Shifting Paradigms for International NGOs and Constituency Building
Evolving Scene from Japan

Kaori Kuroda & Katsuji Imata
CSO Network Japan

Paper presented to ARNOVA Annual Conference,
November 14-16, 2002, Montreal, Canada©Copyright: Kaori Kuroda & Katsuji Imata: Do NOT reproduce or circulate without authors’permission. Do NOT cite without proper reference.

Introduction
In a roundtable discussion of Japanese non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
organized by the CSO Network Japan (www.csonj.org) in May 2002 in Tokyo, a point
was made repeatedly by more than a few participants that Japanese NGOs need toaccelerate their efforts to gain more support from the general public. The point waspresented as a corollary to the view that Japanese NGOs are still weak when it comes totheir capacity to lead the public in such efforts as to bring about change in Japanese
foreign assistance policy. In short, it was presented that Japanese NGOs still lack a broad
support base or constituency.
In order to understand this point, the discussion needs to be situated in thecontext of NGOs in Japan being suddenly brought to heightened visibility in the last few
years. With the initiative of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), to take amost notable example, new networks of Japanese international development NGOs havebeen formed by sector – in humanitarian assistance, education, health/population, andagriculture/rural development – in order to strengthen their management capacity and toraise their presence in the international development scene. In these efforts of MOFA andother funders, the emphasis is being placed on NGOs’ capabilities to deliver services andimplement projects, rather than on their capacity in policymaking and constituency
building. This in effect is creating a fertile ground for an increased awareness among
Japanese NGOs that they need a stronger support base, both in a monetary and nonmonetary sense, in order to achieve and maintain independence from the government andits development agenda.
The efforts to strengthen NGOs in Japan of course coincide with the global trend ofgiving NGOs more active roles in solving global issues. However, Japan is unique in thatit has had a rather weak private voluntary sector historically and in that various initiatives
by the government, by the for-profit private sector and by the nonprofit sector itself tobuild a stronger nonprofit sector have only been active in the last 15 years or so.
But is there anything we can learn from Japan in its evolving process to build astronger constituency for NGOs? Japanese NGOs may be “weak” among the industrial
nations, but is there anything unique that we should be paying attention to? In this shortpaper, the authors would like to point out 1) constituency building of “northern” NGOs
(NNGOs) has only recently become a topic of primary importance in international
development; and 2) the “weakness” of Japanese NGOs may be used as an advantage
particularly with regard to this particular topic. In order to do this, the authors will begin
by depicting the notion of constituency building and by explaining the political andsocietal background in which Japanese NGOs operate.

2.

Changing Roles of Northern NGOs

From the early 1990s, building a domestic constituency and gaining support from thegeneral public has become a topic of growing interest among international NGOs (INGOs) whose headquarters reside in a “northern” country. David Korten asked in 1990 a
set of poignant questions“Will they (NGOs) continue to act primarily as humanitarian assistance agencies, orwill they become agents of transformation (italics added)– even at the risk ofalienating funders? Will they function primarily as professionally staffedbureaucracies engaged in the funding and implementation of projects, or will theybuild their capacities to strengthen global citizenship among their domestic
constituencies and to serve as a support system for a voluntary people’s development
movement?” (Korten, 1990, 202)

These points have been explored by many other practitioners and scholars in recent years.
In Future Positive, for example, Michael Edwards argues that the traditional development
model -- where projects overseas were viewed as the motor of development, financialtransfers were regarded as the best means of support, and people in the rich world wereseen as contributors of funds -- has been questioned since the mid-1990s and that “NGOsbegan to experience more and more confusion about their roles and identity.” (Edwards,
1999: 198) In his view, I-NGOs are asked to make a choice – they need to either try tosurvive by doing what they have been doing harder and capturing a larger slice of theforeign-aid cake, or become “change agents in their own countries.” (Ibid: 200)
Edwards’ change agents corresponds precisely with Korten’s agents oftransformation. In both, NNGOs’ primary roles are found less and less in project
implementation and overseas service delivery, and more and more in transforming larger
political and economic structures, and creating social movements with strong domestic
roots. At the Third CSO Forum held in Washington, D.C. in September 2002, Edwards
delivered the keynote speech and depicted this transforming model for NNGOs as“development as delivery” to “development as leverage.” (Edwards, 2002) Indeed,
service delivery will remain a major task for NNGOs at least for the next decade or so,
but they also need to be looking at how effectively they should use their limited resources– using them as a lever – to make structural changes in the global political and social
environment.

