“Funding does something to people”: NGOs navigating funding challenges in India

ABSTRACT

This article offers an ethnographic exploration of NGO “mission creep” as a result of obtaining funding. Many scholars express scepticism about funding on NGO goals, while others encourage a nuanced critique. This 18-month ethnographic study of two NGOs in Bangalore, India, explores NGO workers navigating the acceptance of funding while maintaining their original missions. When one NGO failed to uphold this goal, staff members created their own NGO. Findings indicate that even when NGO staff have experienced mission creep from funding and make conscious efforts to maintain their missions, they face structural barriers that make this difficult and perhaps impossible.

KEYWORDS:

• NGOs
• funding
• HIV/AIDS and sexual health
• region: South Asia

Introduction

The development literature indicates a longstanding interdisciplinary debate about whether NGOs do more harm than good, emphasising the problems associated with NGO reliance on funding (Brass et al. 2018, 138). Scholars express suspicion about the (often) unidirectional funding flows from Northern donors to Southern NGOs (Rodriguez 2009; Nagar and the Sangtin Writers 2006), the corporatised organisation of NGOs (Rodriguez 2009; Nagar 2006; Kamat 2004), the climate of financial insecurity engendered by funding (Guenther 2011; Rodriguez 2009; Parks 2008), the difficulties newer NGOs encounter obtaining funding (Bano 2012; Abdelrahman 2007), and a decline in NGO legitimacy in countries of the Global South (Brown 2014).

In tandem with these critiques, another group of scholars argues for a nuanced examination of NGOs, asserting that staff are increasingly aware of the constraints imposed by NGO funding and many find creative ways to manoeuvre around these constraints (Bernal and Grewal 2014; Thayer 2010; Townsend, Porter, and Mawdsley 2004). Since NGOs and their associated funding structures appear not to be going anywhere soon, I take seriously the idea of considering the possibilities NGOs present.

To explore possibilities for committed activists and community workers to advance social change through the NGO sector, I conducted an ethnographic study over 18 months with NGO staff, former staff, and independent activists associated with two NGOs in Bangalore, India, from, 2009 to 2016. These two NGOs, which I call Dosti¹ and Swastik, present a novel case study. A group of former Dosti staff who were disenchanted by the power dynamics around funding broke away from Dosti to create Swastik. These former Dosti staff believed that Dosti was unable to maintain their original mission due to constraints imposed by HIV/AIDS funding. Swastik organisers believed their experience of navigating funding constraints would enable them to avoid the kinds of pitfalls they experienced while working at Dosti and thus maintain their original mission. This ethnographic study asks: Can NGO workers who have experienced the pitfalls of “mission creep” firsthand successfully navigate through conditions that could engender mission creep in a new NGO that they have created specifically for this purpose?

Despite their best efforts, Swastik ended up following a similar trajectory as Dosti. In both NGOs, staff and “community members” debated whether to take HIV/AIDS funding, as they were suspicious about what the funding might mean for their mission. In spite of these suspicions, both ultimately accepted this funding, vowing to remain vigilant in maintaining their original mission. In both cases, the constraints imposed by HIV/AIDS funding proved impossible for the groups to successfully navigate, causing some former participants to reflect that doing social justice work through NGOs is not possible. This article offers an ethnographically grounded account of two groups consciously trying to maximise the possibilities NGOs offer for social change. While their motivation to avoid mission creep was high, the experience of these groups is a cautionary tale about the difficulties of overcoming structural barriers imposed by NGO funding.

Constraints and critiques of NGO funding structures

Scholars express concern about the work NGOs can undertake given constraints imposed through NGO funding structures. Citing the connection between economic globalisation and the increase in international funding for NGOs, they argue these (usually) unidirectional funding flows reflect and reproduce unequal power dynamics in NGOs (Thayer 2010; Rodriguez 2009; Nagar and the Sangtin Writers 2006), particularly for advocacy NGOs in the Global South (Parks 2008, 213). NGO workers thus find themselves enmeshed in NGO funding structures that reproduce their own variants of power and authority (Thayer 2010; see also Reith 2010; Rodriguez 2009; Nagar and the Sangtin Writers 2006). This line of analysis highlights the role that NGOs play in mediating current forms of imperialism (ibid).

An issue of particular concern is how funding impacts NGOs’ ability to successfully advocate for their constituents. NGO staff face difficulties maintaining their original commitments to disenfranchised communities, which are often attributed to NGO funding. One camp of scholars argues that NGOs fail to challenge systemic economic inequalities since the wealthy individuals who control foundations benefit from economic inequalities (Rodriguez 2009; Nagar and the Sangtin Writers 2006; Kamat 2004). Some scholars question whether the kinds of social change NGOs encourage is possible through the NGO sector (Pearce 2010; Rodriguez 2009).

