Don’t throw out the baby…

One hopes that the diversion of media and public attention by the recent calamities away from the yet unresolved scandal around the illicit use of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) will not be for good. Among other things, the scandal has inflicted collateral damage on the legitimate community of nongovernment organizations (NGOs) doing genuinely good work all over the country. Suddenly, NGOs seem to have taken on a negative light in the eyes of many Filipinos, all because alleged scam mastermind Janet Lim-Napoles and her ilk are said to have managed to employ dozens of bogus NGOs to siphon massive sums of taxpayer money into private pockets. Worse, among government’s knee-jerk reactions to the scam was an early declaration by certain officials that henceforth no public funds would be coursed through NGOs.

Based on a recent count, the country has around 180,000 registered civil society organizations (CSOs), the broader term that includes people’s organizations, cooperatives, labor unions, homeowners’ associations, clubs and others, apart from NGOs. A recent estimate by the Caucus of Development NGO Networks (CODE-NGO) placed the number of “development oriented” NGOs nationwide at 3,000-5,000. And even while the Napoles NGOs are a tiny minority, it seems that NGOs in general have now become suspect, particularly on the matter of handling government funds. It didn’t help that well before the PDAF scandal broke out, certain NGOs were known derisively as “CONGOs” (Congressman-organized NGOs), or “GONGOs” (government-organized NGOs), existing only to implement projects funded out of the pork barrel.

Then again, the historical track record, even of the wide community of legitimate NGOs, has not exactly been sterling. The heyday of Philippine NGOs came in the aftermath of the 1986 People Power Revolution, when international donor agencies showered assistance on the government of President Corazon Aquino, and NGOs became a favored channel for donor funds. In a paper on NGO accountability practices prepared for the Philippine Council for NGO Certification (PCNC), Danilo Songco observed how in that period, “donors were lax with accountability requirements (as) they were more concerned about moving funds to meet disbursement targets than accounting for funds disbursed… NGOs, on the other hand, bothered little about accountability as they were more predisposed to chasing after funds… Meanwhile, government did not bother with NGO accountability because they were busy spending grants or trying to close grant contracts that were already committed by donors. Accountability was simply not in the agenda because absorptive capacity was the name of the game.”

It was against this backdrop that 10 of the largest NGO networks in the country came together in 1991 to form CODE-NGO, to promote a Code of Conduct and professionalism as well as to expand the reach and increase the effectiveness of legitimate CSOs. More than two decades later, CODE-NGO remains the largest coalition of NGOs in the country. To commemorate its genesis 22 years ago, the coalition will again hold its annual Social Development Celebration (SDC) 2013 on Nov. 28-29 at the Institute of Social Order in the Ateneo de Manila University campus in Quezon City, with the theme “Making Participatory Governance Work and Sustaining It Beyond 2016.”

Through its more than two decades, CODE-NGO has not been without its share of heartaches and struggles in its efforts to exact accountability from its member-networks and NGOs. It had to undergo the painful process of removing one member-network when it failed to account for funds it received from the coalition. Earlier, it had also dismissed two member-networks and 10 NGOs that failed to comply with contractual obligations under a foreign-funded project. But such discipline is necessary for NGOs/CSOs to merit the continuing cooperation and support of the government, and the trust of the general public. It was thus apt that CODE-NGO joined five other large NGO networks in 1998 to establish the PCNC, a self-governance mechanism that is one of very few government-recognized NGO certification systems worldwide. PCNC accreditation is a rigorous and discriminating process sure to weed out any Napoles-style NGOs. While established primarily for tax deductibility purposes, it exists more importantly to promote professionalism, accountability and transparency within the NGO community.

Even as the threat of a government retreat on funding support to NGOs looms, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) is one donor agency that has kept the faith in Philippine NGOs. Remarkably, this is in spite of having its own bad experience with an erstwhile respected NGO in the recent past. USAID recently launched the Phil-Am Fund, a P1-billion ($24 million), five-year grant facility administered by the Gerry Roxas Foundation to support civil society and the private sector projects in five strategic priorities: promotion of new business and entrepreneurship, advancing government integrity and transparency, combating human trafficking, addressing “last mile” challenges to literacy through innovation, and improving natural resource and environmental management. Along with that, USAID is also helping upgrade the capacity of Philippine CSOs through an intensive training program administered by the Ayala Foundation.

Government ought to do no less. We can’t throw out the baby with the bathwater just because Napoles and some corrupt legislators have given NGOs a bad name.

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