In this changing environment, it is not only NNGOs that are being asked to change.
The relationships among NNGOs, “southern” NGOs (SNGOs), and donors (bilateral andmultilateral donors and international foundations) have been changing as well, as thenorm in the development world has shifted to focus on empowering the local
communities of less developed nations. This is related to the increasing roles that
SNGOs and local organizations have begun to play and their enhanced capacity andprofessional work that has evolved. When SNGOs and local organizations are strong
enough, there may be little value for NNGOs in continuing operational roles. Instead,
NNGOs may have a comparative advantage as well as moral obligation to build stronger
links between their own publics at home and development issues through development
education, networking, advocacy and campaigning, and lobbying their own governments.
Moreover, NNGOs should try to raise the level of accountability of their own ODA
through their work in policy monitoring and advocacy (Lewis & Sobhan, 1999). They
should also try to influence/monitor the flow of private money into less developed
countries, which has massively increased and is expected to increase even more.
Ironically, the overall trend among Japanese I-NGOs and the norm that surrounds
them has in recent years been in the direction of more government funding, capacity
building for more effective project implementation, and acceleration of staff andorganizational professionalization. This is mainly because the efforts of NGO capacity
building in Japan have largely been led by the government and because there areformidable obstacles for I-NGOs and other nonprofit organizations in Japan to initiate
their own capacity building programs.

General Overview of I-NGOs in Japan
International Non-Governmental Organizations (I-NGOs) in Japan are a diverse group oforganizations as they tend to be elsewhere (Lewis, 2001), which range from a handful oflarge in size and budget, professional, and formal organizations such as Foster Plan
(Japan division of Plan International), World Vision Japan and Peace Winds Japan to
many small, grassroots-oriented, and informal groups whose operations depend largely
on unpaid staff or volunteers. Activities undertaken by I-NGOs include mainly service
provision to people in less developed countries, advocacy and campaigning work at the
local, national and international levels and the provision of global education to their own
communities. The fields in which I-NGOs work include development, environment,
human rights and peace (JANIC, 2002). Although precise statistics are very difficult tocome by due to the large number of unincorporated organizations, it may be estimatedthat more than 400 organizations are engaged in international cooperation and exchange

(Yamauchi 1999, 142).
I-NGOs in Japan have rather a short history. I-NGOs began to emerge around thetime when Japan became a donor country of official aid in early 1960s. Nevertheless,only a handful of I-NGOs were established in the 1960s. I-NGOs gradually increased in
number and became diverse in response to increasingly complex needs from thedevelopment world in the 1970s. In 1979-1980, many I-NGOs were established as inmany other countries to respond to the outpouring of hundreds of thousands of refugees
from the Indo-China region. When Japan became an economic power in the 1980s an
increasing number of affluent citizens turned their eyes to the rest of the world andphilanthropic activities became prevalent in the corporate sector. Against the backdrop ofthese events, I-NGOs mushroomed during the decade.
In the 1990s, third sector organizations grew significantly and NGOs became
increasingly visible in Japan. I-NGOs dramatically grew in number and became
globalized during this period. Most organizations networked among themselves and withlocal, regional and international NGOs, and partnered with other civil society
organizations, business corporations and central and local governments in order to meetchallenges at the local, regional and global level. Their activities became even morediverse based on the on-the-ground needs and priorities set by donor organizations. An
increasing number of organizations began to deal with emergency and humanitarian aid,
democratization processes such as election monitoring, conflict prevention and peacebuilding. As the NGO sector grew, NGOs’ profiles were heightened dramatically mainly
through the mass media.
Despite the rapid growth of I-NGOs for the past decade or so, the social, legal andpolitical environment under which I-NGOs operate does not seem to have kept pace with
it. Today, I-NGOs in Japan face the following challenges:
First, the legal environment for non-profit organizations is not sufficiently supportiveof any private, nonprofit activities. The enactment of the Specified Nonprofit Corporation
Law or the so-called NPO law in 1998 was significant in that it substantially simplified
the process of incorporation (JCIE, 1999) and took away the regulatory oversight
structure for nonprofit entities that was the prevailing norm under the pre-NPO law era.
As a result, it encouraged small and emerging nonprofit organizations to obtain a legal
status for which they would otherwise have had difficulty qualifying. A tax law to give
nonprofits some advantage was discussed separately from the NPO law and finally tookeffect in October 2001 in a limited form. This law provides tax-deductions to donors for
qualified nonprofit corporations. However, requirements to satisfy in order to become aqualified nonprofit corporation present arduous obstacles for most organizations (Asahi
Shimbun, December 11, 2001). This tax law is being reviewed for improvement.
Second, a majority of NGOs suffers from financial instability. Although a portion of

