Voluntary assignment – Edoardo Pregnolato

Consider non-governmental non-profit organizations (NGOs)

1) How are they different from governmental organizations and for-profit companies?
2) In which ways NGOs interact with the governmental and market sector?
3) Give me an example of NGO of any kind and tell me what are they doing and what do they want
to accomplish
4) How the activities of the NGO from the point 3) and complementing what the government
do/does not do in this area.

Introduction

The world of non-profit non-governmental organization is pretty big. In fact, there are so many
NGOs that operates is so different field that a prior classification should be made. According to U.N.
a NGOs is “a not-for profit, voluntary citizen’s group that is organized on a local, national or
international level to address issues in support of the public good. Task-oriented and made up of
people with a common interest, NGOs perform a variety of services and humanitarian functions,
bring citizen’s concerns to Governments, monitor policy and program implementation, and
encourage participation of civil society stakeholders at the community level”

About our topic, we should note that different type of NGOs exists in different dimension. The
problem of the classification of NGOs is well known by Scholars (Salomon, 1992, Vakil, 1997). The
operational dimension may vary from Community based to international NGOs. Other dimension
could be based on the activities that they do, level of independence from the state, size or number
of staff, sector they serve, ideological direction and who initiate the NGOs.
This prior definition is useful to answer the questions for this essay. Clearly, the involvement of the
governments in some NGS could be extensive. For this essay, I will consider only the true
independent NGOs.

How are they different from governmental organizations and for-profit companies?
A NGOs, as defined by UN, is mainly made by voluntary citizen’s group ad have a not-for-profit
purpose. This should clearly state the difference between a for-profit company, where the
employees are paid (note that in many important NGOs there are a great number of paid employees
that work full time in the organizations. This is necessary for big NGOs that have to deal with
government at high level, great funding seeking, social media management and a lot of coordinators
of various projects.) and the purpose is to gain money. All the money gained by an NGOs shall be
used in reaching the NGOs goal and maintaining the structure of the organization.
Governmental run organization could also have a no-profit purpose, i.e. USAID, a Governmental run
organization with a great budget of 20B$ run by the USA Government. This suppose that any activity
run by USAID that could help a US enemy can be shut down by the US Government. The purpose of
NGOs is to perform a variety of services and humanitarian functions that perhaps wouldn’t be run
by governments.
In which ways NGOs interact with the governmental and market sector?
For big NGOs interacting with governmental and market sector is a daily-basis operation. The
relation with governmental sector could be about funding seeking or lobbying for favorable policies
and law. Also, regional, national and European level government often offer NGOs various grant
calls related to various activities, from direct financing.
Government, i.e. in Italy, requires certain characteristic to NGOs to gain access to public grants.
These are some interaction between the governmental and the NGOs sectors, noting that many
more could be.
The relation between NGOs and market sector is could be related to the necessity of goods and
service that an NGOs could require. For their purpose, NGOs may have to buy a lot of goods in the
private market such food rations, water disinfections implants, medicines and so on. Is common
that a private sector company decide to donate to NGOs their own products. That’s a good deal for
both: NGOs acquire material needed for their purpose and the private company can take advantage
of free advertising of donating to a no-profit organization.

Give me an example of NGO of any kind and tell me what are they doing and what do they want
to accomplish
Sea Watch is a German NGO that saves migrant from death in the Mediterranean Sea. Between
2014 and 2019 over 15.000 people died trying to reach the Europe, due to human-life traffickers’
behavior, sea conditions and bad ships to try desperately to reach Europe. In 2019 over 1000 people
died, almost 1 on 6.
The creators of this NGO decided to buy a ship in 2014 to rescue migrants in the Mediterranean Sea.
In 2019 their fleet is made by three ships. The Sea Watch 3 and her captain, Carola Rackete became
famous because of a stand-off situation between the ship full of migrant and the minister of home
affairs of Italy Matteo Salvini, that denied the ship to enter Italian water and then seized the ship
and arrested Rackete. On 20th February 2020, the Italian Supreme Court find not guilty the captain.

How the activities of the NGO from the point 3) and complementing what the government
do/does not do in this area.
Although Italy and Europe put great efforts in saving people in the Mediterranean Sea, that is not
sufficient. Italy launched operation Mare Nostrum in 2013-2014, funded by Italy and costed over
100M € with a great effort of ships and air units, then turned into Triton Operation (later in 2018
Themis) run by Frontex, EU Agency for External Borders. They provide patrolling in international
waters (24nm from Italy) with some ships and aircraft. NGOs like Sea Watch, Sea Eye, ProActiva
Open Arms and Mediterranea (not recognized as an NGO), complete the patrolling near the Libyan
waters, trying to save migrants both from the sea and the Libyan coast-guard, accused to abuse
migrants and abandon them in the Sea.
Bibliography

Fowler, A 1997 Striking a Balance: A Guide to Enhancing the Effectiveness of Non-governmental

Organizations in International Development.

Salamon, Lester M. and Helmut K. Anheier. “In Search of the Nonprofit Sector II: The Problem of
Classification.” Working Papers of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project, no. 3.
Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies, 1992.

Vakil, A. C. 1997 Confronting the classification problem: Toward a taxonomy of NGOs, World
Development Volume 25, Issue 12, December 1997, Pages 2057-2070

https://www.amnesty.it/giornata-mondiale-rifugiato-strage-mediterraneo/