Voluntary Regulation Of Ngos And Nonprofits PDF Download

Self-regulation is a new mandate in American nonprofit life, both for the nonprofit sector itself and for its government overseers. In the United States, this new self-regulation imperative is the product of oversight and hearings by the Senate Finance Committee on nonprofit and philanthropic accountability and malfeasance, the rise of strengthened self-governance among highly networked and occasionally threatened nonprofit sector industries, the rapid strengthening of voluntary and educational efforts at the state level, and other factors. The National Principles on Self-Regulation drafted by an advisory committee of the Panel of the Nonprofit Sector are the most visible new product of collective action within the nonprofit sector toward self-regulation. But the new self-regulation drive is not limited to the United States. Self-regulation is the product of collective action by the nonprofit sector that can have many and often overlapping motivations, and it is emerging throughout Asia as a means to defend against encroaching and increasing state pressures expressed through law, policy, and politics; to strengthen the quality of governance, services, financial management, and fundraising in the sector; to improve an public, corporate, media and other perceptions of nonprofits and charities; to organize an unruly sphere and marginalize lower-quality actors or other outliers; to access governmental or donor funding; as a market mechanism to exclude competitive or unproductive actors; and as a learning opportunity for nonprofits and their networks at state and national levels, a means to clarify and strengthen shared identity in particular parts of the nonprofit community. This working paper reviews the history of nonprofit self-regulation in Asia and discussions of it in the academic literature, and discusses and analyzes the various forms of nonprofit self-regulation and private governance in Asia, emphasizing developments in India, Cambodia, the Philippines and Pakistan where nonprofit collective action toward self-regulation is most active. The paper analyzes the initial successes of this collective action in formulating standards and mechanisms for self-regulation, as well as the difficulty that the nonprofit sector has in collectively moving toward implementation, enforcement, and scale-up of these self-regulatory systems - a problem that occurs in the United States as well.