Official Development Assistance (ODA) has been channeled to I-NGOs since 1989, only
0.51 percent of the total ODA budget goes to I-NGOs as of April 2002. Moreover, since
government subsidies and grants are heavily restricted under Japanese Constitution
Article 89, government money was not allowed to cover overhead or personnel costs untilvery recently. Besides, due to the long sluggish economy, private foundations and private
businesses have reduced their financial support to I-NGOs. Thus, I-NGOs are still
suffering financial difficulties despite their heightened visibility.
Third, I-NGOs still need to secure understanding and support from the general public.
A recent survey carried out by the Foster Plan shows that while I-NGOs’ visibility has
gone up, those who show sympathy or trust in them have not increased (Asahi Shimbun,
August 6, 2002). With the exception of a handful of large international NGOs, mostJapanese I-NGOs struggle to increase their members and supporters. Another survey
indicates that NGOs do not bother so much to increase individual donors (Matsubara,
2001). This tendency seems more true for I-NGOs, since, unlike domestic nonprofits,
their supporters at home and beneficiaries abroad are often thousands of miles apartgeographically and psychologically, and thus I-NGOs need to make a considerable staff
and resource investment in order to expand and maintain a strong domestic support base.

Changing Environment
As we briefly mentioned, building constituency has become as crucial as ever for I-NGOsin recent years in Japan. What are the main factors for this recent need for building
constituency? This can be attributed to the recent changes in domestic political, legal andsocial structures as discussed below.
The issue of independence of I-NGOs with government’s increasing interest in partneringwith I-NGOs
In an upsurge of worldwide interest in the voluntary sector, the government of Japan has
gradually shifted its policy towards NGOs to include them in pursuit of the public interest(Kuroda, 2002). The Japanese government, which formerly neglected NGOs in theJapanese Official Development Assistance (ODA) Program, came to recognize theirvalue in helping to distribute ODA (Orr, 1993). Subsequently, the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs (MOFA) launched its NGO support programs in 1989. MOFA has increased its
funding support to NGOs despite the fact that the total budget of ODA has decreased by
10 per cent since 1997. According to a new support scheme for I-NGOs, launched by
MOFA in April 2002, it is projected that the ODA budget channeled to NGOs will

increase and regulations surrounding government funding will be reduced to a certain
extent from this fiscal year (MOFA, 2002). With an increase in the ODA budget for INGOs in the late 1990s, members of the NGO community began to participate in
consultation meetings to discuss ODA policy and the implementation of ODA programs.
These included several ODA-related agencies, including MOFA, Japan International
Cooperation Agency (JICA), the Ministry of Finance (MOF) and the Japan Bank forInternational Cooperation (JBIC). MOFA also invited NGO representatives together withrepresentatives of private businesses, media, think tanks and academia to discuss ODA
policy issues in some ad-hoc committees to improve ODA programs. These recentchanges in government attitude towards I-NGOs are welcomed by the overall NGO
sector since an increase of government funding for I-NGOs will certainly give NGOs amuch needed financial boost. At the same time, some have begun to express concern
about the implications of increased government funding for the following reasons.
First, an increase in government funding might lead to NGOs becoming
implementing arms of ODA, impairing their independence. For this reason, many NGOs
limit government funding to a certain level in order to maintain their independence. If
government funding increases while other funding sources decline or remain unchanged,
however, the relative portion of government money will increase automatically.
Second, government funding tends to be channeled disproportionately to service
delivery organizations and on a project basis. NGOs challenging government policies
may not receive money from the government unless it is related to a project delivery, or
they may not wish to receive funding from the government in the first place. This partly
explains why advocacy NGOs in international development and environment issues inJapan often suffer financial instability.
These recent changes in the government’s attitude towards I-NGOs have encouraged
them to increase the support of the general public to maintain their autonomy and expand
their influence.
(2) Recent tax relief measures on contribution to NGOs
Traditionally, individual giving to voluntary organizations is very small in Japan. The
statistics issued by the National Tax Bureau (NTB) in 1996 show that out of the total
contribution of 577.9 billion yen or 4.8 billion dollars, individual giving including
bequests and inheritance is only 26.9 billion yen or about 220 million dollars, which only
accounts for 5 % of the total (Yamauchi, 1999). This is very small if compared with thesize of individual giving in the U.S., which was 121.89 billion dollars in 1997 (Ibid).
There is a caveat here, however, that the actual figure of individual giving in Japan is
likely to be higher, because less than 1 percent of those who file a tax return claim a tax

