Named the Land of
smile with the Buddhism path in life, Thailand was ranked the most generous
country of the world in term of money donation (ranked 86 of non-monetary
donation), according to the World Giving Index 2011. From this altruism
characteristics, there are positive roles that non-profit organizations (NPOs) can be a main
player in development by providing goods and services - especially meeting
needs which have not hitherto been met by either the government or by the
private sector, assisting the government achieve its national development goal, helping citizens to voice their aspirations,
concerns and alternatives for consideration by policy makers, and helping to
enhance the accountability and transparency of government and local government
programs. Even though there are a number of issues taken place in managing
nonprofit organization, academic researches related in this field are quite
however rare in this world’s most generous country, Thailand.
The International College of National Institute
of Development Administration (ICO NIDA), an academic body providing both
courses and research outputs in area of nonprofit management, has presented 5
joint-research outputs under a framework of philanthropy studies and nonprofit
management for sustainable development in Thailand. Those 5 papers can be
categorized into two market sides: 1) the demand side of philanthropy and 2)
the supply side of nonprofit organization management.
On the demand side, there are two research papers
which try to explain 1) why Thai people give or donate their money and 2) how
to explain giving behavior among Thai people, both classified by religious and
non-religious giving. Understanding giving behavior should explain the altruism
behavior
or practice of concern for the welfare of others.
On the supply side, we investigated roles of
nonprofit organization in Thailand by investigating factors influencing financial
viability, their roles in enhancing social welfare, and why the effective
program evaluation should be taken place.
Below are list of papers and researchers.
Demand Side of Philanthropy
Giving
Objective
Happiness
from Giving: A Quantitative Investigation from Thai Buddhists
Piriya
Pholphirul (International College of NIDA and Graduate School of Development
Economics, NIDA)
Giving behavior
Religious and Non-Religious Giving in Thailand: An Economic
Perspective
Amornrat
Apinunmahakul (Graduate School of Development Economics, NIDA)
Supply Side of Nonprofit
Organization
Balancing
financial and grant viability
The
Impact of Information and Communication Technology Adoption on Financial
Viability of Nonprofit Organization in Thailand
Sid
Suntrayuth (International College of NIDA) and Marcel
Novak (University of Economic Bratislava, Slovakia)
Improving
Social Welfare
Cost
of Death and Factor Related to Participating in Cremation Welfare Association
in Thailand
Aweewan
Mangmeechai (International College of NIDA) and Anetta Caplanova (University of
Economic Bratislava, Slovakia)
Enhancing Effective Program Evaluation
Can Small Interventions Have a
Big Impact?: Two Case Studies on the Effectiveness of Non-Profit Interventions
in the Field of Education
Frank
Hubers – Eramus Center for Strategic Philanthropy
and Eramus School of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam (Netherlands)
In
the first paper by Piriya Pholphirul entitled “Happiness from Giving: A
Quantitative Investigation from Thai Buddhists”
explain impacts of giving on happiness outcomes among the Thai Buddhist as according to Buddhism’s
thought, giving without condition leads to a higher level of happiness. Even
though there are a number of studies examining factors that determine
happiness, none quantitatively examine happiness from the perspective of a
“giving” relationship. Using survey of over 27,000 individual dataset of Social
and Cultural Condition survey from Thailand from NSO, where Buddhism is the
main religion, this paper
suggests that religious and non-religious giving leads to a higher happiness
level than not giving at all. Estimating the Order-Probit and Ordered Logit
condition, charitable giving in terms of money and objects gives a donor more
happiness than does volunteer work. Religious giving that
involves offering food and making other non-food offerings to Buddhist monks is
found to increase happiness. The happiness level is increased even more for
respondents who regularly give for religious purposes. By comparing between
religious giving and non-religious giving, regularly
giving to monks leads to the highest happiness level. This is perhaps because Buddhism
permeates Thai society and dedicating offerings to monks is believed to provide
great merit. The government should therefore introduce policy
measures that encourage both religious and non-religious giving and participating
in volunteer work to strengthen social networks, enhance the sense of altruism,
and develop mindset that is appropriate with Thai society.
