have faith-based
missions that are used to justify proselytising and aid activities that fall well outside of
these two established categories.The typology presented above is not intended to be
all-inclusive—but is used here as a heuristic tool to make a case for clearer alignment
between IVCOs and civil society in situations where popular demands may not be fully
compatible with donor priorities.
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
The Influence of Donor Priorities
It is not dicult to find historic and contemporary examples of development organisations
that violate the Paris Declaration principles of ownership and mutual accountability—
particularly when they follow donor agendas that are incompatible with the needs of civil
society [37], [38]. Of particular interest to the thesis discussed in this paper, pressures from
donors to engage in apolitical initiatives have the potential to significantly constrain the
freedom of IVCOs, and to convert confrontational movements into consensus movements
[9], [39]. This is especially true in political climates adverse to social activism, where laws
are expressly created to repress civil society, or where threats to wealth and privilege are
unlikely to support popular movements directed towards social change [40], [41]. While
IVCOs typically aim to remain “compliant” with donor interests [42, Para. 873], they are
often merely responding rationally to a system designed to support consensus movements.
On one hand, support for consensus movements is not an undesirable direction—in
fact, a key message of the UN Development Group’s strategy for delivering the post-2015
development agenda is to “proactively align multi-stakeholder priorities, including those of
government, civil society, volunteers and private sector actors” [43, p. 18]. However, many
stakeholders also note that a well-functioning civil society requires the freedom to express
dissatisfaction through political activism and critical discourse in order to progress—
particularly in contexts where poverty and inequality are rampant [9], [44].
While support for consensus movements is certainly appropriate in many circumstances,
there are other circumstances where transformational social and political change is the
most appropriate course of action. In these circumstances, we must consider whether
IVCOs that consistently support the consensus model are truly able to meet the needs
of the marginalised groups they claim to represent and empower. If IVCOs claim to
align with civil society, they need to be markedly introspective, and critically appraise
whether they are supporting donor agendas that may counter principles of ownership
and mutual accountability.
Even when the needs of civil society are not politically confrontational, IVCOs may find
it challenging to adapt and design programs to meet local needs when these needs are
incompatible, or do not align well, with donor priorities. Scholars assert that modern
funding decisions are de-incentivising the relationship-based and “people-centred” value
base in international service; replacing it with managerial and technical rigidity [3]. With
current conditions of results-based management, donors tend to focus on concrete
measures of eectiveness or key performance indicators, which are largely relevant for short-
term projects. These indicators are typically used to determine whether aid is perceived
as eective. In such circumstances, IVCOs have a low incentive to focus activities on
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
alternative development plans for long-term social change. The following section deepens
the discussion of the potentially negative influences of managerialism and outcome
measures on IVCOs’ diverse development priorities.
New Managerialism
The environment of results-based management and new managerialism, which has
dominated foreign aid since the late 1990s, has hypothetically been a significant driving force
for IVCOs to focus their agendas on measurable service delivery activities [45], [46]. The term
“new managerialism” refers to the management of the aid program and includes an array
of donor activities that include a focus on measuring impact to demonstrate eectiveness
and eciency, insistency on transparent and accountable records, and a reduction in core
funding toward competitive contracting over traditional grant mechanisms [46]–[49].
While many donors, including national governments, seem to fully support the idea of
a dynamic civil society, their emphasis on managed results sometimes makes it dicult
for IVCOs to promote transformative development. To satisfy donor requirements,
IVCOs are required to focus accountability on measurable outputs, outcomes and other
functional targets, often overlooking less-easily measured but equally important goals
such as empowerment, capabilities, livelihoods and well-being. Consistent with this view,
many have argued that volunteering and other people-centred and process-oriented
development strategies are incompatible with contemporary rational planning tools
focused on outcomes over process – and thus should not be subject to managerialist
measures and reporting requirements [10], [38], [50], [51]. As Georgeou has argued in her
critique of neoliberal influence on development volunteering programs, in the late 1990s
Australia moved its development aid focus further away from a rights-based, humanitarian
understanding of development when it “instituted ‘performance-based’ programs, which
made additional aid conditional on economic and public sector reform ‘milestones’ to
be achieved by recipient countries”. The new model required an increased emphasis on
development through market liberalisation, thus taking aid delivery well away from its
humanitarian origins [46, pp. 58, 62, 63]. Within the paradigm of new managerialism,
there are concerns whether attempts to measure international volunteers’ contributions
against the MDGs (and the new SDGs) can ever accurately capture and convey the real
practical and theoretical value of development approaches that are “people-centred” and
“relationship-based” [4, 5].
Although accountability for results is certainly an important principle, a common assertion
from both development organisations and hosting communities is that pre-specified
outcomes and short-term donor requirements for measurable results often inhibit
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
innovation and alternative development approaches [52]. Stakeholders express their
concern that measuring progress according to pre-specified and depoliticised poverty
indicators has significantly reduced the range of alternative development strategies that
volunteer organisations might otherwise pioneer to tackle intractable problems [18], [53]. In
addition, small organisations in particular have diculty maintaining compliance with the
high degree of paperwork required to sustain funding. For these and other reasons, many
voluntary sector organisations remain open to audits to satisfy principles of accountability
and transparency, but are increasingly opposed to the rigid documentation associated with
contemporary donor requirements [42], [54].
