| dc.description.abstract | Non -governmental organisations are effective change agents in socio-economic sectors
including poverty reduction, HIV AIDS, education, health, human rights, natural resources
management, agriculture, alternative trading and the various kinds of vulnerability.
Therefore, the role of NGOs in community development is very essential to the communities
and to the nation as a whole this because NGOs are the links to people at the grass root level
and it also help in the development of the nation. Their relationship with donors, national
governments, project and programme beneficiaries, and the general public is being
interrogated by stakeholders on NGOs’ accountability to the communities. This is because
NGOs tend to concentrate mainly on their funders and the delivery of services without so
much involvement of the communities that they work with. Kisumu East hosts most of the
head offices of NGOs that operate within western region and it has the largest population that
those NGOs serve. However studies done on NGOs’ accountability to the community
indicate that not all NGOs that are within Kisumu east are accountable to the communities
that they serve. The purpose of this study was therefore to investigate the determinants of
NGOs’ accountability to the community in Kisumu East District, Kenya. The main objectives
of this study was to establish how organisational policies influence NGOs accountability to
the community, to assess the extent to which employees’ attitude influence NGOs’
accountability to the community, to assess how the donors influence the NGO accountability
to the community and to establish how managerial capacity influence NGOs’ accountability
to the community. A correlation research design was used in the study and structured
questionnaires with open and closed ended questions were employed to collect the data in an
attempt to answer the research questions. Census was employed on a population of 58 NGOs
from which purposive sampling technique was used to select two managers as respondents
from each NGO which adds up to 116 managers for the sample size. The validity of the
instruments was established through construct and content validity whereby the research
sought the judgment of the construct from the experts (supervisors). The reliability of the
instruments was determined through test retest whereby a pilot study was conducted on ten
managers and repeated after two weeks the results were then correlated. The coded data was
analysed with the aid of statistical package for social science (SPSS) version and Microsoft
Excel. Descriptive and inferential statistic data analysis was employed on quantitative data.
Multiple linear regressions was used to find factors that determined NGOs accountability to
the community while descriptive tables were used to display distribution of population
information on respondent’s background information. Qualitative were transcribed, put in
themes and reported. The findings of the study indicate that organizational policies,
managerial capacity and donor influence had a higher influence on NGOs’ accountability to
the communities. Therefore the findings from the study revealed that strong positive
correlations exist between organisational policies, NGOs influence, managerial capacity and
accountability to the community. So for NGOs to be more accountable to the community
there should be proper organization policies in place and qualified managers to operate in
these organizations. There should also be flexibility of donor’s conditions on the project
implementation to the community. This will enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the
NGOs hence sustainability of the projects being implemented. In addition the study
established that there is little significance of employees’ attitude on NGOs accountability to
the community. There should be further study on effects of donor requirements on financial
accountability and effects of beneficiaries’ demands and expectations on management of
NGOs activities. | en_US |