deduction for contributions, and those who file annual tax returns in the first place are aminority among those who pay income taxes in Japan. Nevertheless, it is often argued
that the size of individual charitable giving is very small in Japan and that it might be
attributable to a lack of a ‘giving culture’ in Japan. Yet, there are customs of giving
ingrained in today’s Japanese culture that are not usually tracked in official statistics.
They include contributions to temples and other religious organizations; kyodo bokin(Japanese version of national community chest); neighborhood associations; parents andteachers associations; various end-of-the-year benefit drives, and others that areincorporated in daily lives as somewhat involuntary acts of charity.
Naturally, with the current movement to provide more financial resources for the
nonprofit sector, the fact that there are still insufficient tax relief measures for voluntaryorganizations has been a topic of heated debate. The new tax law mentioned earlier
allows individuals and corporations to deduct contributions to qualified non-profit
corporations from their taxes including property bequests. A qualified non-profit
corporation is a corporation that has been given legal personality under the Specified
Nonprofit Corporation law (the “NPO” Law) for more than two years and that is certified
by the Commissioner of the National Tax Administration as having satisfied certain
requirements (Ministry of Finance, 2000). However, satisfying such requirements in thecurrent form presents difficult obstacles for most organizations as mentioned earlier. In
fact, not many organizations have even tried to apply for the qualification. As of July 31,
2002, only 8 organizations out of almost 8,000 specified nonprofit corporations havebeen approved as qualified nonprofit corporation.
Although there are problems in the current tax relief mechanism for nonprofit
corporations, it is worth mentioning that the major requirements of this law encourage
nonprofit corporations to increase the number of small contributions in proportion to their
total revenue. In fact, more and more I-NGOs have launched fundraising campaigns toincrease revenue from individual contributions since the enactment of this law, probably
with an eye toward applying for the qualified nonprofit corporation status.
Visibility is one thing; constituency building is another.
Media attention towards NGOs and the nonprofit sector as a whole has been on theincrease since around the mid-1990s, but the profile of I-NGOs in particular was sharply
heightened by the broad media coverage of an incident where two I-NGOs were excludedby the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from the International Conference on Reconstruction
Assistance to Afghanistan held in Tokyo on January 21-22, 2002. The roles of I-NGOs ininternational relief efforts have widely been discussed, and consequently, the acronym‘NGO’ has come into daily use. As an inevitable byproduct of this NGO fervor, somenegative views of NGOs have also appeared. For example, Sankei Shimbun carried astory of inappropriate bookkeeping by two I-NGOs (Sankei Shimbun, February 8, 2002).
The result of the survey conducted by the Foster Plan mentioned earlier showed tomembers of the NGO Community that NGOs have not yet earned basic trust and an
overall positive impression from the general public in Japan. It appears that visibility
itself is not sufficient to help build support. This of course has a lot to do with the shorthistory of Japanese I-NGOs but it also demonstrates that Japanese I-NGOs, precisely
because of their heightened visibility, need to strengthen their efforts to garner support bya larger number of people by implementing effective strategies for constituency
development. Although media coverage can drastically change the image of NGOs in the
short-term, this is a long-term effort. The media can of course have an adverse impact on
NGOs due to its mixed record of both supporting and undermining activists (Reimann,
2002).