The organisational structure of NGOs is widely believed to resemble private sector corporations, a move that impacts NGOs in several ways (Pearce 2010; Nagar and the Sangtin Writers 2006; Kamat 2004). Organisations which advocated for radical social change in the 1970s and 1980s have since “turned themselves into a professionalised aid sector” (Pearce 2010, 622). Anthropological studies of community-based NGOs document the move from educational programmes that employ analyses of power and inequality at the structural level toward “a technical managerial solution” to redress economic and social inequalities (Kamat 2004, 168; see also Nagar and the Sangtin Writers 2006). As NGOs “scale up” by expanding the reach of their programmes, obtaining more funding, increasing staff, and incorporating hierarchical forms of group organisation, they become “distanced from the local communities they purport to serve” (Schuller 2009, 112).

NGO work is recognised as “fraught with insecurity” due to NGO dependence on funding (Abdelrahman 2007, 84). International donor foundations normally offer short-term funding earmarked for specific projects (Guenther 2011, 863). This mode of funding is “unsustainable” (Abdelrahman 2007, 84) and it “creates a climate of financial insecurity” (Guenther 2011, 863). Since short-term NGO projects tend to be staffed by the same rotating group of individuals, former staff whose contracts recently expired often “hang around the office, sometimes volunteering to do the odd job, in the hope that they will be employed when a new project contract is signed” (Abdelrahman 2007, 80).

NGO staff criticise the focus on meeting demands for “measureable indicators” of a project's success (Rodriguez 2009; Nagar and the Sangtin Writers 2006; Kamat 2004). The result is that NGOs are increasingly accountable to those who audit projects instead of their constituent communities (Rodriguez 2009; Townsend, Porter, and Mawdsley 2004; Nagar and the Sangtin Writers 2006; Kamat 2004). Funding agencies constantly encourage reductions on “overhead costs and expenditure on staff,” which makes their demands for “verifiable results and impact of programs” difficult to sustain (James and Mullins 2004, 577).

The insecurity of NGO work is exacerbated by the fact that donors “are always changing their priorities” for funding (Abdelrahman 2007, 84) in ways that appear arbitrary and unpredictable (Parks 2008, 216). As Parks (2008) explains,

When donor funding moves to new priorities or different countries, many of the advocacy NGOs that rely on those donors face a crisis. Do they continue to focus on their current priorities and activities, while risking a massive decline in their budget? Alternatively, do they adapt to new donor priorities, and find ways to re-invent themselves to be more attractive to them?² (214)

Not surprisingly, many NGOs are rumoured to “cook up projects” that are not necessarily applicable to their constituents based upon the availability of funding. Unfortunately, it is widely accepted that this “volatility of donor funding” is unlikely to change anytime soon (Parks 2008, 217).

These complex issues around donor interests dictating NGO goals, a perceived lack of democratic decision-making, and a lack of authenticity vis-à-vis the concerns of the “grassroots” are topics widely discussed by the public in India (Brown 2014). An awareness of the pervasiveness of these problems has led to a decline in legitimacy for NGOs among the general public in India (Brown 2014, 48). Perhaps this is part of the reason these organisations have come into “a degree of disrepute” in the past decade (Brown 2014, 48).

NGOs and possibilities for resistance

In tandem with these critiques, another camp of scholars emphasises the need for nuanced critiques of NGOs and funding (Bernal and Grewal 2014; Ferguson 2009; Sharma 2008). These scholars assert that NGOs can offer “spaces of resistance” where staff and participants can envision and work towards critiquing systemic inequalities and enacting alternate social realities (Townsend, Porter, and Mawdsley 2004, 872). They argue that NGO staff and community members are not completely subordinate to NGO funding structures (Townsend, Porter, and Mawdsley 2004) and negotiating funding may lead to unexpected shifts in an NGO's ambitions, but this does not always imply that NGOs abandon their original goals (Thayer 2010, 132–133). NGO staff are increasingly aware of the structural challenges inherent in accepting donor funds and many find creative ways to accept international funding, while also retaining their commitments to constituents (Thayer 2010; Nagar and the Sangtin Writers 2006; Townsend, Porter, and Mawdsley 2004).

Reproducing power and authority: the problem of funding and mission creep

Altering the goals and commitments of an organisation based on external factors like funding trends is often referred to as “mission creep” (Gold 2004, 641; see also Einhorn 2001; Hailey and James 2009). An NGO's mission is “a clarion call” for the organisation, attracting volunteers, staff and members, while offering “a sense of purpose” and serving as a “guideline[]” for how the organisation should work (Minkoff and Powell 2006, 591). In the development world, there is a considerable amount of discussion about organisations that do not maintain their original missions as a result of external factors (Haddad 2013; Gold 2004; Einhorn 2001) like funding, which is a serious structural problem facing NGOs.