The second paper by Amornrat
Apinunmahakul entitled “Religious and Non-Religious Giving in Thailand: An Economic
Perspective” support findings of the first paper in
explaining factor influencing of giving behavior of the Thai people. This paper uses the survey data of over 2,500
respondents under the project on ‘Economic of Religious’ funded by the National
Research Council of Thailand in 2011 to explore the impact of giving behavior .
Estimating a Binary Tobit Model to explain amount of giving, the study found
that attending religious services on a regular basis does make people become
more generous to both religious and non-religious contributions indicating the
influence of Buddhism on socioeconomic development of Thailand. Highest
educational achievement plays a major role on both money and time
contributions. Education thus is a means not only to human capital formation
but also to implanting the social reciprocal value to young generations. In
addition, while government spending on religious boosts up the religious
contributions, it in turn lessens the non-religious giving. But the level of an
individual social capital significantly increases individual’s time volunteers
to both religious and non-religious organizations. Government hence may
consider diverting some of their religious spending towards community-based
social capital accumulation by financing community activities that could
enhance the civic participations. Furthermore, policy makers should encourage
people to follow news on a daily basis to make people become aware of social
needs. The accuracy and reliability of social media thus have an indirect
influence on social reciprocity.
After understand demand side of philanthropy, the third paper by
Sid Suntrayuth and Marcel Novak, entitled “The
Impact of Information and Communication Technology Adoption on Financial
Viability of Nonprofit Organization in Thailand” explore
its supply side of nonprofit management by examining impact of ICT adoption on
financial viability of nonprofit organization in Thailand as financial
viability is an significant factor in keeping the organizations afloat and in
their making an impact on society. Using
323 samples of Nonprofit Organization Survey conducted by Thailand’s National
Statistical Office, the results reveal that ICT adoption (i.e., basic
information technology infrastructure and use) has a positive impact on the
nonprofit financial viability factor of donation and transfer funds. The extent
of internet use and the presence of an organizational website positively
influence the profit-making measurement indicator of return on assets (ROA). Age
of organization (Duration of establishment) is positively significant on
donation and transfer fund but negative impact on the ROA. Money endowment (net
income) is also positively significant on donation and transfer fund. Size
of organization (measured by number of volunteer staff) is negatively and
statistically significant on financial variability (both transfer fund and
ROA). Nonprofit Organizations’ managers should therefore give
significant consideration to investing in ICT to ensure that their
organizations can maintain their financial viability so as to provide their
services and make an impact on society.
As non-profit organizations
can be a main player in development by providing goods and services -
especially meeting needs which have not been met by either the government or by
the private sector, the forth paper by Aweewan Mangmeechai
and Anetta Capanova entitled “Cost of Death and Factor Related to Participating
in Cremation Welfare Association in Thailand” explain role of the Cremation
Welfare Association (CWA) in Thailand on providing social safety net among poor
households in Thailand. In much of the
developing world, funeral expenditures can take up a large proportion of or
even exceed household’s monthly income.
