Paper presented at NCVO (National Council for Voluntary Organizations) research
conference at Sheffield University in U.K. on September 1-2, 2004.

“The Role of Multinational NGOs within Shifting Development Paradigms– Case from Japan”

Kaori Kuroda & Katsuji Imata
Co-Directors
CSO Network JapanCSO Network Japan
c/o Osaka University Tokyo Office
3-3-6, CIC-601
Shibaura, Minato-ku
Tokyo 108-0023 Japan
81-3-3457-1165 (phone)
81-3-5440-9114 (fax)kaori@csonj.org, katsuji@csonj.org
www.csonj.org©Copyright: Kaori Kuroda & Katsuji Imata: Do NOT reproduce or circulate without authors’permission. Do NOT cite without proper reference.

Introduction
As witnessed in the current debate on the role of “northern” NGOs (Non-Governmental
Organizations), international NGOs that engage in humanitarian assistance, relief anddevelopment have been asked to re-visit their organizational mission and identity. This ishappening largely because recent development policy is shifting toward strengthening theownership of development of the countries of the “south” – i.e., developing countries –and their governments, NGOs, other civil society organizations, people and communities.
Because of this trend, northern NGOs that have played crucial roles in delivering services
and planning and implementing projects in development work are now expected to play
more facilitative roles for the people in the south.
This change in the development paradigm is happening, in the authors’ view,
more in the United Kingdom and so-called its ‘like-minded’ countries than the rest of theworld. This of course has a lot to do with the governments’ attitudes and policies forinternational development. For example, international NGOs in the U.K. with theleadership by BOND (a network of international NGOs in the U.K.) have this spring
launched an “NGO Futures initiative” in response to the shifting paradigms and the U.K.
government’s policy changes in particular.
With these in mind, the authors in this paper examine the role of “multinational”
NGOs, with a particular focus of its affiliates in Japan. Lindenberg & Bryant, in their
Going Global (Kumarian Press, 2001), analyzed the work of six well-known“multinational” NGOs that have affiliates in many countries – CARE, Medecins Sans
Frontieres, Oxfam, PLAN, Save The Children, and World Vision. This work is notablebecause it succinctly placed these multinational NGOs in the very context of shifting
development paradigms and the effects of globalization, as well as it aptly summarized
the relationship of the affiliates within their families.
In extending Lindenberg & Bryant’s work, the authors in this paper examine theJapanese affiliates of these multinational NGOs. Our focus is to 1) point out generalcharacteristics of Japanese NGOs; 2) discuss how the Japanese development community
is responding to the shifting development paradigms; and 3) bring out the efforts inadvocacy and policy work at the affiliates of multinational NGOs in Japan. By writing
this paper, our hope is to generate more discussion in Japan on the roles of northernNGOs and to possibly place these multinationals in the leading role of showing bypractice what it means to be an NGO in an industrialized country in the 21st century. We
would also like to communicate to the international development community what ishappening to the Japanese NGOs. We believe that the multinational NGOs in Japan havean advantage because of their network of affiliates and the inroad to the international
development community which other Japanese NGOs do not have. Also, they have theinternational brand, which makes them easier to appeal to the general public for support.