The degree to which an organisation experiences mission creep is related to how large the organisation is and how long the organisation has been in operation (Minkoff and Powell 2006, 593). To better understand how NGO funding structures impact NGO missions, the experiences of organisations attempting to attain funding are instructive. Two such groups include brand-new NGOs seeking funding and formerly unfunded advocacy groups seeking to become funded NGOs. Their experiences suggest NGO funding structures are biased towards large, reputable NGOs, which makes it difficult for newer, smaller groups to attain funding. This increases the likelihood that such groups will experience mission creep as they attempt to mould their organisations into fundable groups. As Minkoff and Powell (2006) explain, “cash-starved” smaller organisations often must “chase after funds” that tend to be “tied more closely to a donor's interests” than to the original mission of the organisation (593). Both of the NGOs in this case study are relatively new and thus vulnerable to mission creep.

New NGOs trying to break into the funding scene indicate the significance of funding constraints for NGOs. Because NGOs must constantly reapply for the funding that sustains them, large NGOs with “a long history in the field” and “well-connected board[s] of directors” who have personal relationships with donor agencies are more likely to receive funding since they are perceived as having the capacity to operate major projects (Abdelrahman 2007, 82). From the donors’ perspective, it is difficult to find and establish effective working relationships with smaller, newer NGOs whose staff is not established in the NGO world; these organisations are viewed as still “learning” how to conduct outreach and project work (ibid), posing difficulties for new NGOs trying to get a foot in the door. When newer groups manage to secure funding, they often experience adverse effects, notably a decrease in participants (Bano 2012, 148).

In spite of these difficulties, there is evidence of previously unfunded NGOs that managed to obtain large funding packages. For formerly voluntary organisations turned advocacy NGOs in Pakistan, receiving international funding curiously led to a decrease and even an “absence” of NGO participants who were not paid staff (Bano 2012, 148). After accepting international funding, leaders of organisations were less able to mobilise new participants, which was necessary since participation was decreasing (Bano 2012, 149). NGO participants who lessened or discontinued their participation cited “domination of the organization by a small group of people who had gotten close to the donors” and members’ ensuing sense of “isolation” as factors impacting their participation (Bano 2012, 148). This study is especially relevant for my research, since both NGOs made the leap from having minimal or no funding to large amounts of funding for HIV/AIDS projects. In spite of my participants’ knowledge of the pitfalls of accepting funding and their motivation to circumvent these problems, both NGOs ultimately experienced similar negative outcomes as a result of obtaining funding, indicating the difficulties they face overcoming these structural obstacles.

Background and context

In the 1990s and early 2000s in India, there was an influx of sexual health-oriented international funding earmarked for HIV/AIDS outreach and prevention work, which became one of the top-funded areas in the country. This funding led to the creation of new governmental agencies and a plethora of advocacy-oriented NGOs working on HIV/AIDS projects. These opportunities for funding encouraged many NGOs that previously worked with various marginalised groups to shift their focus to HIV/AIDS for survival.

The sexual rights advocacy groups that became HIV/AIDS-oriented, funded NGOs emerged in large, diverse cities where urbanisation and class inequality has increased in past decades. Bangalore, once known as the capitol of India's Information Technology (IT) sector, is a city where the contradictions of economic change are readily apparent. The migration of working class and formerly rural groups over the past 25 years has risen dramatically, yet Bangalore has a reputation for its high cost of living and migrants often struggle to obtain sustainable work.

It is in this context that two NGOs, Dosti and later, Swastik, emerged to advocate for the rights of working-class sexual and gender minorities. Dosti began in the late 1990s as a resource centre where people could go to learn about and discuss sexual minority issues in South India. The group of middle-class activists who started Dosti initially knew little about the experiences of working-class sexual and gender minorities. While documenting cases of abuse against this group, the original Dosti activists uncovered and began to raise awareness of how sexuality- and gender identity-based discrimination is compounded by other axes of identity such as class, caste, gender, religion, and ability. These middle-class activists made efforts to encourage participation from working-class people, which were so successful that the organisation eventually became exclusively focused on the struggles of working class sexual and gender minorities. Dosti insisted upon a rights-based approach to advocacy through a focus on promoting awareness about the lives of sexual and gender minorities and alleviating the discrimination and violence to which they are subjected.

