The international humanitarian system’s localization agenda increasingly relies on digital technologies to coordinate local and global actors. While NGO literature emphasizes digital literacy (DL) as the primary driver of transformative digital integration, this study examines how environmental constraints shape the relationship between DL and NGO digital integration outcomes. Through a comparative analysis of 16 Nigerian NGOs across infrastructure-rich Ogun State and infrastructure-poor Borno State, findings reveal that environmental barriers create a skill-implementation gap where even highly skilled NGOs cannot translate capabilities into transformative integration due to three barriers: infrastructure gaps, bandwidth ceilings, and beneficiary connectivity limitations. Borno NGOs consequently experienced constraints in maintaining digitally mediated accountability to donors, beneficiaries, other NGOs, and staff. These findings reveal that digital skill building alone cannot address humanitarian accountability challenges without parallel infrastructure development.

The ideological fragmentation of women’s organizations is central to debates about the unity and effectiveness of global feminist activism. Existing datasets capture organizational presence and networks, but they neglect ideological orientations of women’s organizations. This article introduces the FEMPOWER dataset, covering the period 1980–2023 for around 9,000 women’s organizations active worldwide. FEMPOWER provides yearly country-level data on organizations’ size, reach, strategies, and ideological orientations, including neoliberal versus social justice, sameness versus difference, and intersectionality. Descriptive analysis illustrates regional and temporal variation in fragmentation as well as comparisons with other datasets from the same research domain. The dataset enables researchers to systematically examine how ideological fragmentation influences women’s empowerment and transnational feminist mobilization.

In recent years, China has sought to tighten regulation of foreign nonprofit organizations and foundations operating or funding in China, including through a new Law on the Management of the Domestic Activities of Foreign Non-governmental Organizations in China, enacted in April 2016. This article analyzes the history of China’s regulation of foreign nonprofits and foundations, the effect of external and domestic events on China’s shifting policy climate, the emergence of security-based intellectuals and their role in policy on foreign nonprofits and foundations in China, the new policy framework and the new Overseas NGO Law enacted in 2016, and initial implementation of this new framework in China. These developments provide background to other aspects of nonprofit and philanthropic performance in China that are discussed in this special issue.

Considering that the members of the International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGO) Accountability Charter played a prominent role in initiating the first sector supplement of the Global Reporting Initiative for non-governmental organizations (NGO), the purpose of the paper is to investigate their sustainability reporting (SR) practices in order to evaluate to what extent INGO Charter members comply with this voluntary accountability standard for SR. The empirical analysis is based on a content analysis of sustainability reports. The findings indicate that most of the INGO Charter members are far away from a comprehensive reporting practice. Hence, critical voices could assert that their reporting behavior seems to be more in line with facade building than the idea of providing a comprehensive account. By adapting a multiperspective theoretical discourse about the potential and shortcomings of SR to the NGO context, the study contributes to a field-specific theory-based pluralistic critical evaluation of SR as a major cross-sectoral innovation in voluntary accountability initiatives.

NGO/NPO effectiveness remains a prominent concern for scholars and practitioners, but the literature on this issue is increasingly fragmented along disciplinary lines. We address this problem by presenting a comprehensive and interdisciplinary review of the literature on NGO and NPO effectiveness using citation analysis. In order to uncover commonalities across disciplines concerned with similar questions, we deploy a structured literature review using snowball sampling within citation networks. This approach limits author biases, fosters an interdisciplinary perspective, and adds a different methodological approach to conventional content-based literature reviews. Our review uncovers three trends: (1) there is broad scholarly consensus that unidimensional measures of effectiveness are not useful—even though such measures are commonly used by NGO/NPO rating agencies; (2) the scholarship on NGO/NPO effectiveness is dominated by conceptual works, while empirical studies remain rare; (3) a consensus on how to operationalize effectiveness remains elusive. These results suggest that progress in our understanding of NGO/NPO effectiveness requires enhanced efforts at crossing disciplinary divides, adding empirical analyses, and increasing attention to develop shared categories and methodologies.

The INGO Accountability Charter is the only global, cross-sectoral regulatory initiative for international NGOs. This is the first independent study of perceptions of its effectiveness, based upon 26 in-depth semi-structured interviews with key individuals from 11 leading international NGOs. Firstly, it analyzes interviewees’ beliefs about the motivations of NGOs in joining the Charter. The findings contribute to the scholarly debate about the key drivers for voluntary regulation between ‘club theorists’ and ‘constructivists’ by demonstrating that NGO behavior in this regard is both self-interested and norm-guided. Secondly, it investigates the extent to which the interviewees believe that the Charter has been effective in enhancing the accountability of its members. Their responses further underline the applicability of club theory and constructivist explanations of NGO behavior, and lead to several policy recommendations about the future direction of Charter.

