The Rise of Philippine NGOs in Managing Development Assistance

In recent years, official development assistance (ODA) agencies have been increasingly
exploring avenues for supporting community development initiatives more directly. The
result has been the creation of a diversity of new funding channels, many of them involving
NGOs, both in the host and donor countries. Little analysis has been conducted, however,
of what has been working, including the how and why, and few attempts have been made to
share examples more widely. This paper seeks to address this gap by looking at the case of
the Philippines in detail and follows on the general overview of ODA-NGO collaboration
presented by David Winder in his paper Options for Financial Sustainability: Collaboration
Between Civil Society and Development Agencies in Southeast Asia.

Various stakeholders in the Philippine development community have warmly received
the practice of NGO management of ODA. NGO management of ODA funds transfers
traditional decision-making powers over allocation and use of funds, from donor representatives and host government agencies to collegial bodies comprised of or influenced by NGO representatives. This paper explores this rise of Philippine NGOs in managing ODA, looking at the different forms of NGO-managed mechanisms and challenges and opportunities for NGOs and ODA agencies moving forward.