Methods

This research is grounded in 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork (including over 75 semi-structured interviews) with Dosti and Swastik staff and former staff between 2009 and 2016. This research is part of a larger project examining the impact of internationally-funded NGOs on community formation and relationships within sexual and gender minority groups. I was motivated to pursue this topic due to an interest in understanding the dynamics around NGO-led sexual rights activism in the Global South.

Initially, I spent my time in the Dosti office and at various Dosti-organised events in the city, from which I took detailed notes. As my fieldwork progressed and I formed friendships with participants, I spent more one-on-one time with people, hanging out at their houses or sometimes at restaurants and coffee shops. At this time, I began to hear about and then meet with a group of former Dosti staff who were starting their own organisation, Swastik. The sexual rights NGO sector in Bangalore is very competitive, as NGOs compete with one another for the same recognition (and funding). Once I began to associate with Swastik members, Dosti members appeared uninterested in speaking with me, perhaps perceiving that my loyalties lie with Swastik. Therefore, my data on the perspectives of Dosti members who chose to stay at Dosti is limited.

My fieldwork until that point had enabled me to hone in on key dynamics, so I decided to switch to an interview-based approach. These interviews varied considerably in structure and length; I asked participants a set of basic and semi-structured questions, yet I also tailored each interview to ask questions that a particular participant would be able to discuss and would be interested in talking about. The interviews lasted between 45 minutes and five hours, and most interviews took place at the participant's home, an NGO office or, occasionally, a restaurant or coffee shop. After obtaining verbal consent, I digitally recorded the interviews, except in two cases where the person declined to be recorded; instead, I took copious hand-written notes that I elaborated upon after the interview was completed. I conducted approximately half of the interviews in Kannada, half in English, and three additional interviews in Hindi.

The “elephant in the room”: Dosti and HIV/AIDS funding

Dosti began as an unfunded, voluntary advocacy group. In 1999, Dosti's founder received a small international grant that was put toward the organisation and interested participants sought out additional funding. In 2002, the organisation was awarded a grant from the Swedish Government that covered overhead costs for running the office, staff salaries, and funding for conferences/workshops (in India and abroad) for ten years. With this funding, Dosti was able to steadily employ 11 staff and maintain a large “community” base of participants.

In late 2004 and early 2005, Dosti's board discussed accepting funding for HIV/AIDS outreach. Accepting HIV/AIDS funding was a hotly-contested issue, since participants and staff argued that, based on the experiences of other groups, HIV/AIDS service provision generally overtook any rights-based work that a group was involved in, so this funding was seen as a depoliticising force. However, as Johan, a board member at the time explained,

Health is also a human rights issue, access to health[care], especially by people from the economically weaker sections of society. People already experience stigma because of their gender expression and sexuality, so for them to access the government healthcare system was very difficult … [we thought] if we took up that project [funding], we could make the service more accessible to the community.

Johan explains that because so many staff, board, and community members were suspicious of HIV/AIDS funding, Dosti voted to accept the money with the specific goal of maintaining the rights-based focus of the organisation. He emphasises,

we were clear that we’re doing [this funded project] as a human rights issue, not merely as a health issue. We were looking more at the social aspect of the epidemic, as opposed to the medical aspect of the epidemic, like how social marginalization impacts the epidemic.

The programme that Dosti organised with this funding was “a huge, ambitious program,” Johan explains. The funding was for 20,000,000 Indian rupees, which was approximately 300,000 US dollars. With this funding, Dosti opened seven drop-in centres that provided HIV/AIDS and STI-related healthcare. The increase in staff was more than fifteenfold; Dosti went from 11 staff to approximately 170 staff. Upon receiving the funding, many people felt the funding negatively impacted Dosti's work. Johan explained,

This HIV funding was such a huge elephant in the room. It was like Dosti went from 11 employees and became 170 employees because of HIV money. Obviously, that would be the focus. I think in some ways, though people accuse us of not actually doing it, we still kept this human rights focus in the organization. We were still involved in activism, we were still on the street, having our press conferences, public programs. But somewhere because of this huge program, it covered up the smaller things that were happening. There was a feeling that this program as getting too much importance, [while] the other programs were becoming less prominent.

At the time, Dosti had separated rights-based advocacy work into one division and HIV/AIDS outreach work into another division; people felt that the advocacy division was falling by the wayside as more effort was focused on the HIV/AIDS division. A defining moment of this period occurred when the board received an anonymous letter explaining that, as Johan explained, “the color of Dosti has changed, it has become too HIV-focused and the human rights aspect is being neglected.” Ram, a former staff member who was involved with Dosti since the time of its inception, agrees with this sentiment. He explains,

When the HIV project came in, Dosti was doing less human rights work, so community members were saying that we need a sexual health program, but side by side, human rights work also has to be done. When the HIV project came, the major work on human rights was discontinued … the support is not there for the community members because they are focusing more and more on HIV … They are focusing where the funds come on HIV, from which side the fund will come. They’re just searching to get more and more funds on HIV.