Cases of the I-NGOs in Japan to Obtain Domestic Support
As we have observed, Japanese I-NGOs still have to fight an uphill battle and have amultitude of difficulties in obtaining understanding and support from the general public.
On top of all, Japan is still experiencing an unprecedented decade of economic recession
and currently is far from an amenable environment for any fundraising efforts.
However, there are several notable I-NGOs in Japan that have enjoyed successful
support building during these times. Let us now turn our attention to some examples ofsuccesses as well as notable efforts in constituency building among Japanese I-NGOs.
They vary from campaigns with a particular focus on fundraising to longer-term attempts
to connect I-NGO activities abroad and the lives of supporters at home thereby creating amutually supportive relationship.
Branding and Strong Name Recognition
One of the most successful fundraising efforts of any I-NGOs in Japan has been achievedby the Nihon UNICEF Association. The Nihon UNICEF Association is a private
nonprofit organization which raises money for UNICEF. With its fundraising campaigns,
the Nihon UNIICEF Association increased its contributions to UNICEF from 2.65 billion
yen (22 million dollars) in 1992 to 8.9 billion yen (74 million dollars) in 2000. The Nihon
UNICEF Association became the largest contributor to UNICEF among any privateorganizations in the world in 1999 and 2000. It launched what it calls “innovative”
fundraising campaigns in the 1990s, which include fundraising through direct mail, bycollecting coins of foreign currency brought back to Japan by Japanese overseas

