Tanzanian NGOs remain heavily dependent on funding from external sources, says new research commissioned jointly by the Foundation for Civil Society and the Tanzania Philanthropy Forum. Fifty-seven per cent of respondent organisations to the study said that their revenues came purely from external sources. International NGOs (INGOs) provide the main source of development funding in Tanzania. According to the report, The State of Philanthropy in Tanzania, 2018, based on research carried out between February and April of this year, INGOs supplied a massive 71 per cent of the funding of the respondent organisations, with 12 per cent coming from trusts and foundations and 4.5 per cent from bi- and multilateral agencies. While a number of organisations reported donations from individuals and companies and allocations from government, the amounts involved are ‘quite meagre’, the combined total from these sources making up less than 10 per cent of revenues.

The report goes on to identify a number of challenges for the sector’s development: the inability of local organisations to attract local sources of income; a regulatory framework that is lacking in fiscal incentives for giving and whose demands are time-consuming and complicated; and a number of accountability challenges – while corporate giving is increasing, notes the report, it is often unstructured, irregular and not adequately documented. Recommendations, therefore, include strengthening the capacity of NGOs to form partnerships with business and government, advocating for the consolidation of laws regulating the sector and identifying philanthropy champions who exemplify the possibility of generating more internal and local resources for civil society.