Dosti's shrinking participant base

I began working with Dosti when the organisation was receiving funding from their initial funding package as well as HIV/AIDS funding. In the beginning of my fieldwork, I began to notice that many participants in Dosti-sponsored events were staff members. As my fieldwork progressed, it became increasingly difficult to find Dosti “community members” who actively participated in events who were not paid staff or people seeking to become paid staff. Even at the many major “community-wide” events, the vast majority of people (and sometimes the only people) in attendance were Dosti employees. An excerpt from my fieldnotes details my experience at one such “community meeting”:

I arrived at the event venue in central Bangalore about 15 min before it was supposed to start. When I walked into the spacious room, bright sunlight streaming in from several open windows revealed about 80 chairs organized in two rows facing a podium located slightly to the right side. I noticed that there were only five people there, all of whom were staff members. Two people were busy taping up a large sign that included the details of the event, while everyone else was sitting in the first row of chairs. Reyaansh, the organizer of the event, saw me and waved, smiling. I walked up to him and asked what I can do to help, but he shook his head, saying I should sit and they are ready. I sat down in the first row with the three other staff members and chatted with them as we waited. As a few more staff members trickled in, the event starting time passed while we waited for additional people to arrive. An hour and 15 min after the advertised starting time for the event, there were only about 20 Dosti staff members in attendance, when the “community meeting” event began … After the event, when I asked Reyaansh about the low turnout, he frowned, looked away, and said that the event went fine. When I mentioned the absence of non-staff “community members,” he looked away and did not comment.³

During my fieldwork, the amount of people who participated in events was linked to how much funding Dosti received, as the amount of funding was linked to the amount of staff. When the funding was high, the organisation could employ 170+ people; having many employees meant that Dosti could still garner high turnouts at events. Over the years, as HIV/AIDS funding in India dried up and employment contracts were not renewed, there were fewer people attending public events, likely because they were no longer employees whose presence was required. When I spoke with Nikhil, a longtime sexual rights activist and former Dosti employee, about this observation, he sighed and said,

Yeah, that is the problem. That is the main problem with an institution like Dosti, that half their support base is from people who are there looking for jobs. So 170 people with jobs, another 170 hoping that they will get jobs. That's about it. There's no other support base.

Throughout my fieldwork, practically everyone I spoke to stated explicitly that Dosti does not have “community support,” which is why the only people that attend public events are employees, a dynamic suggesting that the organisation struggles to mobilise voluntary participants.

When I asked why “community” members do not voluntarily associate with Dosti, former employees spoke bitterly of the hierarchical organisation in Dosti. Rishabh, a longtime sexual rights activist and former Dosti staff member, explains, “it's a process where leaders are making all the decisions. The community is not involved [in decision-making]. Dosti claims to represent the voice of the community, but … they don't.” Ram explains that the combination of “too many hierarchies” with the changing organisational structure of Dosti upset many people, who discontinued their participation. As a result of the leadership styles at Dosti, Rishabh explained,

the community has started dis-associating themselves from the organization, which has actually had a huge impact … because less people are coming for the programs. The donors are questioning why the numbers are down and Dosti's response is that they don't want to do so big of a program.

Solving this NGO problem: the creation of Swastik

The problems with Dosti are often attributed to the impact of HIV/AIDS funding. Around ten years after Dosti began, a group of community members came together to create a new sexual rights advocacy group that would operate in a democratic manner and prioritise maintaining the original mission of the organisation. However, their ultimate decision to take HIV/AIDS funding produced similar outcomes to the problems for which they criticised Dosti. This situation convinced some members that maintaining their original mission and, more generally, doing social justice-oriented work through NGOs is simply not possible. This section details the experiences of this group attempting to successfully navigate accepting large funding packages while maintaining their original mission.

The idea of Swastik: a space of possibility

As a former Dosti staff member who is respected in the community, Rishabh was someone with whom current and former staff members would discuss their frustrations. He explains, lots of people “were coming to my house and having meetings there, complaining.” At first, the focus was on how to try and change the way Dosti works from within, as staff members who could impact organisational practices. As an involved member of this group, Ram felt they should bring these problems to the attention of the organisation; he wrote a letter to the board that was signed by other staff members. Unfortunately, the board members were not receptive to the suggestions and the staff who signed the letter were threatened with the loss of their jobs. After having many discussions and witnessing the fallout from incidents like this, as Rishabh explains, they “began to think there was no point to go back.”