Managerialism and results-based contracting have not always been the norm for IVCO-
donor relations. The following section discusses historic changes in IVCOs’ relationships
with (primarily governmental) donors, and how these relationships have aected IVCOs’
missions and activities in dierent historic eras.
Changes to the Civil Society Mission in
Historical Perspective
Over the past sixty years, the relative merits of the state, civil society and market have
greatly influenced the direction and priorities of the development agenda. Each decade
seemed to bring with it new philosophies on the way to “do development”. Donor
policies are located in big historical movements, as are IVCOs’ policies and priorities.
While IVCOs’ service delivery mission has always been a primary guiding force behind
volunteers’ activities, the relative emphasis placed on civic and political projects has
changed over time—and has varied significantly across organisations. For instance, the
goal of many early IVCOs included a strong emphasis on promoting and influencing
peace and democracy, which is far less evident today.
During the early founding of most publically-financed IVCOs still in operation today, the
global dialogue on international volunteer service focused heavily on its peace-related
roles, and on establishing common interests and understandings among people of
dierent cultures [55], [56]. The promotion of democratic governance and civic action were
also commonly emphasised—particularly by the U.S. Peace Corps, which dominated the
field through its sheer numbers in early years.1 While it can be argued that Peace Corps’
1 Among the 17,000 international volunteers working in Africa, Asia and Latin America by the end of 1965, more than 12,000
were from the U.S. Peace Corps, followed by France (2,200) and Britain (900), and a combined 3,000 international volunteers
from the other sixteen nations counted by ISVS [105, p. 137], [106]. Statistics published by Gillette (1968) also illustrate that other
early IVCOs were relatively small in comparison with the Peace Corps [58, p. 184]. This proportion changed somewhat over the
next decade. Despite the large number of international volunteers coming from North America (down to 10,000 in 1973), by the
mid-1970s nearly 15,000 volunteers were represented by the combined European countries alone [81, p. 32].
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
early focus on democracy was associated with Cold War politics [57], promoting democratic
governance remains a priority for many modern IVCOs. However, their contemporary
strategies typically include tactics such as heightening community-level engagement
and participatory decision-making rather than initiating grassroots mobilisation and
social action [1]. This section explores the evolution of philosophies underpinning IVCOs’
development strategies as reflected in wider scholarship on development NGOs and the
voluntary sector.
1950s-1960s
Many of the large publically-funded IVCOs (e.g. VSO, AVI, JOCV, Peace Corps, FK
Norway, CUSO, etc.) emerged during the late 1950s and 1960s within a system of
international cooperation that occurred alongside the growth of large transnational
NGOs [14]. In the beginning, large-scale structural reform was not necessarily a priority
for IVCOs; development was viewed primarily as a transfer of skills, and the newly-
developed IVCOs provided opportunities for volunteers (predominantly university
graduates) to sta and train social service agencies in the newly-independent countries
[28, p. 2]. The prevailing development ideology in the 1960s assumed that economic
growth was a technical issue, and that countries and communities following the “right”
policies would experience growth. In this context, development volunteering had a
straightforward, technical and skills-based role [46, p. 31].
As one of the first IVCOs to become formalised (in 1958), the UK’s Voluntary Service
Overseas (VSO) focused almost exclusively on service delivery and skills transfer—with
a priority placed on education, agricultural, industrial and medical services. The majority
of other publicly-financed IVCOs that emerged over the next decade also held firmly to a
service delivery mission, with some degree of specialisation by sector. For instance, Japan
Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (JOCV) and the German Development Service program
focused primarily on agriculture, FK Norway focused largely on medical services, and
VSO and the U.S. Peace Corps prioritised education [58, pp. 191, 193]. Volunteers were
often discouraged from becoming actively involved in civic movements, even when these
movements aimed to challenge open racial or religious discrimination. However, quite
consistent with the approach of many contemporary IVCOs, volunteers were encouraged
to help create an enabling environment for civic action. As an early VSO administrator
described the organisation’s philosophy:
Their [volunteers] work cannot and should not be thought of as a substitute for the
action which needs to be taken at a political level. What they [volunteers] can do is
help to create a climate of public opinion in which such action is seen to be right and
necessary, and to reinforce it wherever possible [59, p. 209].
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
Although the majority of mainstream IVCOs during this early decade focused heavily
on service delivery, the U.S. Peace Corps maintained a clear secondary aim to promote
democracy. The case examples in Box A showcase how Peace Corps administrators
conceptualised their volunteers’ roles in the promotion of democracy and political change.
This view was originally quite distinct from the philosophy of many other IVCOs during
the time, which focused on skills transfer. In Kouwenhoven’s report to the International
Secretariat for Volunteer Service (ISVS) comparing the policies of various international
volunteer programs [60], Peace Corps volunteers were portrayed as much more likely to
engage in the “activation of rural or urban communities and groups of people....and at the
enhancement of the community members’ participation in activities aimed at the raising
of their standard of living in general” (pp. 8, 15).
