Fact and Fiction

The new financial year is approaching, and various government departments will be allocating funds to community-based organisations (CBOs) in their quest to attain their Millennium Development Goals.

Now is also the time, however, that government must decide between non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and community-based organisations (CBOs).

So What’s the Difference?

Within civil society, NGOs are generally viewed as the pioneers and experts of development achievements while CBOs are seen as non-entities that misuse donor funds.

At the 50th National Conference of the ANC, then ANC president Nelson Mandela highlighted the important role of civil society organisations and emphasised the role played by CBOs. He talked about the importance of NGOs, CBOs and grassroots-based political groups in ensuring popular participation in governance. These, he said, constituted some of the best institutions through which popular involvement and participation could be mobilised.

However, we must also draw attention to the fact that many of our non-governmental organisations are not in fact CBOs: both because they have no popular base and because they rely on domestic and foreign governments, rather than the people, for their material sustenance.

As we continue the struggle to ensure a people-driven process of social transformation, we will have to consider the reliability of such NGOs as a vehicle to achieve our developmental objectives.

“The success achieved by many CBOs based on the contribution of ‘sweat equity’ by very poor communities points to the need for us to seriously consider the matter of the nature of the so-called organs of civil society,” said Mandela during the same event.

Although there are many similarities between CBOs and NGOs, the two differ in their conceptualisation, organisation and positioning in the development sector. Community Connections, an organisation located in Cape Town that provides support to CBOs, cites the following differences:

• While CBOs are community-led, NGOs tend to be initiated externally, by people outside the community they serve; 
• The pioneers of CBOs are often friends or neighbours who share a special interest;
• CBOs are generally volunteer driven whilst NGOs have paid staff;
• CBOs tend to have a more cooperative (informal) structure, whilst NGOs tend to be formally organised (for example with a board and an executive).

As a result, NGOs can interface easier with the sector and generally have more access to information and resources, while CBOs are formed by people as a way of responding to the needs and challenges facing their communities.

Unlike NGOs, CBOs are organised to address the interests of its members, rather than those of outsiders. The Community Development Resource Association (CDRA) further describes CBOs as self-governing, with a leadership that is accountable to its membership rather than to a board of trustees, donors and clients. CDRA explains that a CBO carries the nobility of the collective, the concept of humane society, the profound attempt to create a real community from fragmented parts; that it manifests as a flagship of democracy, attempting to practise this both with respect to its aims as well as its internal functioning.

Given their stated good intentions, why do CBOs fail to attract adequate funding to support their initiatives?

Why are they not getting the recognition they deserve? CBOs in South Africa are facing many challenges. Development agencies bestow grants to the better-established NGOs that have the capacity to implement certain projects.

However, in some instances it is the CBOs that do the work the NGOs receive funding for. CBOs are generally undervalued and unrecognised for their contribution to development by other role-players.

The policies that have been set in place to regulate and govern civil society organisations do not take into consideration the limitations faced by CBOs.

As mentioned above, CBOs are formed by ordinary community members who want to address specific problems in their communities. In most instances the members of the CBOs have very low literacy levels and they are not conversant with the legal implications and procedures of running an organisation.

– This article, written by Afesis-corplan Project Coordinator of the Capacity-building programme for community-based organisations, Nanagamso Magadla, first appeared in the Local Government Transformer.