NGO-public-beneficiaries relationship: NGOs’ views

Presentation: Dr Shani Orgad, LSE

Panel: Professor Kate Nash, GoldsmithsProfessor Mark Levine, Exeter UniversityBrendan Gormley, CDAC

Analysis of NGO interviews Orgad, Shani. (2012). Thematic analysis of NGO interviews. www.bbk.ac.uk/psychosocial/our-research/research-projects/ShaniReportWebsiteVersion.pdf

Orgad, Shani and Seu, Bruna (2014). 'Intimacy at a distance' in humanitarian communication . Media, Culture and Society.

Orgad, Shani (2014). Underline, celebrate, mitigate, erase: NGOs’ visual communication of difference in a global world. In: Cottle, Simon and Cooper, Glenda (eds). Humanitarianism, Communications and Change. NY: Peter Lang.

Orgad, Shani (2013) .Visualizers of solidarity: Organizational politics in humanitarian and international development NGOs. Visual Communication, 12 (3): 295-314.

Advocacy, Campaigns

Communications, Branding, Media, ‘Public engagement’

Fundraising, Marketing, Individual giving

Humanitarian relationships triangle

NGO

‘BENEFICIARIES’UK PUBLIC

The sector

“It’s so far out of people's realms of what is their reality that they can't possibly begin to imagine” (Communications manager).

‘BENEFICIARIES’

UK PUBLIC

NGOs

“Imagery… that’s a very well-flogged horse. I’m sick of talking about it but that doesn’t mean it’s not important” (Communications manager).

Public-beneficiaries relationship

“People parody our advertising…we communicate generally in quite formulaic ways” (Marketing manager)

“People think nothing’s changed because we’re showing them that nothing’s changed. It’s a helpless story” (Campaigns manager)

BENEFICIARIES

NGOs

Organizational tensions

Public-beneficiaries relationship

Parallel Universes?

“At the moment it’s two parallel universes. …There are attempts in many NGOs, including my NGO, to try and bridge that a little bit. […] but even though we would like at this point to change it, the results and the data tell us that it [long-term communication of development issues that does not focus on severe neediness] doesn’t work”

(Campaigns manager).

Strengthening the Public-beneficiaries

relationship[If I were able to achieve just one thing it would be to] “take all the people in the UK and show them real poverty in the global south”

(Communications manager).

“We made a film in 3D …because we really wanted people to feel that they were in the village… really try to make feel that they were in there and in the hut”.

(Communications manager).

Public-NGO relationship

‘BENEFICIARIES’

UK PUBLIC

NGOs

“The audience … they’ve got a lot of trust in [our NGO], and other big NGOs and the like. They trust you guys know what you’re doing, and you spend the money as you see fit” (Fundraising manager).

“We have disillusioned people by overselling” (Communications manager).

“[Make Poverty History]… essentially you made a promise that cannot be delivered; although it was a very catchy thing, very inspirational. But actually you realize… that kind of works against you, doesn’t it? After one year we disbanded… poverty cannot be ended because it’s too complex. …How do you then go back to your supporters years after and say: we still haven’t managed to arrive at this?” (Campaigns manager).

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Public-NGO relationship

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“It’s about them [the public] believing in us [the NGO] and what we give them by way of a communications experience that will bring them back to us…that will make them love us I suppose in hippy terms.[…] We need people to give us money. We need our business to work. It’s what we add on top of that that will make us memorable, that will create this love in our audiences, that will bring them back to us”

(Branding manager).

“we’d love to help them [audiences] see that they can be political without it threatening them; that takes time. ..So we don’t whip people against money, in other words, softly introduce the notion that they can actually make change politically, but lots of people don’t feel that comfortable with it.”

(Branding manager)

[We want to] appeal to the feeling, to the emotion; but not to the emotion that is about guilt or shame… you want to touch on the positive feeling” (Campaigns manager).

“…But not in a judgemental way, it's saying to [our audience]…you have the agency to help do something about that. So I don't know that it would be layered with guilt”

(Communications manager).

Limits and ways forward• Conditioned upon

‘getting closer’ and becoming beneficiaries’ ‘intimates’

• Tension between long-term ‘journey’ and short-term model of emergency communication

• Pleasurable and non-threatening relations

• Non-reciprocal intimacy

communication that does not simulate intimacy and physical proximity

NGO role as agent of social transformation

two-way, long-term relationships

Rethink dominance

of ‘short conversation’ model

“The test of acknowledgment is not our reflex reaction to a TV news item, a beggar on the street, or an Amnesty advertisement, but how we live in between such moments.”

Cohen, Stanley (2001). States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering. Cambridge: Polity, p. 295.