Changing funding patterns of Dutch NGOs

• In Event: North-South Dynamics in Globalization and NGOs I

Abstract

In 2011, WRR (2010: 268) called for fundamental restructuring of the Dutch co-funding system for NGOs. ‘The point of departure for funding should be the situation and actors in developing countries rather than that of Western organizations’. For WRR this meant, among other things, increase direct funding to Southern NGOs and the need for Western (meaning mainly Dutch) NGOs to ‘profile their added value more emphatically if they wish to be eligible for funding’. Put differently: Dutch NGOs were called upon to professionalise and specialise.

This WRR call did not fall on deaf ears in political The Hague. In fact, a major overhaul of the NGO funding system already started in the early 2000s but was speeded up after 2011. Although direct funding still remains a bit obscure, there has been a major overhaul of the central funding system for (particularly Dutch) NGOs. To such an extent that one of the leading newspaper in the Netherlands on August 5, 2015 opened with ‘Major layoff at biggest aid organisations’ (De Volkskrant, 5-8-2015). Central in the newspaper article were the four so-called co-financing organisations (ICCO, Hivos, Cordaid and Oxfam Novib) which have been the major beneficiaries of Dutch government fuinding since 1965. Overall, these four are seen as the major losers of the process of economising and restructuring of the Dutch government system of NGO funding.

Although the latter may be true this is not the entire story. Nor is it an answer to remaining questions. What has changed in the subsidy system of the government? Is it simply a case of cutting down on expenses or is it (also) a way of ensuring that NGOs (if they want to receive a subsidy) contribute to the goals of the Dutch government in the field of international development? In that sense: what remains of the autonomy of the NGOs or have they all become some kind of subcontractors for Dutch government policy? Which NGOs really have lost out because of changes in the system and which NGOs have actually gained?

Based on a unique database covering more than 600 Dutch, Southern and international NGOs and some 50 Dutch subsidy schemes for NGOs this article provides the first ever analysis of the changes in Dutch government funding of development NGOs over the period 2003-2015 and what these changes meant for (particularly) Dutch NGOs. It among other things shows that, after decades of hands-off management of NGO funding, the Dutch government is back in the driver seat. Now more than ever, (Dutch) NGOs are viewed primarily as implementing agencies of Dutch government’s development policy and much less as autonomous organisations implementing their own programmes. Concurrently, the analysis nuances the general feeling that all NGOs have lost out because of these funding policy changes showing that in fact Southern NGOs and International NGOs have gained substantially, that specific groups of Dutch NGOs have done quite well and that particularly the bigger and more established Dutch NGOs are the ones that have been financially curtailed.

Authors

• Lau Schulpen, CIDIN, Radboud University Nijmegen

• Lucas Meijs, Erasmus University Rotterdam