Non-Governmental Organisations(NGOs): Issues of Terminology and Definitions

Abstract

There is a phenomenal growth over the last two decades in the numbers and scope of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) across the world. Although there is great recognition on therole of NGOs in society, there is no agreement on what the term NGO entails and how NGOs canbe defined and understood. A number of issues are associated with this disagreement such asterminological issues and different approaches to definitions. The terminological issues refer to thewide range of terms used to identify this set of organisations such as an non-profit, not for profit,civil society, third sector organisations and so on. The various definitional approaches include legal,functional, economical and structural definitions. This conceptual paper argues that an analysis ofthe debates on sectoral differences, terminological issues and definitional aspects surrounding theconcept of NGO can provide an understanding of the concept. This paper concludes that NGOs areinstitutional entities, different from government and commercial organisations, based on sixessential attributes: formal nature, non-governmental, non-profit, self-governing, voluntarism andaccountability.