In Thailand, the cheapest funeral expense is 1.2 times higher than the
average monthly household income. One way of obtaining funeral insurance in
Thailand is by joining CWA. CWA are the third largest type of nonprofit
organization in Thailand. CWA helps the families of members with the costs for
arranging funerals. Survey data of Nonprofit Organization from Thailand’s
National Statistical Office was used to identify the factors related to the
financial support given by CWA. From the survey, the average annual income
generated by Thai cremation welfare associations in 2007 was $190,000 US. Using
secondary data of 3,672 cremation welfare associations in Thailand, regression
analyses show that public awareness of these associations and policy directions
significantly influenced how much financial support was given. Currently, as
there are about 75 percent of the population has some form of life insurance,
increasing the public’s awareness of CWA may be the most useful strategy should
therefore be concerned to further boosting this percentage of ensured people
Differ from for-profit organization, nonprofit organizations
have to maintain the balance of their financial viability and donation and how
to create the pro-social programs that to make a big impact. Concept of program
evaluation is needed to be implemented as a systematic method for collecting,
analyzing, and using information to answer questions about projects, policies
and program, particularly about their effectiveness and efficiency. Despite good intentions, the interventions of
non-profit organisations are not always effective. For the past decades non-profit
organisations, in particular those that depend on voluntary donations, have
hence been under pressure to demonstrate the effectiveness of their
interventions. Whereas these evaluations may be useful by providing the
organisation insight in its errors and best practices, they lack usefulness
beyond the institution. The effective use and understanding of impact
evaluations will lead to more evidence based interventions, making the
non-profit sector more effective in increasing social welfare. The
fifth paper by Frank Hubers entitled “Can Small Interventions Have a Big Impact?: Two Case
Studies on the Effectiveness of Non-Profit Interventions in the Field of
Education” aims to show the importance of rigorous evaluation in
understanding the impact of non-profit interventions. Although non-profit
organisations acknowledge the importance of evaluating their interventions,
rigorous methods are rarely applied. This paper introduces two case studies of typical
small scale non-profit interventions. The interventions are carried out by two
Dutch philanthropic organisations and involve offering additional education to
children in particular target groups, with the ambition to influence their
knowledge, moral values and attitudes. The first case study is the impact evaluation of the small Christian
non-profit organisation Children Asking. Children Asking is a Dutch missionary
organisation that receives its funding mainly from Dutch church-goers, but
carries out its activities in shantytowns in Sao Paulo (Brazil). This paper applied Difference-in-Difference approach
to measure the effect of an afterschool-programme in the slums in Brazil in
term of 1) Learning performance and 2) Value and ethics. It found that after-school education has a significant and positive
effect on school performance, but only on Portuguese (language), not in
Mathematics. And, it is more effective in girls than in boys. However, it appears that boys show substitution
behaviour. They replace their regular schooling with the PEDE programme. Boy
shows more tendencies to skip school more often. The second case study
involves the impact evaluation of the education programme of the Dutch
non-profit organisation called the “Movies that Matter Program”. This
evaluation focused on their educational program for teenagers which involve the
use of human rights movies in the classroom. The objective of our impact
evaluation was to determine if human rights movies can indeed positively affect
pro-social behaviour in children. Using field
experiment game (dictator game and ultimatum game), it found that watching
human right movie (human rights education) increases pro-social behaviour in
children, but that the effect is short-lived. After watching the movie children
become more generous: in the dictator game they donate almost 5 percent than
they would have without watching the movie, but this effect reduces rapidly. In that case we may conclude that the human rights movie only
temporarily brought the children into an empathic state, making them more
generous, but that this effect was completely gone after 45 minutes of working
on the educational material. As
rigorous impact evaluations serve two objectives. On
the one hand they provide the organisation with insight in the effectiveness
and limitations of its intervention. Rigorous impact evaluations also serve
another objective, which is to build towards general knowledge about the
effectiveness of non-profit interventions. The evaluations can serve as guidance
to both governments as non-profit organisations worldwide to understand what
interventions work and which do not work.
As
implied by the findings of the five studies, donating behavior and NPO
management in Thailand are unique thanks to the facts that Buddhism, a major
religion of Thailand, and that the religion’s doctrines greatly involve with
donation and beliefs in making merit by giving.
Thus, the donating behavior of Thai people is more likely to be associated
with religious-giving, rather than other types of donations, including donating
money to temples and offering food and non-food alms to monks. For instances, the study by Amonrat
Apinunmahakul (2nd Paper)
discovers that the number of Thai samples who donate for religious purposes was
twice as much as the number of samples who donate for non-religious purpose.