Ultimately, this group decided since they could no longer work at Dosti, their only option was to create an alternative group. This was a group of committed activists working in the NGO sphere, so their decision to leave Dosti impacted their livelihood. When considering how they would run their new organisation, as Suparna frankly explained, “we thought of our own sustenance” as they pondered their employment options.

The group expressed many reservations about working within NGO funding structures. However, after long conversations, they decided that if they remain aware of the challenges associated with funded NGO work, they could successfully navigate these challenges. They thought if they were truly a “community-owned” organisation, they could work together to circumvent the constraints of NGO funding structures. The group decided to name the organisation Swastik. As Rishabh explains, one aim of the organisation is to advocate for working-class gender and sexual minorities while creating “an alternate space and platform to express opinions and create a more democratic space where we will not be oppressed by the people in power.”

Creating a new group that works with a similar constituency as Dosti proved difficult. Since Dosti staff and former staff began to envision starting another organisation, Dosti leaders attempted to negate the efforts to create Swastik. When Dosti leaders heard that the Swastik committee was meeting on Dosti staffs’ day off, Dosti leaders changed the staff's workload to a seven-day work week, which Swastik members believe was done to discourage them from meeting. Dosti staff members were forbidden to attend meetings about Swastik; Dosti leaders told staff they would lose their jobs for being involved with Swastik. These tactics, while infuriating to Swastik, were ultimately unsuccessful. Swastik managed to start their own organisation, though Dosti attempted to stifle their efforts to obtain recognition and funding. Swastik members believe Dosti did not want them to succeed due to the competition for limited NGO funding and the (well-founded) fear that staff would quit their jobs at Dosti to join Swastik.

Swastik's class constraints: difficulties of being “community-owned”

In the beginning stages of forming Swastik, participants decided that this group would not get involved with HIV/AIDS funding, based upon their experience with Dosti. Instead, they preferred to focus their mission on assisting community members in building their capacity, enhancing their economic status, and developing their skills. However, HIV/AIDS work was heavily funded and there was limited funding for other kinds of sexual rights-related outreach and activism, which made their commitment difficult to sustain. Swastik eventually took HIV/AIDS funding, feeling that they had no choice if the organisation wanted to survive.

The class composition of Swastik presented challenges for the group. While Swastik was dedicated to the idea of being a “community-owned” organisation, the “community” is comprised of people who hail from working-class backgrounds with limited access to education, which made running an organisation a challenge. As Rishabh explains,

It's a challenge for an organization that is totally run by the community, in the hands of the community. It's a big challenge for them. They have to prove their capacity, they also have to overcome a lot of difficulties in regards to finances because the state doesn't give you the money on time, so you have to fund projects on your own for a period of time. So it's a challenge. How do you generate this funding?

For people who do not have the kind of financial security that would enable them to work without receiving their salaries on time, starting a new organisation was difficult. If the Swastik founding members were not from working-class backgrounds, they would have had access to education and training that might prepare them to run an organisation. Moreover, not receiving the HIV/AIDS funding on time might not present a major difficulty for middle-class people whose networks could lend them money to fund the projects until they get paid. Additionally, middle-class people might have the financial security that would enable them to be selective about their sources of funding and perhaps wait to obtain funding that was not tied to HIV/AIDS work.

Constraints of HIV/AIDS funding: a familiar pattern

Swastik's dwindling participant base and altered commitments

While the decision to take HIV/AIDS funding financially sustained the organisation, it led to decreased participation that is remarkably similar to that of Dosti. In the early days of Swastik, Suparna explains, “as long as the funds weren't there, the productivity was high.” Before receiving funding, the group published a book, organised a public programme and participated in lots of voluntary work. However, she explains, “the moment funds came, members fizzled out. HIV funds came, and members fizzled out.” When I asked why this happened, Suparna furrowed her brow and replied, “See, I don't understand this whole connection … Funding does something to people! I don't know how, but it does … funding does something to people, I know it!”

When Swastik began, people were enthusiastic about the organisation and its mission and were thus willing to engage in unpaid voluntary work. However, Suparna explains,

Now we don't feel the same towards Swastik. One reason is because they’re focused only on HIV interventions. There's nothing else that is happening. It's mahaaa (very) boring … they don't want to think about other programs … I don't know what happened, but the moment the [HIV/AIDS] project funding came, I was like gone. I don't know, I just lost interest. I wouldn't go for the meetings. Because it became only about MSMs [Men who have Sex with Men] … It's just MSMs, condoms, MSMs, condoms.

