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NGO is an independent association of citizens that can help the community and communities of any size to better organize, finance, spiritual and cultural development, etc. That is, to act in harmony with good communities.
However, NGOs can criticize or even oppose the community, for example, against corruption in local government, united territorial community. Now I will say an even more terrible thing, a public organization is also an independent organization of citizens who are freely and dignifiedly able to question and fight against the unworthy organization of communities of any quantitative power, even if it is a silent majority of citizens who obey the state power that has had enough.
That is – attention! – the essence and meaning of a public organization is that it is an association of citizens. And not because it is funded by the community, which would not be bad at all. That is, a public organization is public not because it should be funded by the community.
However, the view of a non-governmental organization from a professional and financial point of view, although unprofessional in terms of understanding social rather than monetary relations, is popular and, therefore, important.
It is popular especially in the environment of those not public, but political organizations, to which public activity becomes an obstacle. Across, for example, the ideas of an open society, the struggle for civil liberties, the development of civic activity and activists in general.
Just do not confuse the principled strategic management of a public organization and those who are the executors. Although the unity of public interests in the vision of the NGO’s activities and independent, including from money, board members and executive managers of the organization is extremely useful for the success of promoting their own interests.
And here we come to the main point. What, in fact, is the interest of an NGO? In addition to the fact that such interests are very diverse from human rights protection to animal protection, from cultural creativity to the creation of new policies, the essence is that these interests are collective and private. The concept of a public organization is the understanding that it is not about promoting or fighting for someone else’s interests. That organization is public, which, indeed, reflects and is based on the collective interest of a certain community, an association of people, however, precisely because this interest is their own – also private, vital – interest. Which is not as easy to buy as it sometimes seems to business and financiers. Combined with the dual independence of strategic leaders of CSOs – from the state and from funding – the strength of CSOs, and the real “public”.
Therefore, the question of dependence-independence on donors and their influence, the question of “agents” or “patriots” is not very difficult to solve in theory. The more public in the sense I wrote about above, is a public organization, the more independent it is from private, I emphasize – private, intentions and interests of donors.
That is why, if the general interests of the donor coincide with the collective interests of our citizens who created the NGO, then leave suspicious distrust to the communists and regionals, who are never the same. And also those who fight against human rights that do not coincide with their radical understanding of the values of their own culture and identity.
It is possible to have distrust to donors of foreign democratic states, whose state, hence their collective interest is to support the development of democratic institutions, including genuine CSOs, in order to get an equal developed partner-country. This distrust can be strengthened. But one cannot deny the right of a public organization that receives financial assistance from such a donor to respond to such distrust in the most radical way – to be transparent and publicly open.
We must clearly understand that populism enters our souls not only through promises of tomorrow’s benefits. It also penetrates us through a simple recipe of “take and share”, which nurtures suspicion of those who have more than us. This suspicion is valid until the moment when it touches the sphere of values and ideas. Therefore, charitable social assistance – to the sick, children, people with disabilities for one reason or another – is much less suspect than all the others.
But why is it not suspicious to bring ideas and values of people who were educated in Stanford and Harvard. This is also foreign capital in the exact sense of social capital, which is more effective than banknotes.
A rhetorical question. If you received such education, then its application should be really public, that is, to help a real social movement. And this means not suspicion at all, but help in understanding the real public.
And then in a free and developed country, where there will be no oligarchs and corruption, fighting for ideological NGOs, there will be a much larger number of wealthy citizens of the dream “middle class”, who themselves will be able to finance real NGOs en masse.
