Factors affecting financial sustainability of Kenyan Non-Governemental Organizations. (A case study of African Centre for Technology Studies, Nairobi, Kenya)

Abstract

Non Governmental Organization (NGOs) plays very important roles in the society, by supplementing government and foreign missions effort in the provision of services to it citizen. For NGOs to perform this role it has to dependent on donor funds. There has been an enormous growth in the number of NGOS being registered in Kenya. However seventy percent of these NGOs do not live to celebrate their sixth birthday (NGO Council, 1996). Despite this problem, no study has been done to establish the causes leading to collapse of these organizations especially on withdrawal of donor funds. This poses a gap that the study sought to fill through an investigation of the factors that affect the sustainability of the organization. These factors under study were; Funding mix, reserves, management of overheads, stakeholder relationships and use of planning tools. The study employed a descriptive research design. The target population was all the employees of The African Centre for Technology Studies. Data was collected from the sampled respondents using a questionnaire and an interview guide as the principal data collection instruments. Stratified and purposive sampling techniques were used to come up with a representative sample size. The quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistics where as content analysis was used to analysis the qualitative data. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to aid in generating a summary of results which was represented in form of charts and tables.