According to the dominant development ideology, the tasks of community development
and organising were viewed as distinctly dierent from technical assistance. During this
era, Peace Corps administration frankly professed that economic growth and material
gains were secondary to political gains [60, p. 15]. In the 1969 Evaluation of Volunteer
Service Organisations published by the International Secretariat for Volunteer Service
(ISVS), a senior Peace Corps executive, Ward Hower, described how their mission diered
from many other IVCOs, including the German Development Service and Canadian
University Service Overseas. Hower asserted that the “Peace Corps has as a basic aim
the promotion of peace and friendship, and development is a very subordinated aim”;
nonetheless, the connection between community organising and peace and friendship
was not clearly articulated—particularly in connection with the U.S. political agenda
at the time [61, p. 11], including a plausible state-driven political agenda to create civil
society movements in Latin American as a way of making democracy more attractive—
perhaps harnessing activism to advance U.S. national interests. In contrast, European
and Asian agencies during this early era viewed their role as supplementing the work of
governments, and applying their eorts to supply technically skilled manpower where
needed to fill vacancies in organisations [59], [60].
Box A. The political mission of the U.S. Peace Corps in the 1960s
Embedded within the tensions of the Cold War, the U.S. Peace Corps had a meaningful focus on
promoting democracy and social change during the 1960s [57], [107]. In 1965, the Peace Corps chief
public relations ocer, Robert Satin, stated that they aimed to recruit the kind of young people
into the Corps who “can get thousands of demonstrators to turn out, because they have the kind
of organisational skills that can make democracy work in underdeveloped nations” [108, p. 191].
Likewise, the early standardised training of the U.S. Peace Corps was composed of eight modules—
two of which were focused on governance and civil rights including training volunteers on the
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
“analysis of democratic institutions”, and training on “World Aairs: to include contemporary
international problems, Communist strategy and tactics, and America’s role in the world scene”
[60], [109, p. 33].
Although Peace Corps volunteers formally aimed to participate as neutral parties in politically-charged
areas, many viewed the volunteers’ teaching of community action as a significant ignitor of civic
action. One example described volunteers’ engagement with the civilian population of the Dominican
Republic as “contributing to the political awakening of the Dominican people”, which ultimately
aided the rebellion to restore the constitutional government [105, p. 130], [110], [111]. This position was
reinforced by other Peace Corps authorities. Harris Woord, Associate Director of the Peace Corps
in 1965, took pride in the notion that “young Americans teaching in their schools or working in their
communities would be a real source of ferment, agents of change, if not of social revolution” [105, p.
130].
In his address to the U.S. State Department in 1965, the second Director of the Peace Corps discussed
the importance of democratising institutions, asserting “This is also what the Peace Corps Volunteer
is and does and lobbies for.... Everything about him, his reason for going there, his performance,
his personality, what he’s after, what he prays for, is revolution, is change, is democracy” [112, p.
8–A] as quoted in Woord, 1966, p. 130. Although this statement is quite provocative, the concept
of revolution may not be as radical as it seems. Frank Mankiewicz, who was regional director for
the Peace Corps’ Latin American programs in 1964, wrote a discussion paper on the community
development philosophy practised by the Peace Corps in Latin America. In this paper, Mankiewicz
explained:
It may sound strange when I say that our mission is essentially revolutionary. The ultimate aim of
community development is nothing less than a complete change, reversal – or a revolution if you
wish – in the social and economic patterns of the countries to which we are accredited [110, p. 4].
Mankiewicz continued using an example of indigenous children oppressed in mainstream schools,
and explained why a focus on service delivery in this context may be counterproductive:
Where school children are insulted by their teachers and told that their own language is
an ugly animal dialect, it is idle to build a school so that 20 more of those children can go
through that experience and assume we’ve done Peace Corps work. That would simply be
contributing to the preservation of a system that cannot last and must not last. That’s why
community development is essentially a revolutionary process, consisting of helping these
outsiders to get in. Our job is to give them an awareness of where the tools are to enable
them to assert their political power….if that situation is to change to one in which the
great bulk of the outsiders become insiders, the non-participants become participants, and
oppressed and forgotten become a functioning part of the country, then that is nothing less
than revolution; and it is one that will be accomplished by political means [110, p. 7,9].
Although Cold War politics may diminish confidence in the agency promoting bottom-up social
change, the activism agenda was also emphasised by its volunteers, who were perhaps less influenced
by political manoeuvring. In a study conducted on the motives of 2,612 Peace Corps applicants in
1962, researchers reported that one of the volunteers’ six primary motivations listed volunteer service
as, “A laboratory in which the politically conscious can observe and take part in various kinds of social
revolution” [113, p. 201] as quoted in Gillette, 1968.
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
1960s through the mid-1980s
For the next two decades, beginning in the late 1960s through the mid-1980s, supporting
structural reform became a more explicit objective for many IVCOs. As with national
voluntary sector organisations at the time, IVCOs sought a closer alignment with political
struggles—seeking to demonstrate the relevance of civil society-centred strategies as an
alternative to state-centred development strategies [18], [62]. Voluntary sector leaders were
immersed in development theories and ideologies that aimed to empower communities
by challenging the structures of oppression and elite control of resources [63], [64].
