NGO's and relationships

While reading these articles on relationship managment the familiar cliche, "Its not about what you have, it's about who you know" came to mind. Most organizations are carried by the reatlionships that they create and maintain and most business deals or transactions take place because someone in the office know's the Vice Presidents's dog-walker and he can get them a meeting with the VP. From the initial meeting of this class we came to the agreement that Public Relations was about relationships and reputation, so it makes sense that a majority of Public Relations should be dedicated to managing and mainting realtionships with different actors and avenues. But as discussed with some of our other unmeasureable objects how do you go about measuring a good/bad reatlionship? Is it just about money raised, or deals closed or projects created? Hopefully it is measured by some sort of personal connection since reatlionships do usually involve human contact.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) , just like most non-profits also have issues with relationships. I think that NGOs have a harder time creating relationships, one because they have the word "governemnt" in their name and who likes to make relationships with governemnts, too bureaucratic!!! And second because NGOs are usually a reflection of their governments even though they are private organizations that have no representation to a government. Maintaing relationsips with NGOs can be quite tricky since not only are you dealing with the community, possible donors and businesses you are also informally dealing with the bureaucratic goverenmtne behind the NGO. The government is the pink elephant in the room, that no one likes to mention, but NGOs are usually associated with their host government and as we all know goverenemnts have a long list of good/bad relationships. Internationally, NGOs have played a major role especially since they have been legitimized by the UN and since recent conflicts have sometimes been too controversial for a nation to engage in, an NGO can seem less threatening than a nation. For instance some countries may not allow US soldiers on the ground but they will allow UN troops, the Red Cross or other NGOs since their presence facilitates better relationship managment during the crisis.

There might be alot of criticism for NGOs since sometimes they take charge and don't allow for local trends and ideas to take place or allowing for local authorities to sustain control after the NGO withdraws. And some NGOs are still linked to their government, for instance the World Bank is usually linked to capitalist America and this idea or stereotype can be bad for creating relationships in some countries. But NGOs have had succesess where other governements would not even be allowed to step foot; therefore I believe their continued emphasis on relationship mangagment is quite critical, especially in our globalized world.