Accountability Practices of International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs): The Case of World Vision International.

Abstract:

International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs) have become an integral part of the organizational landscape playing an intermediary role between donors and beneficiaries in the last few decades. They bridge the gap of unmet needs by ensuring that goods and services that cannot be provided by the public and private sector are provided to the marginalised in society. NGOs obtain resources from donors to provide these goods and services to beneficiaries. To ensure the efficient utilization of these resources, NGOs are required to be accountable to the two main stakeholders: donors and beneficiaries (in what is termed upward and downward accountability respectively). To examine these accountability practices of NGOs, the study adopted an in-depth interpretive case study approach using a single community based organisation. Data was gathered by way of documentary review of the case study website. The findings of the study are analysed and interpreted by use of the available documents on the case study’s website. The study revealed that the dominant accountability systems in the studied NGOs are upward towards donors. Generally, downward accountability is not given much prominence by NGOs, largely due to lack of commitment by donors. It is clear from the study that the competition for scarce resources shapes accountability systems of NGOs in Ghana. The result has implications for understanding the operations and reporting systems of NGOs.