Facts about European NGOs active in international development

NGOs have moved out of the "amateur" world in which they were once confined into, in many cases, highly professional activities. This statistical analysis demonstrates that there are thousands of development NGOs in European countries with as much as $7.3 billion at their disposal. Supported by a large number of tables and graphs, as well as detailed, individual country surveys, the author provides the first-ever such study of what has become a late-twentieth, early twenty-first century phenomenon. When the results of the study are extrapolated to OECD Development Assistance Committee members as a whole, they suggest that the total income of NGOs would amount to almost $16 billion, a figure three times that estimated by organisations such as the World Bank. Depending on the country, up to half of this income comes from official sources, implying that NGOs have become major partners for governments in the development field.