Although the terms of empowerment, equity and participation are still commonly
used by many development organisations today, the meanings of these terms dier
widely from how they were construed historically in practice and development theory
[42]. International volunteers were described as arriving in countries with documented
human rights abuses “to do battle” with oensive states [65, p. 259]. As external actors,
voluntary sector organisations played an ostensibly important role as knowledge brokers
to strengthen counter-hegemonic awareness or “critical consciousness” in civic and
social movements [18], [66].
Resources ocially budgeted for development projects were often diverted to support
oppositional civic movements, and financing voluntary sector organisations was viewed
as a way to distance governments from providing explicit support for these oppositional
movements [18], [62], [67]. In other situations, IVCOs explicitly aligned with political
agendas. As Dr Cli Allum, CEO of Skillshare International, recalled:
At institutional level, the Catholic Institute for International Relations (CIIR—now
Progessio) consciously positioned itself as a radical wing of the Catholic church;
International Voluntary Service (IVS—now Skillshare International) openly associated
with the anti-apartheid struggle; United Nations Association International Service
(UNAIS—now International Service) was rooted in the values and beliefs of the new
world order as expressed by the values of the UN. [68]
During the first international consultation held on volunteer service in 1970, participants
from 14 countries from India and Zambia to Norway and Germany armed that many
volunteers desired to serve abroad as a way of expressing their political sentiments. As the
participants in this consultation summarised, young volunteers “should understand that
for some, protest may be their service, while for others service may be their protest. By
helping, they can develop the capacity for political unrest and social change” [55, p. 9]. As
is subtly reflected in these comments, despite a broader acceptance of volunteers’ support
for movements in civil society, skills transfer and the delivery of services—particularly
education—were often viewed as a way to artfully support these movements. This idea
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
was more explicitly expressed by Peace Corps’ Director Mankiewicz (1966):
The technical assistant has a vital role to play as well, because he is the man or woman
who can string wire, train midwives, or lay those bricks and teach. His work will often
mean that a community action project can get underway [110, p. 14].
Although service delivery was still the primary aim and activity of international volunteers
during this period, the provision of services was often an underlying activity that facilitated
larger social movements rooted in civil society.
During the second ISVS international consultation on volunteer service, held in 1971,
representatives of IVCOs from 12 nations (including the German Development Service, the
Swedish International Development Cooperation, Peace Corps and CUSO among others)
were even more explicit about the role of volunteering in civic movements—moving beyond
a supportive role provided through skills transfer and service delivery:
We now accept the principle that volunteer service should no longer be preoccupied
with industrialization, or introduce techniques for their own sakes, and that economic
justice, and freedom from social and cultural domination are also goals toward which
volunteers can and must work….We can boldly say that when a volunteer helps through
animation to bring self-awareness to peasants or elites, or to develop ‘intermediate’
technologies, which limit alienation, he is engaged in a humanising process....If these
are among the roles which volunteers can and do play, then continued submission to
the view of volunteerism as merely the provision of technical expertise is unrealistic, and
an intolerable wastage of voluntarism’s real potential [56, pp. 16, 17].
During this same consultation, the ISVS Secretary General, Chikh Sy from Ghana, asserted
that volunteers promoted the expression of ferment and political voice in the African
region, and that through the volunteers’ mobilisation eorts, “peasants” were successful
at speaking with the government about land ownership issues for the first time in many
years. He asserted that these foreign volunteers “might be more easily accepted in the role
as a catalyst than a native” [56, p. 11], and that working in collaboration with local volunteers
they were eventually successful at organising over 35,000 peasants to speak about land
reform and to participate in decisions about how to divide the land.
While some leaders at the ISVS conference insisted that sending organisations were to
be neutral in political matters, others questioned the reality of this position, asking “Is
it possible to be above politics in a local situation, since most of the host countries are
in areas of great ferment, and are undergoing political and ideological struggle of wide
consequence?” [56, p. 4]. Reflecting on his experiences during this era with International
Voluntary Service in Mozambique, Dr Allum armed this position, asserting:
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
Whatever the formal position of the sending organisation, no-one could volunteer and
be outside the political context. For example, international volunteers who went with
IVS to Mozambique during the civil war would likely have been Frelimo supporters,
whatever their technical role. [68]
In politically-charged situations, volunteers supported by IVCOs formally valuing neutrality
were often obliged to align with political movements.
Late-1980s to mid-1990s
By the late 1980s, neoliberal reforms and structural adjustment programming began to
colour the aid landscape. These reforms resulted in a general reduction in the state’s role,
a strengthening of civil society and citizen participation, and the promotion of market
mechanisms to advance liberal democratic values [46], [69]. Development organisations
reported significant pressure from funders to ignore or avoid all political activity, and to
focus on service delivery [70]. Scholars researching volunteer organisations noticed a
“shift away from self-help, community development or campaigning work, towards the
management of funded ‘projects’ or the direct provision of services” [71, p. 214].