Here, Suparna indicates that receiving HIV/AIDS funding altered Swastik's original mission to engage in activism that would benefit all sexual minorities. Because they are now involved in HIV/AIDS outreach, the organisation is focused on people assigned male at birth, so people who want to engage in more inclusive work can feel left out. In addition, Rishabh remarks that staff and participants in Swastik are increasingly “people who have experience in HIV work,” which led to a situation where “the other members felt left out and there wasn't enough space for them, I think, so somewhere they also got pushed out.”

Rishabh acknowledges that Swastik's original mission has been somewhat altered. Three years after Swastik began as an organisation, Rishabh observes, “the focus of Swastik is mostly on HIV,” and “everyone thinks only of HIV. It's very difficult to get them out of that HIV [mindset].” However, he counters, “the good part of it was that we worked with [MSMs and male-assigned transgender people] on building their strengths, their capacities,” emphasising how Swastik has kept some of the organisation's original mission, despite taking HIV/AIDS funding. Rishabh highlights Swastik's accomplishments, especially their success in garnering funding. In his view, Swastik has:

made tremendous progress because they’ve been able to create a kind of space and recognition and reputation that facilitated them to get funding for projects. The organization is only three years old, so to get funding is a real achievement. The next step is to get more international funding (emphasis mine).

While highlighting Swastik's success, Rishabh illustrates that Swastik is increasingly focused on where the next round of funding will come from, in an ironic imitation of the behaviour for which they previously criticised Dosti. While HIV/AIDS funding enabled the organisation to grow, it also restricted Swastik from fulfilling their original goals. Initially, Rishabh observes,

the group was looking more for social awareness and change, but from getting into the HIV [projects], that's getting less attention and less focus … somehow, we are not able to do it … When we were not funded, I think we were doing more of that kind of work and when we got funded, I think we got stuck. And somehow, I think even the involvement of the members has decreased a lot.

The experience of critiquing Dosti, starting another NGO, then witnessing similar dynamics at play in that organisation caused several former Swastik participants to doubt that the kind of social justice work they seek is even attainable in the NGO sector. As Suparna remarks, after this experience, “I kind of decided there's no point having another organisation and getting funding for it.” Instead, she is now employed outside the NGO sector and engages community work in a voluntary capacity.

Aspirations of “community own[ership]” vs. realities of being funded

Receiving HIV/AIDS funding altered the kinds of work that Swastik engages, shifted people's willingness to participate, and it changed Swastik's aspirations for “community own[ership].” Being a “community-owned” NGO meant that staff and participants should hail from the working classes and, at least ideally, would self-identify as sexual and/or gender minorities. In addition, the day-to-day operations of the organisation should be managed by staff and participants “from the community.” However, as Rishabh observes, “the [HIV/AIDS] projects had certain restrictions,” which meant that “we were not able to provide job opportunities to all of the members and many of the members expected jobs.”

The story told by Utham, one of the founding members of Swastik, centres his disappointment at not receiving paid employment at Swastik. It is important to remember that employment was a key concern for the group of former Dosti staff who originally created Swastik. However, this story touches upon a larger issue within NGO funding structures, which is the amount of control that funders exercise and the sense of powerlessness that NGO staff express about this dynamic.

As one of the founders of Swastik, Utham had quit his long-term job at Dosti. He worked in sexual rights advocacy for many years, so he was familiar with issues impacting the community and respected among community members, and he expected a paid position with Swastik. After Swastik was granted HIV/AIDS funding, Utham explained,

[The funding agency] gave a project for community development … and we put out a call for five posts, one of which was overall coordinator. I applied for overall coordinator. I explained to [the Swastik leaders], ‘I don't have a degree, but you know my capacity and my experience.’ They said, “you can apply, the degree is not an issue. If there are no candidates, we can give you the position.” When the interview came, KHPT people [funders] were there along with Swastik members. No problem. I went in, and after I finished, they called, saying “you have all the capacity and we trust that you can do the job [and there are no other candidates]. The problem is you don't know English, that's why [we cannot hire you, because] funders are regularly coming and you have to coordinate with them.” Swastik board members said that what happened in the interview is that Swastik people agreed to take me, only one person did not—[the funder] wouldn't agree.

Unfortunately, the funder's insistence on English language proficiency contradicts Swastik's aim of being a “community-owned” organisation, since working-class sexual and gender minority groups are often structurally blocked from an education that prioritises proficiency in English.

