NGO Soul + Strategy 007. Are NGOs subject to the dynamic of ‘successful failure’? A conversation with George Mitchell of Baruch College, City University of New York
George Mitchell, professor at Baruch College at the City University of New York, USA, is one of my long time collaborators, a dear friend and one of those wonderful academics with a healthy respect for NGO practitioners. He and I, and Hans Peter Schmitz have co-authored an upcoming book on transnational NGOs, which will come out in June 2020.
In this interview, George addresses the following questions and topics:
- What stops NGOs/nonprofits from becoming more outcome-oriented?
- How is it possible that NGOs can survive indefinitely without showing outcomes? Does the provocative concept of ‘successful failure’ explain this phenomenon?
- What are the specific roadblocks to watch out for when NGOs do aspire to become more outcome-oriented?
- Some common myths when it comes to measurement and evaluation
- The importance for NGOs of joining transparency platforms
- Tricky aspects of integrating cost-effectiveness into evaluation approaches
Bio
- George Mitchell is Associate prof at Baruch college, where he taches as well as writes for academic and practitioner audiences in the areas of nonprofit management, transnational NGOs and evaluation and learning.
- George pursued his PhD work in Political Science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, USA, where his collaboration with me as podcast host started. We go back 16 years!
- George and I are co-author (together with Hans Peter Schmitz of the University of San Diego, USA) of a book : Between Power and Irrelevance: the future of transnational NGOs, which is expected to be published by Oxford University Press in June 2020. This book is partially dedicated to the question to what extent NGOs are truly outcome-oriented, and what factors and incentive systems historically have influenced the actions and behaviors of NGOs when it comes to being outcome-oriented.
Resources
LinkedIn profile of George Mitchell
Nonprofit Policy Forum article that references Seibel’s ‘successful failure’ concept: https://doi.org/10.1515/npf-2019-0050
The book ‘Between Power and Irrelevance: the future of Transnational NGOs’, co-authored by George, Hans Peter Schmitz and Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken, will be published by Oxford University Press in June 2020
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