ASSESSING FUNDS AVAILABILITY AND OPERATIONS OF NGOs IN THE WA MUNICIPALITY

Abstract

The operations of Non-Governmental Organizations world over cannot be overlooked as the NGO sector has contributed significantly towards addressing the development needs of rural dwellers. Notwithstanding, many rural dwellers remain the same after an NGO intervention or some NGO projects not being successfully implemented. The failure of the improvement in the lives of these rural dwellers is attributed to availability of funds to enable the NGO sector implement intervention to the utmost benefit of the target beneficiaries. The study assessed funds availability and operations of NGOs in the Wa Municipality. The objectives were: to identify the determinants of NGO access to funds, to establish the effect of funds availability on project implementation and to identify and rank the challenges facing the NGO sector in the Wa Municipality. The study employed survey design and selected a sample of 112 respondents from the 25 NGOs operating in the Municipality. The study used quantitative tools such as logistic regression, simple linear regression and Kendall's coefficient of concordance in dealing with objective one, two and three respectively. The study revealed that management experience, management level of education, previous work relationship, NGO network, NGO accountability, NGO years of operation, and staff strength determines NGOs access to funds. Also, an NGO ability to secure funds before implementing a project has significant effect on successful project implementation. Some of the challenges facing the NGO sector were difficulty in accessing donor funds, misapplication of financial resources, and absence of well-defined objectives, mission and vision, improper accounting system. With difficulty in accessing funds being the topmost challenge and there exist weak to strong relationship between these challenges and NGO performance. The study recommended that NGOs should take steps to satisfy the identified determinants of access to funds to enable them gain competitive advantage over other NGOs.