NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS



Non-Profit Organizations

Non-Profit Organizations

Introduction

The approach of every country is to make the nation and the world free of poverty and achieve sustainable development, which has become the need of the time because of the increase in the nature of poverty across the globe. Non-profit organization is an organization which, by its activities focuses on supporting the private or public rights, not aiming to generate profits. The rise in the nature of poverty has given renewed importance to NGOs, whose existence is legitimized due to the presence of poverty in the world (Edwards 2002: 279).

Poverty can be defined as lack of the ability of an individual of access to and control over commodities, which are not only related to survival i.e. food, water, and shelter, but also linked to the well-being of the individual that is health, survival and literacy, and empowerment to psychological and political situations (Hailey 2002: 54).

The history of Nonprofit Organizations is large and complex. These organizations can be seen in every culture and social context throughout the history. For instance, these organizations include colonial struggles for freedom, rights of women and activation of rights, and rights of workers in an organization. Therefore, an NGO can be defined as an organization that was first formed in Europe and the United States as a response to the socioeconomic upheavals felt during and after the World War I (Hailey 2002: 40). However, the World War II, the role of the NGOs was more broadly linked with development of the nation and its people. In addition to that, the role was more closely linked to poverty, which was considered as an issue in national and political instability. In this way, development became an instrument of Cold War tactics that consist of planned and monitored strategy to foster capitalist economics through free markets, ITA (International Trade Agreements), and social engineering inspired by the Declaration of Human Rights. Such planned interventions were supported in part by the birth of the Bretton Woods institutions (for example, World Bank, International Monetary Fund), which laid down an explicitly pro-West development agenda (Hailey 2006: 7).

Discussion

Although there is no universal agreement on what NGO's exactly are; however, there is wide-spread appreciation that in contemporary society their numbers and influence have reached unprecedented levels. Presently, NGO's address every conceivable issue and it function effectively across the globe. Many NGOs work for human rights and social justice while others work an extremely localized scale. At international level, thousands of associations are active for this purpose. According to a study, 25,000 of these organizations have qualifies as international NGOs and estimated $7 billion are now channeled through these organizations in the form of aid. These organizations have operated at some level throughout history; however, their role as the developmental agency is relatively a modern phenomenon emerging in 1980s (Hobe 1999: 27).

Question 1: Why have NGOs been regarded as the solution to development problem?

Non-profit organizations are considered as the backbone of the major areas of development including the ...