The non-NGO literature provides evidence that employees’ perceptions about their organization’s support to them influences their commitment to the organization. NGOs, which have an increasing presence in developing countries, have not been a target for this type of organizational research. This cross-sectional study, based in a health NGO in Pakistan, examined relationship between employees’ perceived organizational support (POS) and their organizational commitment, and relationship between perceptions about organizational fairness, supervisor support, and job conditions with POS. The current organizational commitment literature guided the design of the survey tool. Focus group discussions were carried out at another health NGO to identify NGO and developing country specific items for inclusion in the survey tool. A total of 249 employees participated in the study, yielding a response rate of 96%. Factor analysis of the survey items indicated that the current scales used for measuring the study variables in the non-NGO sector were valid for the NGO sector as well. In addition, three new variables, namely female supportiveness, personal supportiveness, and favorableness of work conditions were assessed. Findings revealed that POS was significantly related with organizational commitment and actions, such as organizational fairness, supervisor support, and extrinsically satisfying job conditions. Female and personal supportiveness, which are generally ignored in developing countries on the pretext of limited resources and lack of organizational capacity to address them, were also found to be important in influencing POS.

Using a principal–agent approach, I seek to determine if differences exist between official US development aid (ODA) and US-funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs) development aid allocation. NGO scholars have expressed concern regarding NGOs' relationships with their government funders (Hulme and Edwards, NGOs, States, and Donors, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1997); (Smillie, Stakeholders, Earthscan, London, 2000). Studies of European state-funded NGOs have found that need rather than political or economic interests determines state-funded NGO aid (Nancy and Yontcheva, Does NGO Aid Go to the Poor? Empirical Evidence from Europe. International Monetary Fund Working Paper 06/39, 2006; Dreher et al. 2009; World Economy 33:147–176, Kiel Working Paper No. 1486. Kiel, Germany: Kiel Institute for the World Economy, 2010) however; no study has examined US-funded NGO aid allocations. Results indicate that US-funded NGO aid mirrors US ODA allocations.

This study analyzes the strategies displayed by non-governmental organizations in the social services sector to face the resource dependence on public administration in Southern Spain. We focus on the reorganization of the public subsidies system in Spain and its specific impact on the entities registered in Andalusia. In 2017, the Autonomous Communities assumed the management of a proportion of the subsidies with a charge to the Personal Income Tax for “social purposes,” which was previously managed by the General State Administration in its entirety. The case study combines the description of (a) the process of transferring the management of a line of subsidies from the state to the regional level, (b) the strategies of non-governmental organizations to face the context of instability and financial uncertainty, and (c) the impact of the regulatory bases of grant calls on programs implementation. First, the database with all the applications submitted in the calls of 2017 and 2018 is analyzed (n = 11,610 applications). Second, we describe the perception of the change in the management system, from the point of view of the third-sector social services entities. The combination of both strategies allows us to examine in detail the response of social service organizations to ensure the continuity of the budget and the continuity of services. The results show that the change in the management system gave rise to a wide debate among non-governmental social services organizations about the calls for grants managed by the regional government. However, the qualitative case study showed that the reaction of the entities has more to do with the needs of adaptation to an unstable, uncertain, and highly competitive financial environment, than with specific characteristics of grant calls.

Non-governmental organizations’ (NGOs’) significant role in the development sector has augmented scholarly debate on their legitimacy and accountability over the last two decades. While this literature is often framed from a Northern theoretical perspective and focused on one or a few case studies, this article follows a different approach. Through an innovative social media analysis of the #UgandaNGOsExhibition X (formerly Twitter) campaign, this article inductively investigates the perception of Uganda’s urban public (Twitter/X users), a new emerging advocacy actor in Uganda’s civic space, concerning NGOs’ legitimacy and accountability. Our findings reveal that holding NGOs accountable in closed civic spaces can take various collective forms aside from direct control and co-optation by the government or increased donor scrutiny. Prioritizing naming, shaming, and peer accountability, the urban public appealed to NGO leaders to be more altruistic and practice the same ethos of social justice and accountability they demand from the government. However, NGOs should be receptive of valid criticism to maintain their legitimacy amid different accountability loci.

