Case Study: The Incredible Disappearing NGO
By Cynthia Akamere
Let me tell you about the most successful organization you have never heard of, No, seriously. You have never heard of them. Nobody has!. And therein lies our tale.
THE CURIOUS CASE OF “SILENT IMPACT FOUNDATION”
Once upon a time (last Tuesday, actually), there existed an NGO called Silent Impact Foundation – and boy, they did take their name seriously.
Their track record was impressive:
- Trained 3,000 youth in digital skills
- Facilitated policy changes around local health care access affecting 2 million people.
- Built 38 community hub centers across 4 states
- Won an international award nobody knew they applied for
Their visibility strategy? “We do not believe in showing off, our work speaks for itself.”
The problem? Their work was literally speaking to itself. In a closed room. With the lights off and no wifi.
Scene One: The Funding Crisis
Setting: Silent Impact Foundation’s cramped office (which nobody could find because there was no signage, naturally)
Executive Director: Why won’t donors fund us? We have results”
Program Officer: Did we tell them about our results?
Executive Director: Of course! We sent a report to our email list
Program officer: our email list of…. Three people?
Executive Director: Four! Don’t forget the intern’s personal Gmail.”
Scene Two: The Community Meeting
Setting: A community meeting where silent Impact has been working for 3 years
Community Leader: We need development partners to help with youth employment
Youth Representative: Yes! We have never had any NGOS working here in this issue
Silent Impact Field Officer: (quietly, from the back row) Actually we have trained 500 youth in this community over the past three years…..”
Everyone: turns around…
Community leader: Who are you?
Field Officer: ‘Silent Impact Foundation. We have been around since 2020
Youth Representative: Never heard of you
Field Officer: ‘we have a Facebook page. We made a post last December
Scene Three: The Government Meeting
Setting: Policy dialogue on youth development
Government Official: We need evidence-based recommendation from civic society
Silent Impact Executive Director: (confidently standing up) we have conducted the largest youth skills assessment in the region. 3000 participants, our data shows……
Government Official: Sorry, who are you again? Community leader: Who are you?
Silent Impact Executive Director: Silent Impact Foundation. We have been doing this work for years.
Government Official: checking the list…. “You are not on our stakeholder list.”
Silent Impact Executive Director: we have never registered as a stakeholder; our works speaks for itself and should get us noticed
Government Official: Your work is excellent at being invisible, I will give you that
THE TURNING POINT: WHEN THE LIGHTBULB (FINALLY) SWITCHED ON
One fateful day, Silent Impact’s Executive Director attended a conference. Not their own conference (they had never announced one), but someone else’s.
There, they watched an organization with a quarter of their impact present their work with:
- Professional videos
- Infographics that didn’t look like 1995
- Active social media with actual engagement
- A spokesperson who had been on national radio
- Media coverage from reputable outlets
- Partnership announcements people actually saw
The kicker? That organization had just secured $2 million in funding.
Silent Impact’s budget that year? $50,000. From the same three donors who had been funding them since 2020 out of sheer loyalty (or pity, hard to tell).
We often complain about the level of support being gotten from the government through public private partnership as it remains invisible to the NGOs community and the wider civic space, however invisibility is part of the problem. Because when support exists only on paper or behind closed doors, it doesn’t translate into real impact for the people doing the work on the ground. NGOs and civic groups end up operating in the dark, unsure where to turn for collaboration, or whether those so-called partnerships are even meant to include them.
It’s not just about funding either. Access, information sharing, coordination, collaboration, all of those matters. When government and private sector players talk about “partnership,” it should mean more than a few high-level meetings or PR moments. There has to be a transparent bridge that links policies with practice, so the organizations actually serving communities can tap into those opportunities and make them count.
Maybe the real issue is not the absence of support, but the lack of visibility and inclusion. Because what’s the value of a partnership if only a few people know it exists?
Here are some of the truth;
- Donors cannot fund work they do not know exists
- Communities cannot access services they have never heard about
- Government cannot partner with organizations they cannot find
- Your impact is not real until someone knows about it
Silent Impact had an epiphany: visibility isn’t vanity, it’s validity. They started simple:
- Posted their 5-year impact report publicly (revolutionary!)
- Actually, attended stakeholder meetings AND spoke
- Documented work with photos (visual proof what a concept!)
- Sent newsletters to more than four people
Six months later? $500,000 in new funding, government partnerships, and communities finally recognizing them at meetings.
The Visibility Check: Are You a Ghost NGO?
Ask yourself:
- Can people find your organization online in under 2 minutes?
- When was your last public communication?
- Do government officials know who you are?
- Can communities easily access information about your services?
If you answered “no” to most of these, congratulations, you’re a ghost.
The Bottom Line
Your invisibility isn’t protecting your humility. It’s protecting your irrelevance.
Every story you don’t tell, every stakeholder meeting you skip, every social media post you don’t make that’s not humility. That’s impact hoarding. In a world crying out for solutions, hoarding your solutions because you’re too shy to share them isn’t noble. It’s wasteful. Your work is too important to be a secret.
So, here’s your challenge: Document your work. Share your learnings. Tell your stories. Collaborate, Show up publicly. Make some noise. The change you want to see in the world? People need to see it first.
