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Abstract
Extant research on US foundations has found a generally conservative tendency towards support for professionalized non-governmental organizations (NGOs) rather than for potentially more radical grassroots organizations. Yet, the scholarly literature has had little to say about the decisions that grantmakers make when looking for grantees outside the USA. This article analyses data on over 2500 grants made to China between 2002 and 2009 to show that despite funders' rhetorical emphasis on NGOs and civil society organizations, in reality, the vast majority of funding has gone to government-controlled organizations, including academic institutions, government agencies, and government-organized NGOs. To help explain this gap between funder rhetoric and actual grantee choices, I draw on participant observation data and in-depth interviews with US-based donors and grassroots NGOs and argue that we can best understand the dynamics at work as a kind of ‘organizational homophily’, a process in which the personal preferences of large, elite-led US funders and institutional pressures from both China and the USA converge to systematically disadvantage grassroots NGOs.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Deborah Davis, Kai Erikson, John Nguyet Erni, Eli Friedman, Rachel Stern, Ling-Yun Tang, Lin Tao, and the Journal's anonymous reviewers for their encouragement and helpful suggestions for revision. This research was supported in part by the Yale Council on East Asian Studies Dissertation Fellowship and a Direct Grant from The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Notes
From the Annenberg Foundation website. Available at http://www.annenbergfoundation.org/about/about_show.htm?doc_id=209617 (accessed 23 March 2011).
From the Gates Foundation website. Available at http://www.gatesfoundation.org/global-health/Pages/hiv-prevention-china.aspx (accessed 27 March 2011).
From the Alcoa Foundation website. Available at http://www.alcoa.com/global/en/community/foundation/info_page/about_working_foundation.asp (accessed 23 March 2011).
From the Ford Foundation website. Available at http://www.fordfound.org/global/office/index.cfm?office=Beijing (accessed 20 October 2006).
From the Ford Foundation website. Available at http://www.fordfound.org/global/office/index.cfm?office=Beijing (accessed 20 October 2006).
All of these are required if the funder wishes the grant amount to count towards its 5% payout requirement, but generally suggested in any case. Also, see IRS guidelines at http://www.irs.gov/charities/foundations/article/0,id=137613,00.html.
In addition to constraints imposed by IRS regulations and other public information mechanisms, after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, US-based non-profit organizations of all stripes came under pressure from Washington to ensure that their monies are not used for or diverted to terrorist causes.
See details (in Chinese) at http://news.xinhuanet.com/zhengfu/2004-03/18/content_1372870.htm (accessed 1 December 2010).
See details (in Chinese) at http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2008-11/26/content_10415607.htm (accessed 1 December 2010).
The regulations on social organizations currently in effect were issued in 1998. See details (in Chinese) at http://www.people.com.cn/item/flfgk/gwyfg/1998/112103199803.html (accessed 1 February 2011).
See appendix for details on the identification of grassroots groups.
It is, however, common in much of this literature to cite the 1995 UN Women's Conference, held in Beijing, as an event that stimulated official and un-official discussion of civil society and NGOs (see Zhang, Citation2001). Also, the China Development Brief's (Citation2002) ‘Directory of International NGOs in China’ was an early effort to document INGOs in China. Ma (Citation2006) discussed the influence of ‘INGOs’ in China during the 1990s but did not distinguish between operational organizations and non-operational funders. Yang (Citation2004) offered a brief discussion of international impacts on China's environmental movement.
See www.foundationcenter.org for details.
Accessed via: http://foundationcenter.org on 6 June 2011. Although the data generated by the Map of Cross-Border Giving do not distinguish between grantees in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau, separate calculations found that just under 7% of total ‘China’ grant monies went to Hong Kong- and Macau-based grantees in the 2003–2009 period. Reducing the value of each data total by 7% (effectively removing the non-mainland grantees) yields no change in the rankings presented here except that (mainland) China drops to the fifth position in the number of distinct recipients. Note: International comparative data for 2002 were unavailable in the Map of Cross-Border Giving without contracting for special research services from the Foundation Center and are not included here.
A separate analysis (not shown here) that removes the $99 million in grants made by the Gates Foundation—to a relatively small number of grantees—makes little difference in these figures, as China still ranks in the top 10 of every category.
Some monies do flow indirectly to some grassroots groups, as I discovered myself with a few of the NGOs I studied, but it is likely that any indirect flows are in rather small amounts relative to what direct grantees receive.
Again, removing the $99 million in Gates Foundation grants makes little difference as the majority of the top 10 recipients remain government-controlled groups.
From Ford's website: http://www.fordfound.org/global/office/index.cfm?office=Beijing (accessed 20 October 2006).
From the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's website, via http://www.gatesfoundation.org/GlobalHealth/Grantseekers/GH_Strategy/Strategy_Grantmaking.htm (accessed 1 February 2007).