On The Road Blog
The Nonprofit Sector: Challenges and Opportunities
- By Vineeta Gupta on December 28th, 2010
- Category: Blog, South Asia
New York, New York – As I waited for several hours in New York on my way to Dhaka, Bangladesh, I looked through the long list of nonprofit organizations I had with me to plan my visit to explore the possibilities of supporting some new community organizations in Bangladesh and Nepal. At GFC, we call these trips “scouting visits.”
Growing up in India in a family environment full of philanthropists, community organizers and leaders, rebels, and activists, I probably heard the words nonprofit organization and NGO earlier than most teenagers. The nonprofit sector in India started to emerge in the mid-1980s, and today NGO is a household word. In the course of my Internet research on organizations working with a tribal community of about 150,000 people in Chittagong Hill Tracks, in Bangladesh, I was surprised to find a large number of NGOs, with budgets ranging from a few thousand dollars to several million.
The nonprofit sector in India is still evolving, filling the space formerly occupied by the government and the private sector. There are many opportunities to fill the gaps left by the receding government provision of social services and the increasing unaffordability of private-sector services. The current environment also presents an opportunity to connect and integrate the traditional way of conducting governmental and private business to allow for innovative approaches to benefit the most marginalized citizens.
Like most opportunities, the utilization of the nonprofit sector for social change, whether through the provision of services or through policy reforms, also presents many challenges. More later….
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