section_path: Antipoverty institutions/Nongovernmental organizations
section_name: Nongovernmental organizations
paragraph_text: Nongovernmental organizations
  
  In recent decades, the number of nongovernmental organizations has increased dramatically. The High level forums on aid effectiveness that was coordinated by the OECD found that this leads to fragmentation where too many agencies were financing too many small projects using too many different procedures and that the civil service of the donor countries were overstretched producing reports for each.
  
  A major proportion of aid from donor nations is tied, mandating that a receiving nation spend on products and expertise originating only from the donor country. US law requires food aid be spent on buying food at home, instead of where the hungry live, and, as a result, half of what is spent is used on transport. Domestic NGOs have more expertise in their respective regions and have less overhead and thus tend to be more efficient in delivering aid but receive less funding. Housing only for a Western aid worker in Ethiopia is enough to pay the salaries of four or five local NGO workers, for example. Bilateral government aid programs such as US Agency for International Development aim to increase their share of funding to go through 'local partners', called 'localizing'. The obstacles include accountability where it is easier to delegate responsibility for spending on one international NGO than having to track tax payer money going to numerous smaller domestic NGOs.