While there were certainly exceptions, most IVCOs continued to support community
development processes at the grassroots level, but became less willing to support
local activism or advocacy eorts [18]. Due to governments’ greater reliance on the
voluntary sector during this period to provide services, including increased contracting
of governmental activities to both domestic and international volunteer organisations,
few activist and radically-oriented activities were supported [72]. As in earlier periods,
however, IVCOs sometimes maintained a foot in service delivery, while also supporting
oppositional civic movements. As one example in the late 1980s, despite the ocial
closure of schools by the Israeli government, international volunteers were enlisted by
women’s groups in Israel to bypass ocial school closures and subversively taught classes
in Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank [73]. As another example, thousands of
international volunteers in the 1980s were sent to Nicaragua to aid with agricultural
development, engineering, teaching and other social programs. Many of these same
volunteers later engaged in activism to support the Sandinista Revolution, and were
supported by IVCOs such as Progressio [2], [74].
It was also during this period that many small, commercial and privately-supported
international volunteer cooperation organisations emerged and began to grow in response
to the neoliberal agenda and the consequent reduction of the state in service delivery [62].
As a result, the role of voluntary sector organisations in service delivery became far more
explicit. As one example of the increasingly significant role that international volunteers
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
began to play in service delivery in some countries, Slater [75] reported that, due to a
shortage of physicians in Nicaraguan hospitals during the height of the conflict in 1986,
more than 50% of the practising physicians in select areas were international volunteers,
and more than 15% of health specialists in the country were international volunteers.
As both domestic and international voluntary sector organisations gradually began to
move away from supporting popular movements, some scholars reflected on previous
decades and argued that these organisations started to “lose their way” or “lose the
volunteerism spirit” — becoming largely public service contractors, which ostensibly
“compromised their innovativeness, autonomy, legitimacy, accountability, and ability
to continue elaborating [development] alternatives” [18, p. 1707], [38], [76], [77], [78,
p. 26]. Still other IVCOs moved away from both political activities and direct service
delivery, refocusing their eorts on developmental strategies of skills transfer and
capacity building.
Late-1990s to Today
Since the year 2000, the Millennium Development Goals and the associated poverty
reduction framework have become the central orientation employed by most development
organisations. State funding to voluntary sector organisations, including IVCOs, has largely
turned to contracting for services—focused on delivering charitable and humanitarian
goals over activist and social justice goals, thereby reducing the potential for volunteers
to support movements designed to create systemic change. During this era, practitioners
began to see a significantly diminished role for alternative development actors that had
previously supported social and civic movements [10], [18], [70].
Despite this general trend, it is worth noting exceptions. For instance, in the early
2000s, volunteers with FK Norway worked with a left-wing political party and civil
society groups in El Salvador to assist with party elections [79]. There are also a handful
of contemporary examples of IVCOs that continued to explicitly support counter-
hegemonic movements in civil society, such as Progressio’s project designed to train
activists in sexual diversity, and to increase awareness about the rights of LGTBI people
in Nicaragua [80].2 In addition, as will be illustrated later, many modern IVCOs continue
to perform civil society objectives; however, these objectives are largely implemented
as solidarity movements with local membership-based and popular organisations that
can carry out activist agendas.
2 Progressio’s funding scheme is far more diverse than many large-scale IVCOs: http://www.progressio.org.uk/content/how-
we-are-funded, which likely helps to encourage closer alignment with civic movements.
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
As early as 1978, nearly all large-scale IVCOs in U.S. and Europe were funded primarily
by governments—with the exception of British and Canadian foreign volunteer services,
which obtained around 50% of their funding from private sources [81, p. 28]. Despite the
fact that these IVCOs were publically funded, most (perhaps with the exception of German
Volunteer Service under DED) still had “significant flexibility in their decision-making once
the annual budget and program is approved” [81, p. 28]. Indeed, both IVCOs and their
volunteers appeared to have greater flexibility to align with civil society group interests
than they would in the modern context. While accountability to civil society is still a goal of
many modern IVCOs, modern managerial approaches are contrasted with more flexible
and independent experiences of international volunteers historically. As one example,
scholars researching the Peace Corps program in rural Ecuador in 1985 concluded that
these volunteers viewed themselves as largely independent from the interests and priorities
of the U.S. government. This study described volunteers as:
Free agents, that is, their performance in the field is determined in greater measure by
their own imaginations and value systems and by their own personal interpretations
of what their roles should be than by the objectives of funding or supervisory
agencies…far from promoting the particular interests of the U.S. administration
[they] are more likely to pursue their own interests or the interests - as they see them -
of their Ecuadorian communities [82, p. 545].
Flexibility that IVCOs and volunteers often exercised over the spending of resources,
and the self-determining control of their activities, started to change during the late
1990s when donors began to exert far more managerial conditionality and oversight
over contracts [10]. Since the early 2000s, foreign aid budgets that support the work of
IVCOs have often positioned the organisations as clients contracted to deliver services
[46], and to advance MDG targets. While some aid streams also support projects
aimed at promoting democracy, these projects are typically incremental rather than
supporting deep transformational changes to politics and society—even when such
changes are viewed as necessary for true progress [27].
Although research has found that one of the defining characteristics of volunteers’
complementary contributions is a greater trust for international volunteers and IVCOs
over other development actors [17], we might ask if such trust may be given too freely or
misplaced when priorities may not necessarily represent the interests of civil society groups.
