Do-it-Yourself Aid: The Emergence of American Grassroots Development Organizations

Abstract

The number of American-based international NGOs has increased tenfold since

1990. The growth is driven by GINGOs: grassroots international non-governmental

organizations, or NGOs founded by amateurs with a personal tie to a developing country,

and supported with volunteer labor and individual donations. The Americans who launch

these organizations typically are middle-class college graduates, but have no training or

professional experience in international development. Instead of being shaped by the

norms of the professional aid field, these organizations are defined by the personal

relationships and skills of the people who found them. They represent a countermovement

to the trend of professionalization seen in aid organizations and the nonprofit

sector broadly.

This dissertation combines analysis of IRS records with fieldwork and interviews

in Africa and the United States. I also create an original database of all known websites

for international relief, development, and human rights organizations registered with the

IRS in 2011, which is analyzed with topic modeling and content analysis of a random

sample of 150 organizations. My findings show that globalization offers a tenuous

opening for nonprofit organizations to bypass the isomorphic pressures of

professionalization. And while supporting world society theory’s claims about the ways

individual agency and rationalism shape international organization, I show that the

expressive possibilities of nonprofit organizations are critical in understanding GINGOs’

emergence. I describe implications for development aid and for the American

communities that support these groups.