Lobbying a Crucial Mechanism for NGOs to Obtain Funding for Poverty Alleviation Programs in Africa

Lobbying a Crucial Mechanism for NGOs to Obtain Funding for Poverty Alleviation Programs in Africa

Idahosa Igbinakhase, Vannie Naidoo, Thea van der Westhuizen
Copyright: © 2021 |Pages: 10
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-4339-9.ch013
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Abstract

The need to unravel the organizational capabilities of youth-serving NGOs that may influence the replication of successful programmes designed to empower poor youths in order to make these programmes accessible to more youths and more geographical locations has motivated this study. This chapter will highlight the crucial role lobbying plays for NGOs in their efforts to obtain funding for poverty alleviation programs in Nigeria. Lobbying challenges experienced by youth-serving NGOs and factors that influence lobbying capabilities will be also be unpacked and discussed. A quantitative study was conducted on 196 youth-serving NGOs in Nigeria. Simple random sampling was used to collect data. This chapter will highlight the crucial role lobbying plays for NGOs in efforts to obtain funding for poverty alleviation programs. The results of the study indicated that lobbying is an important organizational capability for youth-serving NGOs in their bid to alleviate youth poverty in Nigeria.
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Introduction And Background Into The Study

Youth-serving NGOs are among the key stakeholders fighting the scourge of youth poverty in Nigeria (Ohize & Adamu, 2009:48). NGO’s are involved in many programmes that benefit the youth, such as the provision of shelter, food, medical services and education. Lobbying is very important in NGO management and plays a strategic role in the advocacy activities of NGOs. To establish the theoretical foundation for the investigation of the organisational capabilities of youth-serving NGOs to replicate successful programmes designed to empower poor youths in Nigeria, the deductive use of the SCALERS model is provided. The SCALERS model by Bloom and Chatterji (2009:115) proposes, “the extent to which an individual driver influence scaling success depends on various factors in the internal and external environment of the organisation that can enhance or suppress a driver’s influence”. In explaining the SCALERS model, Bloom and Chatterji (2009:116) and Bloom and Smith (2010:127 & 128) show that seven independent variables are considered, namely:

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    Staffing

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    Communication;

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    Alliance building;

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    Lobbying government agencies for support;

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    Earnings generation;

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    Replicating; and

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    Stimulating market forces (organisational capabilities) in correlation with a dependent variable, which is the “scale of social impact” (see Bloom & Smith, 2010:128).

For this paper the focus is on lobbying government agencies for support that NGO’s require and the important role lobbying plays to NGO management in the advocacy activities of NGOs.

  • H1: Lobbying is positively related to the replication of successful programmes designed to empower poor youths.

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Literature Review

In the literature review various themes relating to lobbying challenges experienced by youth-serving NGOs and factors that influence lobbying capabilities will be unpacked and discussed.

Lobbying Challenges Experienced by Youth-Serving NGOs

Youth-serving NGOs encounter challenges in their attempt to lobby key stakeholders to assist in alleviating youth poverty in Nigeria. Momoh, Oluwasanu, Oduola, Delano & Ladipo (2015:1–2) considered the outcome of a reproductive health advocacy mentoring intervention by staff of selected NGOs in Nigeria and found that some of the NGOs lacked the capacity to negotiate with the state government. They also lacked a working system for influencing the policy formulation process and were unable to work together to act as an agent of change and to influence the political and social system to act for the benefit of their cause. Other major challenges were financial and time limitations (Momoh et al., 2015:6–7). Momoh et al. (2015:8) further state that the lobbying and advocacy challenges affected the effectiveness of NGOs to contribute positively to the reproductive health issues of adolescents and youths in Nigeria. Among the outcomes of the reproductive health advocacy mentoring for NGO staff were the provision of free airtime by a television station to educate the public on reproductive and maternal health issues and the donation of a landed property to build a youth-friendly centre (Momoh et al., 2015:1). Youth-serving NGOs encounter lobbying challenges in the form of financial challenges, time limitations, a lack of capacity to negotiate with state government, a lack of an effective operational system for influencing the policy formulation process among other challenges in their drive to alleviate the suffering of the youth with regard to reproductive health issues.

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