DevelopmenTwist - Development Discussion Den: 2006-03-05

Social Sector Organizations
What is your role?

Imagine there are three new organizations on a platform. The announcer introduces them to the audience as “Today we have amongst us organizations that are striving to make the world a better place. X is a charitable organization, Y is a humanitarian organization and Z is the developmental organization”. What impression would the introduction have created on the audience about the work of each of these organizations?

There is a value statement in each of these words – charity in charitable, humanity in humanitarian and development in developmental. The implication of this value association then differentiates the three categories of organizations:

A charitable organization focuses on those who are suffering and in pain. It provides goods and services that can for the moment stop or reduce the suffering. E.g. Food distribution to the hungry, blanket distribution to the homeless, money to the poor beggar etc.

A humanitarian organization’s focus is on human welfare through a two-fold approach - alleviation of suffering and advancement of social reforms. It extends relief in the form of goods and services to people in difficult circumstances based on humanitarian principles. For example, International Committee of Red Cross “exclusively humanitarian mission is to protect the lives and dignity of victims of war and internal violence and to provide them with assistance. It directs and coordinates the international relief activities conducted by the Movement in situations of conflict. It also endeavors to prevent suffering by promoting and strengthening humanitarian law and universal humanitarian principles.”

A developmental organization is concerned about growth. Its objective is to facilitate a positive, long-term and sustainable change by addressing the root cause of the social problem. Oxfam, Care and Greenpeace are some international developmental organizations. Oxfam Internationals mission states that it is “dedicated to fighting poverty and related injustice around the world.”

The core objective of all three organizations is broadly the same – make the world a better place. But how they go about doing it (their mission, goals and methods) is different.

‘Humanitarian’ is very close, but not synonymous, to ‘charitable’. The latter is derived from the ideal that it is a virtue to give fish to someone who is unfortunately hungry while the former is based on the belief that it is human responsibility to take care of those who are currently hungry due to circumstances. As this play of words implies, the motivation behind the two forms of giving and how the recipients are viewed is different. While charitable and humanitarian organization’s provide the fish to the hungry, a developmental organization helps people learn how to fish inorder to not go hungry. In special circumstances, a developmental organization may undertake humanitarian work, for example during a natural disaster. And a humanitarian organization may initiate a developmental process in the course of their work.

All three types of organizations play an important but different role. Take for example organizations working on a health related cause such as cancer. The mission of a charitable organization would be to provide financial aid or medicines to a needy cancer patient. A humanitarian organizations mandate would be to establish a mechanism for contributing towards the cost of medical treatment of patients from low-income groups and provide counseling and other necessary emotional support to the patient and his or her family members during the illness. A developmental organization would support research into causes of cancer and new treatments or focus on prevention and early detection through public awareness programmes on cancer. All three types of organizations play a different role in the fight against cancer.

The words 'charitable, humanitarian and developmental' communicate the organization’s beliefs and attitudes to the public, donors, employees, vendors and partners. It also reflects how the organization perceives its role and character, determines the way it functions, the kind of people it employs, the fundraising methods it adopts, the accountability criteria it sets and how it plans its future. The following table reflects some of the distinctions in approach and functioning of the organization.

	Charitable	Philanthropic	Developmental
Underlying Motivation is	Human virtue	Human responsibility	Human advancement/ growth
Guiding Objective is	Relief oriented	Relief oriented	Development oriented
Focus/Stress is on	Service/product delivery	Service/product delivery	Change facilitation
Impact of activities/programs	Short term	Short to medium term	Long-term
Fundraising methods designed to tap	Charity	Philanthropy & Charity	Philanthropy & Social Investment