While a number of contemporary IVCOs have reported contributions to governance that
encourage the participation of marginalised people in decision-making processes as a
means of representation [1], some have argued that this model is not truly able to fulfil
the vision of democratic participation necessary to make genuine structural changes to
processes that otherwise perpetuate inequality and oppression [19], [83].
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
Consensus and Confrontation Strategies
In reviewing the historical evolution of IVCO goals and priorities over the past half-century,
it is important to emphasise that the dual goals of delivering services and supporting civil
society were never polarised objectives for IVCOs. Supporting confrontational movements
is not always, or even customarily, preferable to supporting consensus movements.
As a matter of definition, confrontational movements (or conflict movements) have
oppositional identities that campaign against groups with opposing views or objectives.
On the other hand, consensus movements are “organized movements for change that
find widespread support for their goals and little or no organized opposition” [84, pp.
273–74]. Rather than confronting or bypassing corrupt institutions in failed or weak states,
cooperative collaboration between multiple actors in civil society, the market and the state
is a common development strategy and a primary driving force to eectively deliver services
[69]. This complementary role of volunteers as co-architects with other development actors
was highlighted in the UN Development Group’s strategy for delivering the post-2015
development agenda, which states “Volunteerism can be seen as a cross-cutting means of
implementation, producing benefits such as capacity-building, empowerment and social
integration” [43, p. 22]. Indeed, research that questions the value of confrontational tactics
has found that securing funding for advocacy eorts is often more likely when proposals
are approached with diplomacy and cooperation [8].
IVCOs’ strategies to work in consensus with other development stakeholders, including
the state and market actors, is likely preferable in most circumstances. The key challenge
is that consensus-based strategies are not always the best solution to social change. It
is important to ask whether IVCOs, which have historically been understood as having a
distinctive role to play in development, may experience “mission drift” in situations where
social mobilisation and confrontation may better reflect the true needs of civil society [18].
Likewise, regardless of the chosen tactic, it is important to consistently monitor how donor
pressures to document measurable achievements to the poverty reduction agenda may be
contributing to mission drift.
As illustrated above, services can be delivered across a spectrum of political to apolitical
engagement [85]. Through capacity building, skills transfer and the provision of services to
disenfranchised members of civil society, IVCOs can “neutrally” aid citizens as they work to
hold state and market institutions accountable. In this sense, even if service delivery remains
a primary focus over the coming decades in fulfilment of the post-2015 SDG agenda, IVCOs
may still have a comparative advantage over other development organisations. Likewise,
the contradiction that splits donors’ and civil society’s interests is often resolved in practice
through the practical work of volunteers, who often have their own motives and priorities
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
regardless of the IVCOs’ formal positions [86]. Through volunteers’ personal relationships
in communities, IVCOs can maintain their capacity to sustain a firmer grassroots orientation
than most other development organisations. Through volunteers’ hands on work with
communities and relative independence in practice, IVCOs can maintain a distinctive and
complementary role—regardless of donor demands and trends towards service delivery.
IVCOs and Membership-Based
Organisations
Even with this comparative advantage, IVCOs are certainly not the most important
actors in civil society. Individual citizens, community-based volunteers groups and
membership-based organisations are far more fundamental actors when it comes to
initiating and implementing structural social change. Membership-based organisations
(MBOs), also called popular organisations, include political and religious volunteer
organisations, self-help groups, cooperatives, citizen groups, and organisations formed
during progressive social movements [87]. MBOs are largely composed of volunteer
activists, whose work can be categorised under the general umbrella of non-formal and
change-oriented volunteerism [20], [27].
Membership-based popular organisations can often respond better to the needs of civil
society because they are financed by members, and are almost exclusively accountable
to their membership [20, p. 26], [88]. Because MBOs are primarily accountable to local
supporters, they have less pressure to remain political neutral or to satisfy the interests of
public donors [27]. Thus, civil society functions that aim to challenge or counterbalance
state interests are often core to the activities of popular MBOs [49, p. 16].
Despite this potential advantage, it is rare for MBOs to survive long when they rely
exclusively on membership or service fees without receiving external grants or other donor
funding [89], [90]. However, few donors allow funds to be spent on activities that could be
viewed as activism or advocacy—even when these are explicit goals for local civil society
organisations [91]. Although MBOs often begin with downward accountability, this tends
to change quickly as soon as they are subcontracted by funders to provide services [37],
[92], [93]. As a consequence, local volunteer agencies and their umbrella groups report
that they often feel captured by funders, lose their ability to engage in local struggles, and
cannot maintain activities consistent with their original missions and priorities [38], [94].
This begs the question of how IVCOs might collaborate more eectively with MBOs—
partnering to help them accomplish their goals. The virtues of collaborating with local
volunteers and village-level workers have been stressed since the creation of international
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
volunteer service programs in the 1960s [60]. In the modern context, such collaborations
often operate at a surface level. To stealthily fulfil their civil society functions as an alternative
development strategy, IVCOs may strengthen these partnerships by forming strategic
alliances with popular MBOs, which are hypothetically far more liberated to act on civil
society priorities [27]. Indeed, work with popular movements has the potential to greatly
scale up IVCOs’ civil society mission, as the energy and vitality that drives social change is
typically concentrated in local civic groups [95].
