Tracking External Donor Funding.pdf - NDC

Due to the fact that the donors sampled each had a
number of PNGO partners, ranging from 2 to 25, the
survey of 41 donor institutions may have yielded a
sample of as many as 800 PNGOs, much higher than our
PNGO survey sample of 80 organizations. Like our
donor survey, the survey of PNGOs was an opportunity
to look more closely at the activities of the other side of
the equation. Because PNGOs, especially larger ones,
have a number of donors ranging anywhere from 1 to 20
according to our data, the PNGOs survey have returned a
donor sample in the hundreds (around 540), allowing us
to look more closely at the trend in external funding in
terms of the source and type of aid, as well as the level of
aid dependency experienced by PNGOs.
Figure1: Donor – PNGO Survey Rationale
Don
Don
Don
Don
PNG PNG PNG PNG
Donor Survey 2
Our donor survey aims to track external aid into the
PNGO sector over a ten year period according to the
sector, geography and target population of its
distribution. Donor Survey fieldwork was conducted
between April and July of 2009.
Sample and Approach
A total 41 institutions were surveyed directly and each
returned completed data for at least one year. Donors
were chosen primarily on a basis of perceived scale, the
findings of previous MAS studies and through
consultations with stakeholders. As our study sought to
cover a specific percentage of funding to PNGOs in
2008, projects and programs from any available source
were compiled indirectly in order to help meet that goal 3 .
Indirect data gathering included the use of the websites
and financial reports of organizations.
Efforts were also made to differentiate our sample along
other lines, such as the type, the region of the aid's
origin, the sector of the donor's work and their estimated
contributions to the PNGO sector. Especially in the case
of INGOs, only those who utilized the majority of their
funding in direct partnerships with PNGOs were
approached; while those INGOs who directly implement
most of their own projects were not.
The primary division within our sample is between
Governmental (bi-lateral and multilateral aid) and
Nongovernmental (INGO, Private and Religious)
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3
Donor questionnaire available in Appendix VI.
We originally set out to reach 70% of the total external funding to
PNGOs in 2006 according to previous MAS mappings of the
PNGO sector. As the following section shows, we were able to
capture much more than that in both of our surveys.
sources. The 25 nongovernmental agencies surveyed
provided up to 55% of the external aid captured in our
survey, while the 16 governmental agencies provided the
remaining 45%. Though it is largely true that INGOs act
as intermediary channels of Government funding to
PNGOs, we worked to analyze whether the behaviors of
the two groups differed. In other words, are INGOs able
to assert their own agendas, not necessarily those of the
government financing them We also wanted to look at
how the channels of funding to PNGOs are affected by
political upheaval and whether governments prefer
bilateral, multilateral or indirect (INGO) partnerships
with PNGOS.
The expansion of our donor sample beyond governments
and into the INGO sector is crucial to capturing the real
picture. The MoP, from the MoPIC system to the current
PAMS database, has not been given the legal mandate to
capture external aid to PNGOs channeled through
INGOs. As Hanafi’s 1998 study for Welfare shows in the
table 1, the failure to incorporate INGO funding into the
picture dramatically underestimates the amount of
external funding allocated to PNGOs. According to
Hanafi’s findings, when INGOs funding to PNGOs is
included, the amount of total external aid to the WB&GS
captured by the PNGO sector moves from 11% to 18%.
Table 2 shows the results of the donor survey against the
official time series estimates of the MoP, as well as the
two cross-sectional estimates of MAS in 1999 and 2006.
The success of our survey fluctuated according to the
year, as well as the estimate of total aid entering the
PNGO sector. If the official estimates of the MoP are
used, the survey managed to cover nearly 64% of the
total estimated aid to PNGOs in 2008. However, if
MAS’s 2006 estimate is assumed to be closer to reality,
our survey managed to capture 76% of the external aid to
PNGOs in 2006.
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