General Characteristics of Japanese NGOs
The authors have written two papers on Japanese NGOs, focusing on their constituency
building and the question of legitimacy. In these papers, we depicted Japanese NGOs as
relatively young and still small as a sector, composed of a diversity of groups in size andscope of activities, and suddenly brought to a heightened visibility in the last several
years. As different global issues – most notably the situations in Afghanistan and Iraq –capture the attention of government officials, mass media and the public, Japan sees its
own NGOs as useful vehicles for carrying out Japan’s kokusai koken (international
contribution). In this process, there have emerged several star players who appear on TV
screen and make commentary in newspapers on the situations in conflict and their efforts
in humanitarian assistance. While this is happening and people wanting NGOs to play
more active role, there certainly is a gap between the expectation and the capacity ofJapanese NGOs.
The presence of this gap is not unique to international NGOs. In Japan, legal(including taxation) environment is still not supportive enough for private not-for-profit
activities to flourish. As a not-for-profit entity, it is very hard to raise funds throughgovernment (with a very detailed set of instructions regarding for which expense items
the funds can be used, usually excluding a large portion of indirect and administrativecost), corporations (with lingering recession), and individuals (traditionally, the Japanesepublic almost entirely relied on the government and its subsidiaries for the provision of
public services and thus “giving” has not become prevalent). Also, there is a huge issueof trust. In Japan, some nonprofit organizations are not accountable to the public andthus often looked at suspiciously. Building trust is one of the biggest challenges facedwith nonprofits.
Japanese international NGOs have to work within these unfriendly social
environments. With this background, there have appeared efforts of capacity building of
the Japanese NGO sector working in international relief and cooperation. This is largely
led by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Japanese government would like to see
stronger NGOs in Japan playing more active roles in humanitarian assistance andcommunity development.
Change in the Role of Northern NGOs
The authors have been paying attention to the discussion of changing roles of NGOs andwe have covered some key points of the discussion in the papers mentioned above.
Since the cold war ended, the wave of globalization has surged into every part of
the world. Globalization makes traditional north-south, donor–recipient relations
increasingly redundant. The foreign aid declined in most countries and humanitarian
emergency relief delivered by NGOs became a priority item of governments. Since some

civil society organizations in developing countries have become prominent indevelopment, the direct funding of southern civil society has grown significantly. Against
the backdrop of these changes, northern NGOs which have traditionally been delivering
aid in the form of development projects are required to re-assess their identity. A future
direction shown in the discussion is for northern NGOs to play more active role in the
country of their origin, especially in raising public awareness in global issues andmobilizing public in campaigns, in development education and in government lobbying
and advocacy efforts.
We have not yet fully witnessed this shift in Japan. Needless to say, NGOs in
Japan as elsewhere are always examining their roles in the field and as a result feel thatchanges are bound to happen. Nevertheless, it appears that members of the Japanese
NGO community on the whole have not been gearing up their efforts to step into thedirection of change, which requires a painful process of re-assessing and thentransforming the status quo at the organizational and operational levels. One of the main
reasons is that they have not been urged to do so by their main stakeholders – the donor
community and the general public. Generally speaking, the Japanese donors still expect
the Japanese NGOs to deliver services (in education, health, environment, etc.) in
communities in developing countries. They do not want their money to be used to lobby
Japanese government for policy change, or for public awareness raising campaign inglobal issues. The general sentiment of the Japanese public is largely the same – people
in Japan might expect to see the Japanese nationals working on the ground in developing
countries in order to link themselves with local people and issues in the south. The only
exception here may be development education, as the Ministry of Education, Science andTechnology is gearing up its effort to place development education in public school
curricula, and is asking for NGOs to provide its contents.
Multinational NGOs in Japan
As mentioned, the authors believe that multinational NGOs in Japan have a unique role toplay within the Japanese international development NGO sector, with their access to thebroad network of affiliates. The multinational NGOs in Japan are in the position to gain
first-hand knowledge about what is being debated. With this assessment, the authors
conducted interviews with a director-level staff person at the World Vision Japan, Oxfam
Japan, CARE Japan, Save the Children Japan, PLAN Japan and a phone interview with astaff person at the marketing section at Medicins Sans Frontieres.
Combined with the information available from their publications, the mostrecent annual reports, their websites and information in Directory of International NGOs
concerned with International Cooperation, we have observed the following:
Advocacy and campaigning