With these partnerships in place, it is important not to conflate the priorities of IVCOs with
the priorities of MBOs and popular civil society organisations. Although IVCOs often claim
to represent the interests of civil society, the legitimacy of this claim needs to be critically
considered when their funding comes primarily from state and private actors. In order
to legitimately represent civil society, accountability should be focused downward toward
members of civil society, rather than upward toward donors. Based on a 2011 survey of
Forum member organisations, only 10% listed individual contributions as a significant
funding source [15]. This reality suggests that the challenges inherent in MBO-donor
relationships may also be extended to MBO-IVCO relationships. IVCOs that require their
local partnerships to be structured along donor intervention plans also typically ask partner
organisations to maintain reporting that conforms to their donors’ conditions. This practice
can easily distort MBOs’ accountability to their members. In this sense, IVCOs may act as
vectors of managerialism—essentially transferring managerialist practices to their local
partner organisations [46], [96]. Considering the contemporary managerial approaches
linked with funding and accountability, the limitations of IVCOs as “representatives” of
civil society need to be openly acknowledged and carefully negotiated.
On a similar point, to the degree that IVCOs are present in volunteer-receiving countries,
or are located in urban centres and capital cities, they may have relatively weak connection
to popular movements in rural areas, which may also limit their ability to act as viable
representatives [20], [97]. Despite these challenges, IVCOs, through person-to-person
volunteer exchanges, still have a legitimate claim to closer alignment with civil society than
many other development agencies—particularly in rural areas. In this realm, volunteers
have long been viewed as a critical bridge between poor and indigenous communities in
the South and national political institutions, based on the volunteer’s greater access to
Northern resources, and knowledge [82]. This bridging role is highlighted in the synthesis
report of the UN Secretary-General on the post-2015 agenda:
Volunteerism can help to expand and mobilise constituencies, and to engage people
in national planning and implementation for sustainable development goals. And
volunteer groups can help to localise the new agenda by providing new spaces of
interaction between governments and people for concrete and scalable actions [12, p. 36].
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
Recommendations
The following sections provide recommendations for IVCOs that may be concerned about
mission drift due to complex relationships with donors. While there are likely many ways
that IVCOs can improve their support to local civil society organisations, this section first
considers how to work with funders unsupportive of reciprocal relationships, or whose goals
are clearly at odds with the interests of civil society. In addition, other possible innovations
are discussed as a means of building new relationships and partnerships, not only with
grassroots organisations but also with larger networks that support marginalised groups.
Working with Funders
Research with “civil society strengthening” NGOs in the Global South has clearly
identified a number of undesirable eects resulting from donor conditions and reporting
requirements [38], [98]. In response, many have developed and implemented innovative
strategies to work around these donor conditions. Some of these strategies include:
carefully selecting only compatible donors to work with, osetting donor resources with
other discretionary funds, withholding or selectively releasing information to donors,
misrepresenting the accuracy of information reported to donors, rejecting donor
funding, and terminating donor relationships [38]. While some of these strategies would
clearly not be considered ethical in practice, these strategies illustrate that IVCOs are not
helpless in their relationships with donors.
Perhaps the most commonly used strategy is to innovate alternative ways to fund civic and
advocacy projects that may not be compatible with donor goals. Elbers and Arts [38] found
that Northern NGOs and their Southern partners typically fulfil their advocacy missions by
osetting donor resources with discretionary funds. Other research found that this is also
a relatively common strategy among development NGOs in the UK [8]. In circumstances
where advocacy is not supported by their mainstream funders, IVCOs can support civil
society priorities by locating other small pots of money. As one example, 6% of Progressio’s
funding comes from individual supporters, along with an assorted set of donations from
private funds and foundations [99]. Such diversity of funding allows Progressio to engage
in activities that are consistent with community-level governance and advocacy priorities
to support “… civil society groups in order to equip people to successfully achieve greater
rights from local governments” and “securing clear accountability and responsiveness
from the European Union, member states and multi-lateral institutions in advocacy areas
such as illegal logging and climate change” [100, Para. 8].
Another promising method of working with funders is to directly advocate for greater
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
flexibility in spending. Michael [91] makes a convincing case for expressing concerns to
donors, and lobbying for flexibility when the priorities of civil society are clearly at odds
with donor priorities. By pitching principles embedded in the Paris Declaration on Aid
Eectiveness and the Accra Agenda for Action—including the core principles of reciprocity,
mutual accountability, ownership and close alignment with the goals of civil society [101]—
funders may be willing to change core priorities and measures of accountability.
Finally, in circumstances when donor priorities remain at odds with the needs of community
groups, IVCOs may need to carefully consider whether to accept donor funding. As a matter
of practice, in situations when supporting confrontational popular movements rooted in
civil society is seen as a progressive movement towards positive social change, IVCOs may
need to consider whether the funding is diverting their eorts toward less relevant goals.
