The Role of Non-Governmental Organizations in Social Investment

Abstract

This article is dedicated to consideration of the role and place of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the context of social investment. The main role of NGOs in social investment is that they are social invertors, which is a driving force behind the implementation of many necessary for society projects. The acuteness of the issue of Ukraine’s recovery leads to a growing demand for new effective methods of interaction between the state and the society, which social investments from NGOs can become. From this point, the study of the characteristics of NGOs as social investors becomes especially relevant. So, the scientific novelty of the presented article is the determination of the specifics of NGOs as social investors, and its purpose is the analysis of the role and place of NGOs in social investment, their opportunities in the course of social investment. The author has used the following methods of scientific research: analysis, comparison, generalization and induction, analogies, abstract logic method. It has been established that the specificity of NGOs as social investors includes a number of important characteristics, including: greater (compared to other social investors) closeness to the problem, greater flexibility during investment implementation, opportunity to make not only financial investments, ability to perform various roles during social investments implementation, use of diversified sources of financing. The main resources that non-governmental organizations can invest are financial resources, material resources, employees’ work, time spent by NGO employees on work within the scope of social investment, their experience, knowledge and skills, their emotional resources. To determine the role of NGOs in social investment, two parameters are taken into account: 1) the ratio of financial and other types of investments, 2) the nature of the organization’s activities. According to the ratio of financial and other types of investments, NGOs can perform the role of direct investor, which means taking all the costs associated with the investment upon themselves, transferring all the funds necessary to solve a certain problem directly to the target group; or the role of donor, i.e. transfer their resources not directly to the target group, but to other organizations (including NGOs); or the role of donor and recipient at the same time, which means investing not only one’s own but also donor resources. Foreign researchers have identified the main roles of non-governmental organizations according to the nature of the organization’s activities, which are: the role of an investor, the role of a co-founder, the role of a provider, and the role of an experimenter.