This trait of religious donation is especially prevalent among low educated
samples. It is also positively subjected to social capital within community. In addition, the findings from Piriya
Pholphirul (1st Paper) also indicate that religious giving
contributes more to happiness level than do non-religious giving, such as the
volunteer works.
Therefore, the policy implications
of these researches on philanthropy studies and nonprofit organization for
development issues in Thailand are that
1. Government should enhance its roles
in promoting religion and non-religious giving as it is a way in enhancing
happiness level of the Thai people (Finding from Piriya Pholphirul). Public
spending on religion positively influence Thai people to donate more to
religion. Furthermore, it is advisable that the government should foster social
capital in a community, which serves as another factor that facilitates
donating behavior of Thai people (Finding from Amornrat Apinunmahakul). However
delivering
a measure to persuade people to donate might not provide a long-lasting impact.
Hence, policies that are able to stimulate donating behavior should be
continuously implemented (Finding from Frank Hubers).
2. In order to improve efficiency in
nonprofit management sector, the government, and the Nonprofit organization
itself, should pay more attention to investment in infrastructure development such
as ICT infrastructure, which can increase efficiency of NPOs and thus enable
them to attract more funds from domestic and foreign donors. On top of
everything, Nonprofit Organizations’ managers should also pay greater attention
to developing skills of organizations’ staff so that they are able to use ICT
tools and optimize benefits from ICT infrastructure (Findings from Sid
Suntrayuth).
3. As inequality is a main obstacle in
Thailand, Nonprofit Organizations should support projects aimed reducing
inequality by helping disadvantaged peoples who are unequally refrained from receiving
benefits from programs of public and/or private sectors. Besides, they should
have a role in improving Social Safety Nets of those disadvantaged groups. For
instances, from the findings by Aweewan Mangmeechai and
Anetta Capanova’ paper,
the research is about the roles of Cremation Welfare Association (CWA) (a type
of NPOs) in reducing undesired events when families experience loss of their
member and have to spend a considerable amount of money on funeral
arrangements. Interventions of Nonprofit organization’s program in providing
social insurance system to assist low-income or disadvantaged families does not
only contribute directly to social development, but also support government in
reducing inequality and promoting long-term inclusive growth for Thailand.
4. Since Buddhism temples are generally
recognized as the most important nonprofit organizations in Thailand and due to
the fact that the donating behavior of the majority of Thai people is concerned
with religious-giving, the temples themselves should provide more roles in
improving free program that to enhance the Social Safety Nets. For example, the
temple should provide cremation services for free of charge to people
especially those who have low income (or are low educated) who are found to
donate the most for temples through various activities such as donating money
and offering food and non-food alms.
5. Apart from their role in contributing
to social development, nonprofit organizations have to ensure that funds are
spent in the most efficient and effective manner. Program evaluation or impact
evaluation is therefore crucial for ensuring that each Baht is spent for the good
of the society. Nevertheless, in order to effectively conduct rigorous impact
evaluation, specific technical expertise is required. For this reason, NPOs
which lack the technical expertise in this area are advised to establish
cooperation with academic institutions which can provide consultations on the
impact evaluation (finding from Frank Hubers).
6. Other than measures for evaluating
impacts of pro-social programs, the government should introduce governance
measures for the transparency and efficiency of NPOs’ spending. There are still
a number of nonprofit organizations (e.g. temples and charity organizations)
that do not sufficiently disclose their financial information.
7. In conclusions, it is necessary for
nonprofit management for sustainable development in Thailand to be incorporated
with four important elements as follows:
1) Effective fund raising program
2) Continuous infrastructure
improvement, especially ICT infrastructure, for becoming a high-performance
organization
3) Focus on program that reduce inequality
and enhancing social welfare particularly for disadvantaged people
4) Rigorous program evaluation for transparency
and accountability
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3. Reducing Inequality
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1. Effective Fund Raising
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2. High Performance Organization
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4. Program Evaluation, Transparency,
and Accountability
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