Diversification of NGOs’ revenues: implications for the mission changeability

Abstrakt

Growing social needs and changes in the governmental policy aimed at reducing social aid spending have put pressure on non-profits to develop strategies to gain financial support from diversified sources. Diversification of funding’ sources gives the chance not only to increase revenues, strengthening the stability and predictability of NGOs’ functioning but also to limiting the control of public and private donors, especially when any of them predominates in capital contributions. The access to many different sources of revenue may reduce changeability of organizations’ mission and lead to a larger organizational autonomy in their mission related work. The objective of the article is to examine which sources of NGOs’ funding, including public, private internal and external sources are significant factors for the changeability of mission of non-governmental organizations. Data for the analyses have been collected from the national survey of Polish non-governmental organizations. To achieve this aim factor analysis was carried out. This research find that public support or commercial activities are not significant factors regarding the volatility of the non-governmental mission. The only significant variable, from the point of view of decision-making on changing the mission of NGOs, is the external private financing. The obtained results may contribute to the ongoing discussion on the impact of particular types of sources of revenues in the structure of financing NGOs for the implementation of the social mission. The results may provide some indications for those responsible for organizational development strategies.