As they get larger, NGOs are also looking more and more like businesses themselves. Now a whole class of them, even if not directly backed by businesses, have taken on corporate trappings. Like corporations, they attend conferences endlessly. Fund-raisers and senior staff at such NGOs earn wages comparable to the private sector. Some bodies, once registered as charities, now choose to become non-profit companies or charitable trusts for tax reasons and so that they can control their spending and programmes more easily.
Many big charities have trading arms, registered as companies.
One manufacturing company, Tetra Pak, has even considered sponsoring emergency food delivery as a way to advertise itself. Any neat division between the corporate and the NGO worlds is long gone. Many NGOs operate as competitors seeking contracts in the aid market, raising funds with polished media campaigns and lobbying governments as hard as any other business. Governments and UN bodies could now, in theory, ask for tenders from businesses and NGOs to carry out their programmes. It seems only a matter of time before this happens.