Officially the birth of nongovernmental organizations (NGO) begins in 1945 with the formation of the United Nations following the end of the Second World War. Since then, the growth of NGO's across the world has been significant with 40,000 NGO's currently operating in the United States. In many other countries this number is significantly higher. Although NGO's have a significantly different mission than corporations and business, they use public relations in much the same way as these other organizations.
It is important to understand that NGO's operate quite differently than businesses. Although they may be structured similarly as businesses and corporations, they are not motivated by profit. Whereas corporations are responsible to shareholders, NGO's are responsible to stakeholders and beneficiaries. Stakeholders are simply the people who have a committed interest in the mission of any given NGO. They may be donors, but their return on investment is not in the dollar profit but rather in the social profit of the NGO. The missions of NGO's usually involve affecting some kind of change or delivering a particular kind of service usually of a humanitarian nature. They pursue wider social goals than those of companies and can have political leanings, but they are not strictly political organizations.
Because of their missions, NGO's often have the same need for public relations that corporations and businesses do. However, public relations often has a very negative connotation and as a result, may NGO's do not use the word to describe their public relations activities. Mostly their concern is that using the term "pr" will cast a negative light on the organization and interfere with its mission. For all intents and purposes though, NGO's communications activities are identical to those of a large business or corporation. They write press releases and talk to journalists. They maintain relationships with stakeholders and they create and manage events in support of the NGO's mission.
Unfortunately, NGO's have significant limitations when it comes to their resources. Companies can dedicate massive amounts of money to their public relations campaigns, but on the whole, NGO's operate on much smaller amounts of money. However, this creates a work atmosphere within a NGO that allows them to be highly trustworthy and dependable. This also means that NGO's tend to be very resourceful in how they approach public relations. For instance, NGO's were some of the first organizations to adopt social media for public relations purposes because of its ease of use and cheapness. NGO's largely paved the way for larger companies to use social media to target their respective audiences in support of brand and social identity.
Competition for resources has also changed how NGO's deal with public relations compared to corporations. Government resources for social welfare programs have been dwindling not only in the United States, but also around the world. NGO's have seen the need to combine their organizations to pool their resources better to serve their respective missions. A large part of public relations within NGO's is finding willing and able partners. Their PR campaigns need to use highly effective communication to smartly analyze their situations to develop successful campaigns. Although this takes time, its success means that NGO's last longer in order to identify stakeholders and carry on their missions.
Jamie Smith is a full-time writer for higher ed blogs and journals nationwide with a focus on online education opportunities. Several schools offer online degrees, including University of San Francisco and Northwestern University.