travelers, and through a ‘monthly pledge’ program in which a pledged amount of moneyby a donor is automatically transferred monthly from the donor’s bank account to the
Association. In all of these efforts, the “UNICEF” brand is used vigorously tocommunicate the message that it is an established UN-affiliated organization that can betrusted.
Another organization that has recently started to use this “brand” approach is Peace
Winds Japan (PWJ). PWJ is a rapidly growing I-NGO that specializes in emergency
relief, humanitarian assistance, conflict resolution and development with an annual
budget of a little over 1.1 billion yen (9.1 million dollars) in fiscal year 2001. It was
brought to the center of national attention when its representatives were excluded fromthe Afghan Reconstruction meeting in Tokyo in January 2002 by MOFA officials and by
the barrage of mostly sympathetic media reporting that followed.
After its inception in 1996, PWJ’s core budget had traditionally come from acosmetic company that committed 5% of its net income to be contributed annually as anunrestricted donation to PWJ. In an interview, Mr. Kensuke Onishi, representative of
PWJ, said that the organization now has enough budget to strengthen its marketing andexternal relations. While it reinforces advocacy and training for potential social
entrepreneurs, based on their own marketing research it creates special events to attract
their target audience of young women in their 30s. One of the plans is to organize aconcert with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. It is often said that direct mail is notcost-effective as a tool for fundraising in Japan due to the fact that a lower postage rate is
not given to most charity organizations, and that the response rate is usually quite low.
However, PWJ gets a 15% return on their outreach through direct mail, with an averageof 11,000 yen (about 95 dollars) (Onishi, 2002). This probably has to do with the
exceptionally high visibility of the organization and thus with the fact that PWJ has
become one of the most well-known NGO “brands” in Japan. As a result, PWJ is now
able to raise money through various means despite the fact that it has not yet been granted
qualified nonprofit corporation status.
As was shown in the case of PWJ, mass media is a powerful tool to raise thevisibility of an organization. Peshawar no Kai was founded in 1984 to mainly provide
medical assistance for an area of 300,000 people in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Dr. Tetsu
Nakamura, head of this organization, became the center of attention in the media in thewake of September 11, 2001. Consequently, the number of visitors to its website
exceeded 200,000 during the period from September 2001 to March 2002 and thecontributions to this small organization totaled approximately 800 million yen (6.7
million dollars) for the past year which was 10 times as high as the average yearly
contribution (Asahi Shimbun, September 8, 2002). Peshawar no Kai did not make any
special efforts to fundraise in the aftermath of September 11, but Dr. Nakamura gainedpopularity by appearing on television and speaking to the public in order to raiseawareness and ask for support for the people of affected regions. As a result of the public
showing support, money almost automatically flowed into the organization.
Child SponsorshipChild sponsorship is a popular and often successful way of garnering financial support inwestern nations as well as in Japan. Foster Plan (Japanese division of Plan International)is the largest I-NGO operating in Japan with the total revenue of 4.6 billion yen (38million dollars) for FY 2001 (July 2000 to June 2001). Its child sponsors include 49,477
individuals, 755 corporations and 3,400 monthly supporters. In an effort to beaccountable to the supporters and the general public, Foster Plan runs advertisementswith audited financial statements in national papers every year.
World Vision Japan (WVJ) is another child sponsorship organization that has
steadily increased revenue from individual contributions in recent years. It increased
from 832 million yen (6.9 million dollars) in 1999 to 925 million yen (7.7 million dollars)in 2001. The total revenue was approximately 1.73 billion yen (14.4 million dollars) in
FY 2001 (October 2000 to September 2001), 53.6 % of which is revenue from its childsponsorship and 12% of which comes from individual donors through other fundraising
campaigns. Its revenue is expected to further increase since WVJ has become a qualified
nonprofit corporation under the new tax law. Besides its child sponsorship program, it
has successfully increased individual contributions through other campaigns. “Loveloaf” is a campaign to collect small coins to provide clean water and food assistance inTanzania. This is a bread-shaped donation box to be placed in school classrooms, offices
and bakery shops. The President and CEO of Yamazaki bakery, one of the largest
bakeries in Japan, is Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors for WVJ who has placed
5,505 love loaf boxes at Yamazaki bakeries throughout the nation. Through thiscampaign, WVJ collected 35.6 million yen (300,000 dollars) in 2000-2001.
Mr. Nobuhiko Katayama, Director of WVJ, said in an interview that WVJ once tried
to raise money through direct mail but without much success. Instead, running ads innewspapers and magazines proved to be an effective fundraising method. This probably
has to do with the trust factor – people generally assume that an organization that hasenough financial resources to be able to run ads in regular newspapers must be stable andtrustworthy. WVJ, a majority of whose supporters are in their 40s and 50s, is currently
working with a large advertising company to find a way to attract more supporters fromthe younger generation.
Relationship Building
Some successful Japanese I-NGOs, especially those which are considered to be“established” under the Japanese standard, strive to build, maintain and expand a strong
relationship with their supporters.
OISCA (Organization for Industrial, Spiritual and Cultural Advancement) is one ofthe oldest and largest I-NGOs in Japan with an annual budget of approximately 1.4
billion yen (11.7 million dollars) in fiscal year 2001 (April 2001 to March 2002). It
operates in more than 20 countries and territories in the Asia-Pacific, the Middle East,
Africa and Central and South America and has four training centers and 33 prefecturalbranches in Japan. Branches are usually headed by a prominent figure in the prefecture.
One of OISCA’s most successful campaigns is the Children’s Forest Program (CFP)
that started in 1999. By March 2002, it had grown to include more than 2,650 schools
from 24 countries. This program promotes tree planting at schools in developing
countries. Participating schools organize the tree planting activities with the assistance ofabout 250 volunteer coordinators. OISCA runs various kinds of fundraising campaigns in
support of CFP. It encourages school pupils to collect ‘bell mark’, which is attached tocertain products by supporting manufacturers of educational materials and equipment.
OISCA uses this ‘bell mark’ system to have schoolchildren support CFP. Moreover, it
invites shops and department stores to agree to put up posters publicizing CFP, and
OISCA asks a major hotel chain, a large department store, an outlet store and other shops
to support CFP in one way or another. One example is that Takashimaya Department
Store, a store of long standing, sells a special bag designed by a famous singer, which ismade out of recycled pet bottles. Part of the revenue from the sales of the special bag iscontributed to CFP. OISCA also reaches out to individuals, corporations, and labor unions
for donations to CFP. It recruits volunteers as well. In addition, branches of OISCA raisemoney locally and give contributions to CFP, too. In fact, OISCA’s headquarters officeencourages branch offices to compete with one another for fundraising. In many cases,
the head of the office uses his or her contacts and networks to reach out to many people
for donations. Like the sales division of an insurance company in the business sector, anoffice that successfully raises the largest amount is awarded an honor by the president,
which functions well as incentives for employees and volunteers of each branch(Takahashi, 2002).
As in OISCA, some Japanese I-NGOs are very conscious about their support baseand try to work with them closely. Shanti Volunteer Association (SVA) was establishedby Sotoshu, a Buddhist sect, in 1980 in response to the outpouring of Indo-Chinese
refugees. SVA uses its nation-wide network of Sotoshu temples to raise money throughnumerous fundraising campaigns. SVA’s revenue from private contributions for FY 2000
was approximately 263 million yen (2.2 million dollars), which accounts for 45.6 % of
the total revenue of approximately 577 million yen (4.8 million dollars).
The Japan International Volunteer Center (JVC) is another well-established I-NGO.

