Money talks. Funds, control over funds, and conditionalities associated with funds are common themes in debates over relations between NGOs and their international funders (e.g. Drabek 1987; Hudock 1999; Hulme and Edwards 1997; Society for Participatory Research in Asia 1991). But while financial interactions are central to NGO-funder relations, an analysis of organizational interactions based primarily on funds misses other crucial forms of resource exchange, particularly of symbolic types of resources such as reputation and status.

A key point to be made in this chapter is that while NGOs depend on funds to maintain and expand their operations, funders also rely on NGOs for information, and to maintain or enhance their own reputations. In other words, NGOs and funders have strongly inter-dependent relations – and they are constantly engaged in struggles for control over and access to financial and symbolic kinds of resources. These interdependencies are examined not only by tracing resource flows and exchanges, but also through an analysis of perceptions of relationships. I investigate how members of NGOs and funding organizations perceive and talk about their relations with one another, and what sorts of exchanges they view as being important to their relations. I also explore tensions in relationships arising from differences in perceptions and asymmetries in resources.

In the discussion which follows, I use the term “capital” synonymously with “resource.”