Partner: Cooperation with nongovernmental organizations (NGO)

Approximately 30% of the SDC's bilateral development cooperation work with the South is handled via Swiss NGOs and private development organizations. Based on its "Strategy 2010" the SDC pursues a policy of strengthening such cooperation with civil society organizations and seeks innovative forms of dialogue with them.

Social change, expanding international integration and globalization confer increasing importance upon civilian and private organizations. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) often support topics and issues which do not enjoy a lobby and thus are given no central priority on the political agenda. This was the situation which led to the foundation of private aid organizations and which is still their great strength today.

Cooperation with NGOs is an important component of SDC activities on the political and operational level. Since its founding in 1961, it has sought contact with NGOs both in the North and South, and has gradually built up partnerships.

It gives an impressive variety of private organizations has materialized which specialize in different forms of development cooperation (e.g. information and educational work, political lobbying, project work) and in various fields of expertise (e.g. health, agriculture, trade promotion).

The SDC works in particular with organizations which, by virtue of their experience and their range of activities, play a leading role in development cooperation. This occurs mainly in the following forms:

Program contributions
So-called “program contributions“, i.e. financial contributions to a program developed by an organization itself, go to programs of several years and made up of a variety of projects . As a rule this support ranges between 30% and 50%. Responsibility for the program remains with the private organization. With its contributions, the Confederation complements private donations by the people.
Contributions to projects
Contribution to individual projects.
Mandates
The term mandate refers to the awarding of contracts to private organizations to carry out a project or program. In this case the over-all project costs and responsibility are assumed by and remain with the Confederation, while the state makes use of the capacities and expertise available to the NGOs . As a rule, such contracts are submitted to public tender.

Local NGOs in the South
Parallel to the democratization processes in many countries of the South comes the urgent question of how work is divided between the state and civil society. New strategies to solve problems and new forms of cooperation are being sought.

In its supportive function, the SDC's objective is to guide these processes and contribute to the clarification of these roles. It thus collaborates with both governmental as well as nongovernmental partners. Decisive for the selection of such partners are their basic orientation and program objectives.

Before deciding to cooperate with any local NGOs in the South, the SDC examines the individual organizations closely to determine if there is mutual consensus on values and development concepts, if there are common expectations and demands and if potentials and expertise are available.

Additional Information and Documents

Switzerland’s contribution - The achievements of SDC in 2006–2010
Results in the areas of Health, Employment, Basic and further education, Agriculture, Rule of law and democracy, Water, Humanitarian Aid, Partnering with NGOs
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