All of the six NGOs have agreed on the importance of advocacy and policy work in order
to influence the foreign assistance policy and development policy. They participate in
NGO consultation meetings with Official Development Assistance (ODA) agencies on aregular basis. Above all, newly established Oxfam Japan has started off mainly as an
advocacy and campaigning organization by using their global network and abundantresources developed by other Oxfam international member organizations. World VisionInternational has recently set itself the goal of allocating 4% of the total expenditure foradvocacy activities. World Vision Japan (WVJ) is putting comparable resources into
advocacy and campaigning. It established an advocacy division and hired a staff person a
few years ago to work exclusively on advocacy in the area of children’s rights and now
allocates nearly 5 % of its human resources for such activities. WVJ and Oxfam Japan
globally work on policy issues and advocacy as part of WV International and Oxfam
International, respectively. They also actively participate in local networks of JapaneseNGOs and other civil society organizations in efforts to mainly lobby the Japanese
government and carry out national campaigns. Medecins Sans Frontieres, Japon (MSFJapon) is very active in advocacy and campaigning as well. Oxfam Japan and MSF-Japon
with a local NGO have lobbied together the Japanese government on HIV/AIDS and theissue relating to the Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)
Agreement. MSF-Japon is recently strengthening its campaign on access to essential
medicines. Save The Children Japan (SCJ) and CARE Japan are very aware of thesignificance of policy work and advocacy. However, they presently seem to put priority
in expanding their budget scales through marketing and fundraising. Advocacy andpolicy work may become a focus area once they will have enlarged the scale of theirorganizations at a desirable level. PLAN Japan also has a clear intention to work more on
advocacy and policy work in times to come.
Researching and writing policy papers
The six organizations interviewed do not spend so much resource on researching andwriting policy papers. One of the common reasons is a limitation of budget and humanresources. With limited resources, the organizations have to prioritize their activities sinceresearch work takes away substantial labor and thus financial resources. Another reason
for this, in the case of Oxfam Japan in particular, is that they have access to policy papers
and research outcomes provided by other Oxfam International member organizations.
They use these resources by tailoring them for particular Japanese context. PLAN Japan
does research for its constituency building purpose by conducting a survey of theJapanese public to find out the level of their interest in and recognition of internationalNGOs biannually. Because the finding has shown that the general public’s interest in
developing countries is low except for the time when the world concentrates on someparticular countries, i.e. Afghanistan and Iraq, PLAN Japan has decided to lay stress ondevelopment education in recent years.

Constituency and public awareness building
The budget level varies drastically among the 6 organizations. Oxfam Japan isconsiderably small compared to the other five organizations since it is new and was only
established in December 2003. Apart from the differences in budget size, the largest
source of income for these organizations is membership fees and contributions. With achild sponsorship program, both WVJ and PLAN Japan have become the largest NGOs
in Japan, with nearly US$ 30 million of total revenue per annum. MSF-Japon is one ofthe organizations which have drastically increased its revenue in recent years, from about
US$5.5 million in FY2000 to 13.4 million in FY2003. This is alluded to the sudden risein the name recognition after the winning of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999. The
proportion of the funding from individual supporters and membership fees ranges from30% (at CARE Japan) to nearly 100% (at PLAN Japan). SCJ has partnered up with apopular convenience franchise which has more than 6,000 stores all over Japan. It
provides a donation box at the cash register in each store so that customers may put smallchange. WVJ carries out a donation campaign with a popular bakery chain with several
hundred shops nationally. Oxfam Japan seeks to increase the number of its supporters byusing Oxfam brand. Besides the child sponsorship, PLAN Japan has developed a uniquemonthly support system and enjoyed a rapid increase of supporters of it. Because of its
success, some other PLANs have introduced this system to their own fundraisingmechanisms.
Constituency building is one of the top priority items for the six organizations,
not only from fundraising perspective, but also for the purpose of building a broad
support base, awareness building of the issue of poverty and social injustice, andcultivating active civil society. Oxfam Japan has an urge to increase its supporters inorder to ensure legitimacy for their claims and advocacy. MSF-Japon is launching aunique series of events in five cities in Japan which replicates a refugee camp in outdoor
exhibits, building on its success in the 13 other MSF affiliates. CARE Japan has asupporter’s group called ‘CARE Friends’ Group’ which currently consists ofapproximately 150 members, including several spouses of influential parliamentarians
and successful entrepreneurs who helped to bring more people to support CARE throughtheir own fundraising and public relation activities. PLAN Japan also has strong support
groups. There are forty groups made up of foster parents voluntarily throughout Japan.
These groups are engaged in development education in the community where they live byusing the materials developed by PLAN Japan.
Development education
Development education is an emerging area on which many development NGOs haveplaced focus in recent years. Since sogo gakushu (integrated studies) that is more or lessequivalent to Citizenship Education in UK was introduced to regular schooling in 2002,

