NGO Soul + Strategy 029. Potential and peril when NGOs collaborate with social movements: May Miller-Dawkins
Summary
What are the biggest limitations social movements encounter, time and again?
What are the good examples of positive collaboration between INGOs and social movements?
And what characteristics, what attributes made that collaboration positive?
In this podcast episode, I discussed with May Miller-Dawkins about the potential and peril when NGOs collaborate with social movements.
May’s Bio:
- Researcher, advocate and facilitator, working with social movements, NGOs, foundations, universities and community groups on social change processes
- Used to be based in New South Wales, Australia, now in New Zealand
- Works with social movements and social sector organizations as well as universities to strengthen their advocacy, deepen their coalitions and sharpen their analysis
- Former director, Governance and Transparency, The B Team, which seeks to redefine the culture of accountability in business by creating and encouraging the diffusion of new norms for business in society
- Head of Research at CoreLab, focused on research aimed at influencing policy and practice
- Former head of research at Oxfam Australia
We discussed:
- When NGOs collaborate with social movements in a respectful manner that recognizes movements’ autonomy and the need for its members to maintain safety, it can increase the credibility of their work
- InnovationNetwork has developed a very helpful framework with four dimensions for evaluating social movements:
- Institutional power
- People power
- Influencer power
- Narrative power
- Social movements tend to be more effective in raising broad public consciousness, while NGOs can be effective in agenda setting with elites and institutions
- NGOs are more at risk of reinforcing their power structures, or get coopted or become victim to ‘insider incrementalism’. On the other hand, they can set agendas in ways that are considered more ‘palatable by the mainstream opinion or elites.
Quotes
“It can be hard for NGOs to step back sufficiently to make sure they are complimentary and respectful of the power and agency of social movements”
“NGOs have to be careful in how they exercise their gatekeeping capabilities”
"Long-term, flexible funding is one of the most important ways in which social movements can be supported”
Resources:
Articles mentioned:
- Understanding Activism (2017) with Rhize and The Atlantic Council – Link
- The State of the Growing Movement Fighting Inequality (2019) – Fight Inequality Alliance, Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity and Rhize – Link
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