Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOS)

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are nonprofit organizations that either deliver public services or advocate public policy, or both. Some observers also refer to them as civil society groups or third sector groups, as distinguished from the for-profit business sector and from government. They are also to be distinguished from intergovernmental organizations, such as the United Nations and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

NGOs include a wide range of organizations—relief, humanitarian, development aid, and sustainable development—but the term more commonly refers to advocacy groups. The forerunner to the emergence of NGOs on the global scene was the rise of citizen groups and citizen activism within the United States. The proliferation of such groups occurred during the 1960s and 1970s and coincided with the rise of social regulation. The trend continues unabated in the new century and has given rise to global NGOs and international networks among citizen groups.

In the area of service delivery, there are domestic organizations that provide basic needs and social services, such as the Salvation Army, Goodwill Industries, [Page 1509]and Habitat for Humanity. Some of these organizations provide services in the global arena as well, where they are joined by relief organizations such as the International Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders.

More central to this discussion are advocacy groups that promote change in corporate practices and public policy. These are the groups that have proliferated most rapidly over the past half century and that have promoted corporate responsibility and ethics concerns.

Before the strong wave of social regulation in the United States in the 1970s, the social movements of the 1960s transitioned into citizen groups in the following decade. What began as protest movements on civil rights, women's rights, consumer protection, and environmental protection in the 1960s transformed into more mainstream interest groups in the 1970s.