Working with Membership-Based Organisations
With a long history of partnership with the aid industry combined with a better understanding
of donor and philanthropic terminology and processes, IVCOs and their “transnational
civil society” networks (e.g. Forum, IAVE, CIVICUS) can act as intermediary bridges—
connecting actors from dierent levels in the development ecosystem [102]. While popular
organisations deeply rooted in civil society may have the passion and incentive to organise,
they may lack the technical knowledge and the networks with other governance actors to
eectively realise their action [103]. IVCOs are in a strong position to act as intermediate
activists together with popular movements as they are “neither entirely elite nor subaltern”
but somewhere in between [104, p. 659].
As discussed earlier, community-based and national volunteers are typically more
flexible in their ability to support civic and social movements. They are also less likely
than international volunteers to be challenged on questions of legitimacy. Although the
priorities of MBOs and grassroots civil society organisations are not always benevolent,
and supporting these priorities may not always be the best strategy, IVCOs can strengthen
their civil society missions as they establish supportive partnerships with community-
based and local volunteer organisations. In practice, many IVCOs already appear to be
following this strategy through capacity building initiatives. Indeed, capacity building can
be an eective “middle ground” strategy that side-steps common critiques of service
delivery while also not explicitly being delivered in a recognisable form of advocacy.
However, in situations when IVCOs act as intermediary organisations in partnership with
MBOs, they must be careful not to reproduce donor requirements in their relationships
with local partner organisations.
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Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
Conclusion
This discussion paper began by posing key questions that emerged from prior research
on international volunteering and governance: Despite IVCOs’ perceived comparative
advantages over state and market actors, to what extent do we see IVCOs aligning with
civil society interests and needs? Under what circumstances might it be appropriate for
IVCOs to support controversial movements and advocate for civil society interests? What
qualities do IVCOs and volunteers possess that allow them to be eective at strengthening
co-productive relationships between governments and civil society?
As with other development organisations, some argue that modern IVCOs ultimately
follow the logic of the marketplace by aligning their priorities with donor interests,
which may or may not be in the best interests of civil society. The political realities of
IVCOs’ funding environments and the pragmatic limitations they face with legitimately
representing civil society as external entities are often overlooked. Consistent with
findings from other studies, IVCOs as an institutional form of “organised civil society”
supported by state donors face multiple barriers to eectively advancing their civil society
mission—particularly in comparison with local volunteers and popular movements that
comprise non-formal civil society [20].
While IVCOs will never be the major player in civic action, they nonetheless need to consider
new strategies in their negotiations with donors if they hope to successfully develop or
support enabling spaces for eective political action. Because non-formal volunteer
advocacy eorts and popular movements are dicult to sustain long term without public
funding, IVCOs can play a significant role as catalysts and bridges to help sustain local
advocacy eorts and movements.
The work of IVCOs and their networks to provide added support to the eorts of civil
society and local volunteers in their struggle to maintain autonomy and promote social
change is not of minor consequence. Individual citizens, community-based volunteers
groups, popular membership-based organisations and other civil society actors are needed
to complement, to balance, and occasionally to counteract, the interests of powerful state
and market actors. As emphasised by the U.K. National Coalition for Independent Action:
Voluntary services exist to do the things that Government cannot, will not, or should
not do; to complement, not substitute for public services: to innovate, reach excluded
groups…to act as commentator and critic of public services and State action. Once a
voluntary group becomes a servant of the State this unique role is compromised [48, p. 1].
Within the IVCO-community partner relationship, advocates are needed to develop and
maintain enabling spaces for citizen-state political action. Despite the modern challenges
28
Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
that often limit IVCOs in their support for civil society movements, they may yet have
an upper hand on other development organisations—many of which have been highly
criticised for becoming ever-more professionalised, less rooted in personal relationships
with local citizens, and increasingly distant from the bona fide needs of civil society [27], [49],
[54]. However, to the degree that IVCOs capitalise on their distinct strengths and embrace
alternative strategies that support civil society, they can make significant contributions to
sustainable social change.
29
Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
Acknowledgements
The author would like to acknowledge Cli Allum, Nichole Georgeou, Christina Jenkins,
Anne-Marie Duval, Peter Devereux and Suzanne Gentges for their helpful feedback on an
earlier version of this paper.
List of Acronyms
AVI Australian Volunteers International
CIVICUS World Alliance for Citizen Participation
CUSO Canadian University Service Overseas (now Cuso International)
DED/GIZ Deutscher Entwicklungsdienst / German Development Service – now GIZ
(Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit)
FK Norway Fredskorpset / Norwegian Peace Corps
Forum International Forum for Volunteering in Development
IAVE International Association for Volunteer Eort
IDS Institute of Development Studies
ISVS International Secretariat for Volunteer Service
IVCO International volunteer cooperation organisation
IVS International Voluntary Service
JOCV Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers
LGTBI Lesbian, gay, transexual, bisexual, intersex
MBO Membership-based organisation
MDG Millennium Development Goal
NGDO Non-governmental development organisation
NGO Non-governmental organisation
SDG Sustainable Development Goal
SIF Singapore International Foundation
UNV United Nations Volunteers
VSO Voluntary Service Overseas
WUSC World University Service of Canada
30
Benjamin J. Lough PhD, Forum Discussion Paper 2015: Balancing Donor Priorities and the Civil Society Function
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