Founded in Thailand in 1980, JVC uses fundraising tools, including direct mail andspecial events to raise money from individuals. JVC also makes use of its niche – notonly as one of the oldest I-NGOs in Japan, but also as the one that boasts its“progressivism” and innovation in combining its service delivery and advocacy work. A
unique fundraising event JVC holds every year is its charity concerts in Tokyo (Messiah)
and Osaka (Oratorio). JVC recruits members of the choir from the general public every
year who of course are already-committed or prospective supporters of JVC. JVC
contracts a company to manage the concerts and the profit from ticket sales is contributed
to JVC. JVC also creates volunteer groups in countries in which JVC operates and has
each group recruit more volunteers through its newsletter, website and activities open to
public.
Supporting advocacy
Although some I-NGOs have been successful in gaining support in Japan, advocacy
NGOs in general in international development and environment issues in Japan often
have difficulties in increasing their members and contributors. This probably has to dowith the history of the “leftist” citizen’s movement which attracted some hardcore
activists and, at the same time, alienated most of the general citizenry in the process.
Kim Reimann did an interesting study on Advocacy I-NGOs in Japan active insustainable development. According to her study, funding from foreign sources has been
an important lifeline for advocacy I-NGOs in Japan on global environmental issues(Reimann, 2001). The Friends of the Earth Japan (FoE Japan) has only 350 members
including individuals, nonprofit and for-profit organizations. Its total revenue for FY
2000 was 78 million yen (650,000 dollars), of which foundation funding accounted for 65%. The combined amount of individual contributions and membership fees accounted for
only 2.5% of the total revenue (JANIC, 2002). Several other advocacy I-NGOs in Japan
have from 50 to 1,000 members and contributions from individuals and membership feesare very low compared with funding from foreign foundations.
Under thesecircumstances, some advocacy I-NGOs have begun to realize the importance ofconstituency building to gain leverage for their advocacy activities.
Mr. Naoto Anzai, Director of FoE Japan, has launched a campaign to increase its
members and supporters to 100,000 in three years. He emphasizes the importance of
networking with other like-minded organizations both domestically and internationally inorder to achieve this rather challenging goal. FoE Japan started its “Love Islands 2002”
campaign before the World Summit for Sustainable Development which was held fromlate August to early September in Johannesburg, South Africa, to reach out to ordinary
people with pictures of beautiful islands in the South Pacific. This campaign particularly
aims at educating young citizens in their 20s and 30s about serious environmental issues,such as global climate change, and encouraging them to change their lifestyle and takesome positive actions. FoE Japan has also launched many events and campaigns to getyoung people interested in environmental issues. It hires a large advertisement company
in Japan to organize some events and to design FoE Japan’s newsletters to attract young
people. Although it is too early to tell the effect of the above campaigns, it seems that
FoEJ is in the process of changing its corporate image from a group of dissatisfied
activists to a friendly but ‘cool’ organization, under Anzai’s leadership

Linking “North” and “South”
As shown in the last section, some Japanese I-NGOs share a common approach by which
they seek to attract new groups of supporters. One of the target groups is the “untapped”
young generation whose disposable income cannot be easily dismissed, although its
entire assets might be smaller than the older generations.
Another trend that is observed among the successful I-NGOs in Japan is their effort
to link up their domestic supporter base with their activities abroad as a way of not only
raising monetary support but also cultivating interest, awareness and intangible support
for their activities. In fact, many I-NGOs in Japan provide “study tours” for supporters to
expose them to actual situations abroad and to network with and learn from people inlocal communities in less developed nations.
John Gaventa discusses the need to understand the increasing level of parallel thatcan be observed between poor communities in the North and the South by tracing theexchanges between NGOs and community-based organizations in poor regions in the
U.S. and counterpart organizations in Mexico and India (Lewis, 1999). Gaventa argues,“For NGOs, globalization offers a series of challenges for developing new models forlinking and learning on strategies for approaching common problems in both North andSouth.” (Gaventa, 1999).
What Gaventa discusses here can be considered as one of the newest driving forcesof constituency building efforts by I-NGOs among different countries of the North. The
concept of crossing the North-South divide is increasingly shared among members of the
global NGO community. Incidentally, it is an approach that is probably easily acceptable
to Japanese I-NGOs, even if it may not be the approach that has traditionally beenpracticed by them.
Shapla Neer is one of the oldest Japanese I-NGOs and has long been involved incommunity-based development mainly in Bangladesh and Nepal. It currently emphasizes
a reciprocal approach by linking communities in Bangladesh and in Japan, rather than aone-way approach where information, skills and resources flow from the North to theSouth. Japanese local branch offices of Shapla Neer try to involve people in theircommunity in their overseas community-based development programs. It tries to findcommon problems in communities in both countries. Mr. Takashi Shimosawa, former
director of Shapla Neer who questions the role of NNGOs that provide assistance to poor
countries as outsiders, advocates a two-way approach based on the concept of ‘Think
Locally, Act Globally.’ (Shimosawa, 2001)
Similarly, Mr. Toshihiro Menju of Japan Center for International Exchange has
proposed an initiative named “Community and Local International Cooperation (CLIC)”
which promotes locally initiated exchanges at the international level. Menju insists that
community-based programs be a two-way flow and thus benefit both communities, rather
than a community of a rich nation providing assistance to a community in a poor nation(Menju, 2002). This idea is based on a concept of a new globalized world in whichpoverty, inequality and many other social issues exist within any community.
Community-based Development Initiative-Japan (CDI-Japan) also has a similar
concept to CLIC and has promoted international exchanges and development cooperation
at both local and municipal levels with the assistance of I-NGOs. As these few examples
testify, an increasing number of I-NGOs are starting to consider it necessary to involve
people in their own communities in linking up people globally in different communities.
Nevertheless, Shimosawa reminded us that we ought to consider an inevitable power
relationship that emerges when a Japanese NGO, as is the case with other NNGOs, isengaged with its counterpart in a developing country in such exchange situations(Shimosawa 2002).

