A while ago I attended a think tank meeting in London to look at the technical requirements for a single platform for fundraising, membership management and activist mobilization for a global NGO. This is an area of increasing interest for the big international NGOs like Oxfam, Red Cross/Red Crescent, Greenpeace, Amnesty and Unicef, partly as a result of the growth of the internet, which brings the global audience into reach, and also because of the active expansion of many western NGOs into emerging markets in the global south.
What we mean by the term ‘Global NGO’ is pretty unclear. Global civil society, and global movements have been around for decadea, but in practice there isn’t really such a thing as a n actual global NGO - i.e. an NGO that operates on a truly global scale, with equal presence and activity in all parts of the world. The biggest globe-spanning NGO brand names (such as those mentioned above), operate more like multinational corporations than truly global organizations. They have strong country-based offices only in regions where they have a historic base or fundraising/program operations, and they have a global headquarters or secretariat that coordinates and supports these national centres, each of which operates with a great deal of autonomy and inward focus.
Not surprisingly, decision-making and coordination between the various national offices and the international secretariats can be very complex, difficult, and highly political. Each national office has its own history, capacity, vision ,and priorities and these do not often line up neatly behind any sort of global decision.
Putting aside for the moment the very good points that can be made in support of maintaining a diversity of systems within an organization, it not an easy exercise to imagine a single technical framework for a globe-spanning technical system that would meet all of the needs of the constituent offices, because the capacities (skills, budget, infrastructure) are so varied between different sections/countries/regions. Some offices have minimal or no technical capacity while others may be highly sophisticated, and highly demanding in the tools they require.
Still, the basic building blocks of a global technical framework for NGOs can start to be sketched out, based on a loose grouping of country office profiles into three groups:
Established markets - in so called ‘western’ countres where organizations have strong resource bases, well-developed fundraising programs, and highly skilled staff.
Expanding markets - in nations and regions where organizations are actively investing in developing new programs, expanding offices and operations, based on the potential for growth of membership, income and impact.
Emerging markets - in nations and regions where NGOs are not actively developing markets, and likely have no permanent staff or field operations, but where there still may be important individual supporters, contacts or programs that require some level of technical service support.
Each of these groupings has very different needs from a technical system for online engagement:
1) For emerging markets: a global just-the-basics system that offers a basic set of online engagement options for the global audience - simple things like make a donation, email sign up, and a simple petition/activism tool. Nothing would be localized to the country of origin - typically this would be just a generic “international” level signup/donate to service the audience in places where the NGO has no effective on-the-ground presence.
2) For expanding markets: the tools that national offices would need in expanding markets, where the global NGO is actively investing in building presence and infrastructure, would likely be localized, customizable version of the basic tools outlined above - donation, email signup, activism - plus possibly a social networking platform. The most important factors would be localization of languages, using local currencies for donations, and linking with in-country banking systems for donation processing. All of these would functions would need to be highly customizable, and easily managed both from a global administrator, and local, in-country staff.
3) For established markets: the need is for a fully-integrated suite of top-end online communication, member and data management, fundraising and activism tools. Probably this system would need to be modular, and would be open-architecture, or at least offer an api-interfaces so that external/third-party tools could be connected.
The model for a single technical system that can cover this broad scope of needs while still allowing for the necessary localization (language, culture, infrastructure, etc.) to be of maximum value, whatever the level of the user, seems unlikely. What seems more likely is a suite or collection of services that meet the typical-case needs of operations in each of the three above designated areas:
