What are Non-governmental Organizations (NGO)?

Non-governmental Organizations, commonly known as NGOs, are non-profit groups formed by citizens to support social or political causes. They may be organized locally, nationally or internationally. The non-governmental organizations work independently of the government although they often receive funds from the governments. 

What do NGOs Do?

The are other alternative or overlapping terms used for similar organizations, that includes non-profit organization, civil society organization, third-sector organization, voluntary organization, grass root organization, social movement organization, and others. 

United States Agency for International Development refers to NGOs as a private voluntary organization.

The World Bank has categorized the NGOs in two sections: operational NGOs and advocacy NGOs. The operational NGOs works to achieve certain developmental goals such as poverty alleviation, improved health care, improved education and literacy, and many others. The advocacy NGOs are organized to promote specific causes. The works of some NGO may fall under both categories. 

Some NGOs are run by the volunteers while many other have paid employees. The NGOs collect their fund from various sources to run the operations. Private donations, membership dues, sale of goods and services and grants are some of the ways of collecting the funds used by the NGOs. 

Government agencies, different ministries of the government, the World Bank and UNESCO release a significant amount of grants to fund the NGOs. Many NGOs rely completely on governmental grants to run their operations. Some large NGOs secure millions or billions of dollars as grants. 

In the United States, there are about 1.5 million domestic and foreign NGOs operating in the country. The estimated number of NGOs working across the world is 10 million. 

The term non-governmental organization was first introduced in 1945 when the United Nations was established. The term was coined to distinguish private organizations from intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations. 

 Followings are some of the acronyms used for describing various NGOs.

• BINGO: Business-friendly international NGO or Big international NGO. Amnesty International is one such NGO.
• ENGO: Environmental NGO such as Greenpeace.
• GONGO: Government-organized non-governmental organization. Government organizes such NGOs in order to qualify for outside aid or to promote the cause of the government. International Union for
• Conservation of Nature is one such NGO.
• INGO: International NGO. Red Cross is an international NGO.
• QUANGO: Quasi-autonomous NGO. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is an example of QUANGO.