7.

Conclusion

Like it or not, Japanese I-NGOs nowadays, just like other NNGOs, need to ask
themselves hard questions such as “will we become agents of transformation”? In otherwords, they are being asked how to assess the present state of international development
and how they see their present and future roles. There have been many successes indevelopment project implementation, but the wider geopolitical structure that reproduces
poverty remains intact. There have been transfers of money, which might have achieved
development goals in some cases but might also have created a few riches in developing
countries and promoted corruption and other misuses of money in others (thus a call for“good governance” as we often hear today). Overall, many question if traditional
development models have created healthy and sustainable economies in recipient
countries.
In these shifting environments for development, the fact that the Japanese nonprofit

sector has not yet matured may be used as an advantage, rather than disadvantage.
Because the Japanese government intends to accelerate its cooperation with NGOs inorder to raise Japan’s visibility in development, there is indeed a strong call for capacity
building and professionalization of NGOs from the government. At the same time,
however, there is also a growing suspicion, especially from within the NGO sector, about
expanding too quickly and becoming a “government contractor” whose independence
may become questionable. Instead of creating an international development industry of
I-NGOs, Japanese NGOs are struggling to find a place where they can exert influence innational development and official assistance policymaking but at the same time where
they can feel close to their supporters and the communities they serve, both at home andabroad. At times, this is manifested as resistance to growth and professionalization, but
in this maturing process, the concept of crossing the North-South divide finds support
among Japanese I-NGOs rather easily. This may be one thing that is unique about
Japanese NGOs.
In the seminar organized by CDI-Japan in June 2002, Mr. Hiroshi Taniyama, former
director of JVC, talked about a choice Japanese NGOs are asked to make. Because of thegrowing interest on the part of the Japanese government to partner with NGOs, coupledwith a new set of mechanisms to funnel financial resources not only for development
projects but also for programs to raise the capacity of NGOs, Japanese NGOs could makea choice to become or remain operational and seek government funding for projects,
thereby enabling them to receive support that would strengthen their managerial
capabilities. On the other hand, Mr. Taniyama mentioned, Japanese NGOs could choose
not to be aggressive in acquiring project contracts or grants, and instead “choose to besmall” and carry on their unique activities.
NGOs and the nonprofit sector in general in Japan are not well-established to form arecognizable “third sector” in the nation. It may, therefore, be easier for Japanese INGOs to consciously choose strategies to be the agents of transformation, rather than forother NNGOs in countries where NGOs occupy a more visible and accepted place andthus are more professionalized to constitute an established role in the development scene.
The topic of constituency building has now begun to be carved out as an important
ingredient for creating a strong NGO sector in Japan. The methods that some leading INGOs adopt in pursuing this task show a mix of different approaches. Success will
depend on what kind of hybrid can be developed that fits their societal needs andcharacteristics. It is in this very process where Japanese I-NGOs could try to find theiridentity as agents of transformation.

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