Donors’ influence strategies and beneficiary accountability: an NGO case study

Previous research on NGO accountability have focused on the constraining features of NGOs’ accountability to donors. We argue that donor accountability of NGOs also has enabling features which can be mobilised to the advantage of beneficiaries. Drawing on a fieldwork-based case study design in this paper, we show that how powerful stakeholders like donors can influence NGOs, and in that process facilitate beneficiary accountability. We have found that donors have applied “direct usage” (influence NGOs directly by controlling critical resources) and “indirect usage” (influence NGOs indirectly via other stakeholders such as regulators) strategies in holding the case NGO to account.HIGHLIGHTS This paper is concerned with finding ways for the improvement of NGOs' accountability to beneficiaries.We have argued against the tendency to view donor accountability versus beneficiary accountability as dichotomous.While previous studies have focused on the constraining features of NGOs' accountability to donors we highlight in-built enabling features of NGOs' accountability to donors which can be mobilised to the enhancement of beneficiary accountability.Our results show that powerful NGO stakeholders like donors have applied various influence strategies in holding the case NGO to account for their beneficiaries.