After being denied the position at Swastik, Utham became distressed. When they envisioned starting Swastik, Dosti threatened Utham with the loss of his job if he kept working with Swastik, so Utham quit his job. He found another job outside the sexual rights NGO sphere where, he says, “I have a good salary and I don't have much work. I’m very comfortable.” He applied for the job at Swastik “because Swastik is ours and I’m giving so much [volunteer] time to Swastik anyway. I thought I will develop the organization.” Though Utham is comfortable in his current job, he argues that working at Swastik is part of the ideal of “community own[ership]” the organisation was founded upon. When he looks back on his decision to quit working with Dosti, Utham is disturbed. He declares,

I put my time, my complete effort into Swastik. I took on so many responsibilities—money, time expended. When I think about all these things [I feel frustrated] … At Dosti, I worked for 10 years; that work is still dear to my heart. When I started in Swastik, I just gave up my work in Dosti, where I had opportunities. But Swastik was ours, so I sacrificed everything … If I were [still working] in Dosti, I would be working at a high [position] there, so now I am saddened by this. I sacrificed everything because of Swastik … Why did I sacrifice this? Because of Swastik, I’m very upset, mentally disturbed. So many days, I cried, thought of suicide. This is my life—what can I do?

Utham sacrificed opportunities at Dosti since he assumed that Swastik is community-owned (“Swastik was ours”) and as a qualified, involved community member, he would obtain opportunities. If he had remained in Dosti, he would have opportunities for advancement that are no longer available. He shared his frustration with Swastik members, but he is unsatisfied with their response. As he explains,

I discussed these things with Swastik people. I told them all the things I told you. Meera [a Swastik board member and staff] openly said, “it's not good.” [I wanted to say,] “Then why don't you speak up about it? If you agree, you have to change the process.” The problem is she wants to keep her position, she wants her own opportunities, no?

Utham also witnessed the tension between Meera's beliefs and the realities shaping her behaviour. At an event, a woman from a Dalit feminist organisation pointed out that “for people who do not speak English, NGO funders will not listen to our suggestions and complaints.” Utham saw Meera vigorously nodding her head and exclaiming, so the next day, he recounts,

I went to the office and asked Meera, ‘you are a Swastik board member, no? Yesterday, you shouted, ‘yes, people are doing this [and it's not right]!’ But in my interview, what did you also do? You only did this! Is this right?’ She said, ‘what can I do?’

Swastik's focus on funding is particularly upsetting to Utham. He emphasises that because Swastik is a new organisation, they are less able to negotiate with funding agencies about decisions affecting the organisation. As a result, the funders have become more involved in the organisation than they ethically should be. He explains,

Funders come into Swastik—they come in and tell the organization how to run. See, funders give money for the proposal, then we do that work, but funders can't make decisions, can't tell us how we should work. They can't make those decisions.

In Utham's experience, Swastik's funders impact these kinds of decisions, which is contrary to the original mission of this “community-owned” organisation.

Conclusion

In this article, I take seriously the call for nuanced critiques of funding, NGOs, and possibilities for social change (Bernal and Grewal 2014; Townsend, Porter, and Mawdsley 2004) by investigating possibilities for NGO organisers to successfully navigate the kinds of constraints posed by NGO funding, particularly the problem of “mission creep.” Through an ethnographic account of two NGOs’ struggles to maintain their original goals and commitments while accepting large funding packages, I find that NGO workers face a difficult predicament, indicating the complexities of agency and collective action in the NGO sphere. They must either reject large funding packages, which limits them to part-time work on a voluntary basis, or accept funding, which exposes the organisation to external interference and bureaucratisation. For the NGOs I studied, the decision to accept funding engendered a set of unanticipated consequences, including a dramatic expansion in staff, a significant decrease in voluntary participation, an increase in hierarchical organisation, a marked shift in their original mission, and a distancing of staff from constituents.

This research is based upon an ethnographic case study of two NGOs with overlapping staff. Despite their high levels of motivation and experience with HIV/AIDS funding while working in Dosti, Swastik staff were unable to avoid falling into a similar trap, which they attribute to the constraints imposed by large funding packages. Their experience indicates that even for NGOs whose staff are cognisant of the challenges associated with accepting large funding packages, maintaining their original mission can pose insurmountable challenges. This research does not imply that maintaining original goals and commitments while accepting NGO funding is impossible (Rodriguez 2009), as more ethnographic research is needed to make this claim. However, this research makes abundantly clear that the structural challenges posed by accepting large funding packages should not be taken lightly.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Liz Mount

Liz Mount is currently an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Flagler College. Her research and teaching interests focus on gender, inequalities, NGOs, and human rights. She is working on a book manuscript tentatively entitled New Women: Trans Women Remaking Inequalities in India.

Notes

1 All people and organisation names are pseudonyms.

2 Altering the goals and commitments of an organisation based on external factors like funding trends is often referred to as “mission creep” (Gold 2004, 641).

3 Staff attending “community” events is a dynamic not reported elsewhere in the literature. It is unclear how this would be reported to funders, who generally put into place measures (like sign-in sheets requiring signatures) to discourage such actions.