NGO staff and materials for development education have been in great demand atprimary and secondary schools. Some multinational NGOs have already developed many
materials for international development for many years and their Japanese affiliates may
be encouraged to introduce them to regular schools. Many NGOs, both local andmultinational, strategically utilize development education for building their support baseas well.
Western versus Japanese identity
SCJ and CARE Japan admitted that they had not fully utilized their global brand namesin the past. Rather, they acted as an indigenous born NGO in Japan. This has something
to do with their possible desire, at least in the beginning (SCJ started in Japan in 1986,
and CARE in 1987), to be seen not as a well-established Western NGO coming to Japanto seek “Japan money.” Although the tension between the Japan-born and “foreign-born”
NGOs in Japan has been eased to a certain extent, there still remains a prevailing sense in
the NGO community of distinguishing between the two and treating them with different
attitudes. That is why these Japanese affiliates had to demonstrate their local base to thepeople in Japan.
WVJ is fairly successful in blending their effectiveness and strength at global
level and localized experiences in its early stage following the WV principle of ‘twin
citizenship’ that means global citizenship and local citizenship. The Executive Director
of WVJ is one of influential persons within the NGO community in Japan, serving as thevice chairperson for a largest network of international development NGOs andchairperson of Japan Network of NGOs for Education. The other multinational NGOs
seem to try to maximize their dual citizenship these days as well.
Conclusion
The authors have stated that the shift in the consciousness of NGOs in Japan has nottaken place to a noticeable level. Yet, the Japanese NGO community has begun to review
its mission, vision and role to play in international development. Indeed, some NGOs
have started to openly express the need to become “change agents” in their own country,
rather than service delivery organizations. Once they choose to go in that direction, they
will need to accelerate their efforts in broadening their support base at home and building
capacity for advocacy and campaigning. As mentioned earlier, some multinational NGOs
have already exerted a significant influence over the NGO community in Japan byconnecting Japan-born NGOs with their global networks and sharing with them theirwell-developed resources, know-how and methodologies.
Strengthening research capability is what is still lacking in Japanese NGOs, andit will become crucial for reconfiguring their new identity. Even multinational NGOsinterviewed for this paper have not yet developed this capacity fully. Accumulatingreliable research outcome is important in order to make a strong basis for policy work
With the global debate on aid modality and harmonization evolving among the donors, it
is hoped that Japanese NGOs will soon take part in this macro development policy
debate, especially with the Japanese ODA agencies, so that they can be an effective
conduit for the voices of civil society, domestic and abroad.
Public-awareness raising is another area where Japanese NGOs need tostrengthen efforts, and this is where the multinationals in Japan could possibly cooperate.
There needs to be a more concerted effort to increase the number of people who areinterested in and showing concern for the issue of global poverty and conflict. NGOs
should also be able to chart a path for the public from showing concern to participating intaking action. There is a sense among NGOs, Japan and elsewhere, that there is acompetition for supporters and thus sensitive information such as marketing strategy
cannot be shared easily. Still, if NGOs are to play more powerful role in Japan, they needto think more about broadening the support base for the cause than competing for thewould-be supporters from the same pool of small constituents.
There are many challenges ahead for NGOs in Japan. And yet, they seem tohave no choice but to change their role within shifting development paradigms. That will
eventually lead to visible outcomes such as making change in the policy making processof Japanese ODA. It is strongly hoped that a further expansion of multinational NGOs in
Japan will stimulate locally-born NGOs to make the shift and strengthen the sector inpartnership.
Kaori Kuroda & Katsuji Imata, 2002, “Shifting Paradigms for International NGOs and Constituency
Building -- Evolving Scene from Japan,” Paper presented to ARNOVA Annual Conference, November 14-16, 2002, Montreal, Canada
Kaori Kuroda & Katsuji Imata, 2003, “Evolution of ‘Legitimacy’ Discussion of International Development
NGOs and its Absence in Japan,” Paper presented to ARNOVA Annual Conference, November 20-22,
2003, Denver, United Statesst
Edwards, Michael (1999), Future Positive – International Co-operation in the 21 Century, Earthscan. , p.
198
Lewis, David (2002), ‘International Development NGOs: Policy Conflict and Convergence in Harris &Rochester, Voluntary Organisations and Social Policy in Britain, Palgrave.
Ibid.
A director of MSF was unavailable for an interview.
Japan NGO Network for International Cooperation (JANIC), 2004, Directory of International NGOs
concerned with International Cooperation

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