Counting Nepal's NGOs

What the data actually says about Nepal's NGOs

The Karki Aayog Report is out. Any serious researcher knows that the report suffers from several limitations, some of which are discussed here. Despite those limitations, I was curious about the report’s take on civil society.

Two sections address civil society directly. Section 14.8 (page 766) covers civil society broadly, and section 14.11 (pages 777–782) addresses NGO/INGO management. Together, that is six pages on civil society.

The issues raised in the report reflect broader debates in Nepali society: politicization of civil society and the erosion of impartiality, urban-centric elitism, and the dominance of NGO-led civil society. Zooming in on NGO/INGO management, the report points to the lack of unified records of NGO/INGO presence, donor-driven development agendas, increasing influence over core state functions, and the capture of technical experts, among other concerns (see the translated version here).

This post addresses one of those concerns: the lack of unified records of civil society organizations, and of NGOs and INGOs in particular. At least four different acts provide basis for the registration of CSOs in Nepal (see Table 1). As a result, no single central database of CSOs exists.

Table 1. Primary laws and regulations affecting civil society

The predominant organizational form of Nepali CSOs is the NGO, registered at District Administrative Offices (DAOs) under the Ministry of Home Affairs. Seventy-seven DAOs maintain records of registration, renewal, dissolution, and constitutional amendments. However, most DAOs report only new registrations and renewals — and only those figures are disclosed consistently, published on their websites every three months under the proactive disclosure requirements of the Right to Information Act, 2007. From these records, one can infer the actual picture of new and active NGOs — but given how painstaking the process is, the data have been underutilized.

To illustrate how difficult it is to work with these records: for 2081/82 (2024/25), only 45 of 77 DAOs (58%) had up-to-date information on their websites. Of those, 14 districts (18%) required tracking four separate quarterly reports, while the remaining 31 had consolidated annual reports. Twenty-one DAOs (27%) had records that were at least a year old; for 11 others (14%), records were more than two years out of date. Six DAOs (8%) had gaps in monthly data, for which I used the average of available months as an estimate. Getting a snapshot of a single representative year required manually navigating, downloading, and entering data from 144 PDF files across 77 DAO websites. For someone with the relevant expertise, this took over 13 hours.

After this painstaking process, we can say with reasonable confidence that Nepal had approximately 25,760 active NGOs by the end of FY 2081/82, meaning organizations that renewed their registration at a DAO that year (see Table 2). A further 3,543 new organizations registered in the same period. This represents the most accurate picture of NGO numbers available. The separate question of what these organizations actually do, and whether they fit the popular image of NGOs as foreign project implementers, is a discussion for another post.

Table 2. NGO in numbers

To date, the Social Welfare Council’s affiliation figures have been widely cited as the total number of NGOs in Nepal. At the end of 2081/82 these stood at 58,353; today the figure is 58,999. Compared to the 22,217 organizations that actively renewed their DAO registration, the SWC figures are inflated by over 36,000. The reason is straightforward: SWC affiliation is cumulative. It counts every organization that has ever affiliated, not those that remain active. My own analysis of the SWC renewal database finds that 85% of affiliated organizations never renewed their affiliation. Only around 9,000 ever did, of which just 4,347 remain active.

The distortion is not only in the totals; it is geographic. The provincial breakdown reveals a striking divergence between DAO and SWC counts. Bagmati accounts for 34% of active NGOs by DAO records but 51% of all SWC affiliations, suggesting that Kathmandu-based organizations are far more likely to have sought SWC affiliation, probably to access foreign funding. The reverse holds elsewhere: Koshi and Gandaki each account for 16% of active NGOs by DAO records but only 8% and 7% of SWC affiliations respectively. Madhesh presents a similar gap in the other direction, at 8% of active NGOs but 15% of SWC affiliations. In short, SWC numbers do not just overcount; they misrepresent where Nepali civil society actually operates.

The problem is not just that data on civil society are fragmented — it is that the fragmentation itself shapes how civil society is understood. When inflated and uneven figures become the default reference point, they reinforce a narrow view of NGOs as donor-driven and Kathmandu-centric, while obscuring the much broader and more grounded reality. A unified, regularly updated record would not only improve administrative clarity; it would also allow for a more accurate and fair assessment of civil society’s role in Nepal. Until then, both policy debates and public perceptions will continue to rest on a distorted picture.