Numbers of NGOs

Since the mid-1950s, the number of NGOs worldwide has increased dramatically, along with a broadening of the focus of their activities and a strengthening of their influence. NGOs are now impacting policies and guiding agendas that once were nearly exclusively the arena of governments and corporations.

In terms of NGOs internationally active, the Yearbook of International Organizations has documented an almost 30-fold increase between 1956 and 2000. In 1956, the Yearbook listed 985 active, “international NGOs,” with this category, including organizations operating in at least three countries. By 1996, that number had swelled to more than 20,000. In 2000, the Yearbook documented 29,495 active, international NGOs. Anheier (2001) places the number of internationally operating NGOs at 32 in 1874, at 1,083 in 1914, and at 13,000 in 2000, with one-quarter of these created after 1990.

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