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), operating through the initiative of people, are valuable resources in contemporary economies and have grown rapidly worldwide; however, the development of NGOs in post-Soviet countries has been slower in more economically developed European countries. NGOs did not exist under the Soviet regime and only emerged in post-Soviet countries after the restoration of their independence. According to imprinting theory, when institutions are created within a new environment, they are still affected by previous knowledge, attitudes, and specific behavioral patterns. Relying on imprinting theory, our qualitative retrospective study explores the imprints of the Soviet regime and their manifestations in the development of NGOs in Lithuania in the post-Soviet period. Findings from semi-structured interviews with 30 creators and developers of early NGOs in Lithuania show that despite the new democratic norms being legitimized, many imprints of the Soviet period influenced the development of NGOs. While many negative manifestations are noted, we also find essential motivating factors that acted as impetuses for NGO development during the first decade after the restoration of independence in Lithuania.

This paper attempts to take the first steps toward developing a theory of non-governmental organizations (NGO)–state relations under dictatorship. Drawing on evidence from East Asia, the author argues that dictatorships typically employ one of two strategies in attempting to govern NGOs. First, some dictatorships follow a corporatist strategy, in which business associations, development, and social welfare organizations are co-opted into the state and controlled through a variety of strategies. Second, other dictatorships pursue an exclusionary strategy in which NGOs are marginalized and replaced with state institutions. Variation in the strategy chosen may be explained by differing levels of elite competition and the type of development strategy. Single-party states tend to regulate elite conflicts better and thus often choose corporatist strategies. In personalist regimes dictators tend to fear the organizational and mobilizational potential of NGOs and thus tend to pursue exclusionary strategies. This choice, however, is conditioned by the development strategy employed, as socialist development strategies reduce the incentives to allow NGOs.

The UK’s Health and Care Act (2022; paused until 2025) includes a globally novel ban on paid-for online advertising of food and beverage products high in saturated fat, salt and sugar (HFSS), to address growing concerns about the scale of digital marketing and its impact in particular on children’s food and beverage preferences, purchases and consumption. This study aimed to understand the potential impact of the novel ban (as proposed in 2020) on specified forms of online HFSS advertising, through the lens of interdisciplinary expertise. We conducted semi-structured interviews via videoconference with eight purposively selected UK and global digital marketing, food and privacy experts. We identified deductive and inductive themes addressing the policy’s scope, design, implementation, monitoring and enforcement through iterative, consensual thematic analyses. Experts felt this novel ‘breakthrough’ policy has potential to substantially impact global marketing by establishing the principle of no HFSS advertising online to consumers of all ages, but they also identified substantive limitations that could potentially render it ‘entirely ineffective’, for example, the exclusion of common forms of digital marketing, especially brand marketing and marketing integrated within entertainment content; virtual/augmented reality, and ‘advertainment’ as particularly likely spaces for rapid growth of digital food marketing; and technical digital media issues that raise significant barriers to effective monitoring and compliance. Experts recommended well-defined regulations with strong enforcement mechanisms. These findings contribute insights for effective design and implementation of global initiatives to limit online HFSS food marketing, including the need for government regulations in place of voluntary industry restrictions.

By addressing the question “Are the roles and values of stakeholder participation qualitatively different for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and national human rights institutions (NHRIs), and if so, how?” this article dissects stakeholder participation in UN human rights treaty body activities. First, it normatively posits that stakeholder participation in treaty body activities carries three values, which weigh differently based on the actor and the treaty body activity concerned: facilitating “bounded” national deliberations, promoting international deliberations on human rights treaty standards, and supplementing the treaty bodies’ fact-finding capacity. It offers concrete normative guidance for treaty bodies on their engagement with NGO and NHRI participation to maximize the benefits of these values. It then empirically analyzes their current practice in light of the above-mentioned normative guidance. This article contributes, first, to the theorization of stakeholder participation in treaty body activities, which has been discussed but only in generalized or fragmented ways in previous studies. Second, it supports the effectiveness and legitimacy of treaty bodies by endorsing their practice that is consistent with the guidance and finding space for improvement. Finally, it provides a rationale for establishing and strengthening NHRIs by showing that NHRI participation has unique roles distinct from those of NGOs.

This article examines the government purchase of social services in China as a window by which to investigate the evolving relations between the party-state and social organizations. Going beyond the conventional focus on state–non-governmental organization (NGO) dynamics in urban areas, we explore the expanded role of social organizations in rural service provision under state-led campaigns of rural modernization. Engaging with institutional theory and the consultative authoritarianism thesis, we argue that NGOs initially operated in an emerging organizational field where they exercised considerable autonomy in setting agendas and designing services. As the party-state's incentives to utilize and co-opt the social work profession grow, however, we observe a trend towards incorporation, wherein social workers now play a bigger role alongside the strengthening of state control over the sector. Through tracing the inception and eventual termination of a decade-long social service project in Guangdong, this article shows how state incorporation might undermine the future role of NGOs in rural development.