“SHE CAN GET A VISA”: How Nationality and Class Shape Decision Making at a Kenyan NGO

Abstract

Prior studies show how race, class, and gender matter for worker identities within organizations, but there is an opportunity to focus on worker nationality and class background within nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Using evidence from ethnographic fieldwork, in-depth interviews, and organizational documents at a small NGO in Kenya, I show how nationality and class mediate how NGO workers assign and accomplish organizational tasks. My results suggest that a process of elastic transnational stratification determines how nationality and class distribute tasks and decision-making power in relation to the location and organizational domain in which they must act. While both nationality and class are used as proxies for one’s proximity to power and influence, there are instances where less privileged identities are more strategic to deploy. Nationality and class shape access to various development spaces, the amount and type of resources one can attain on behalf of the organization, and legitimacy locally and at the global level.

Introduction

Sociologists have made progress in studying how the identities of workers—and specifically the triumvirate of race, class, and gender—matter in organizational dynamics across a wide variety of organizations, for example, corporate firms, small businesses, nonprofits, schools, etc. (Leicht and Fennell 1997; Reskin 2000; Sorenson and Rogan 2014). However, fewer studies analyze how the nationality and/or class of workers shape the operations of transnational nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

This is important because we have seen a massive rise in the number of NGOs supplementing government services. For instance, following the end of World War II and African independence movements, Western governments and private NGOs have flourished to create a network of monetary aid and international development projects to help young African countries “catch up” (Moyo 2010; Zuberi 2015). However, with the advent of postcolonial and decolonial studies and the revived reckoning with White Supremacy following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, there have been many calls to change the directionality of international development aid and services and interrogate inequities due to power imbalances and the oppression of certain identities (Strong 2018; Strong and Nafziger 2021). Additionally, organizations like No White Saviors and Fifty Shades of Aid are bringing light to the many ways NGOs and the priorities of governments providing aid have actually harmed African development (Easterly 2006; Portes, Passe-Smith, and Seligson 1993; Rodney 1982).

In this article, I ask how nationality and class distribute responsibilities and decision-making powers among workers at a transnational NGO? Based on a three-month ethnography, follow-up visits, and in-depth interviews with the staff and board members at Save the Street Kids (STSK), a small Kenyan NGO, I develop a theory of elastic transnational stratification that informs how nationality and class distribute tasks and decision-making powers. I show how organizational taskspriorities, and decision-making power are distributed among staff and board members according to who possesses thenationality and class background best suited to the scenario and would provide the best results for the organization. I provide an empirical case for analyzing how international development most often privileges, supports, and rewards workers who hold citizenship within the Global North and/or have upper-class status. This case of transnational NGO governance provides many examples that affirm the dominant position of Global North citizenry and evidence of pushback from the Global South citizenry. I also find that in some instances staff and board members with traditionally less-privileged identities are given discretion in running the organization. Additionally, I find that given the current racial justice climate, responsibilities are being redistributed to lesser privileged people. Staff and board members’ tasks and decision-making powers are within one of the following three domains: organizational hierarchy, organizational fundraising, and organizational legitimacy (Sakue-Collins 2021).

Nationality, Class, and Organizational Hierarchy

Early scholarship on organizations focuses on how an organization’s identity impacts its members (Dingwall and Strong 1985; Dutton and Dukerich 1991; Gioia, Schultz, and Corley 2000). However, newer scholarship reintroduces the role of the individual in determining organizational characteristics (Poppo and Zenger 2002; Sorenson and Rogan 2014; Uzzi 1996). Research has studied the characteristics of an organization’s leader and the role of the board. Organizational leadership scholarship has focused on transformational leadership, the process of the leader building rapport with the followers (workers) such that motivation is increased (Burns 1978; Demir and Budur 2019). Ethical leadership, “the demonstration of normatively appropriate conduct through personal actions and interpersonal relationships” is another framework through which nationality and class determine how accepted norms are (Brown, Treviño, and Harrison 2005; Demir and Budur 2019; Dinc and Nurovic 2016; Kanungo and Mendonca 2001).

The board of an NGO is tasked with ensuring the organization is compliant with laws, fundraising, and determining the strategic direction of the organization. Board members are selected for their capacity to facilitate access to resources (Stiles and Taylor 2002). However, this may come at the cost of expert knowledge of the NGO’s day-to-day work. These “outside” board members may not have experience within the international development sector, or their experiences may not match up with the mission of the NGO (Ng and Khodakarami 2022). Less is known about how the nationality and class backgrounds of board members shape how “outside” the organization they are. The number of resources outside board members attain results in achieving more decision-making power within the organization. However, as organizations attempt to challenge western dominance, outside boards are working toward forging more partnerships with the organization’s leadership and staff.

Within the NGO space, Sackett’s research highlights the shifting agency of NGO frontline workers (street-level bureaucrats) in providing services (Sackett 2022). She finds that frontline aid workers are given latitude to make decisions regarding client well-being given their “on-the-ground” position and social proximity to their clients (Sackett 2022). In addition to frontline workers having greater discretion because of the sheer volume of work, researchers might consider that frontline workers’ positionalities give them greater authority in addressing client needs and making key decisions.

Nationality, Class, and Organizational Fundraising

Previous scholarship privileges Western conceptions of aid and development (Boli and Thomas 1997). Sorenson and Rogan’s work on how individuals endow their organizations with social capital exemplifies how people may activate their networks to garner resources for the organization. These individuals “act as anchors, connecting someone in the other organization to their own” (Sorenson and Rogan 2014, 275). Despite Sorenson and Rogan using only corporate examples, they highlight the important role individuals play in brokering relationships on behalf of the organization. While their study reintroduces the role of the individual in getting resources for organizations, Sorenson and Rogan do not account for nationality and class within a transnational determine the types of relationships that may be brokered.

The board of an NGO is largely responsible for fundraising. “Nonprofits frequently add board members to gain access to additional sources of funding and donations, obtain valuable advice, and increase legitimacy,” (Galaskiewicz and Bielefeld 1998; Grønbjerg 1993; Malatesta and Smith 2014; Smith and Lipsky 1993). In a case where there are two boards—one comprised of wealthy, upper-class Americans and one comprised of wealthy, upper-class Kenyan—the type and amount of resources may differ.

Nationality, Class, and Organizational Legitimacy

Organizational legitimacy is determined not only by the organization’s efficiency and efficacy in delivering services but also by the types of people affiliated with the organization (Assenova and Sorenson 2017; Brown and Gua 2010; Lecy, Schmitz, and Swedlund 2012). The staff and board members must meet minimum standards of professionalism and experience. Nationality and class matter in relation to individuals developing organizational legitimacy. “Foreign credentials are reviewed for their authenticity and equivalence with comparable training courses in the host country” (Damelang, Ebensperger, and Stumpf 2020). In the transnational NGO context, the United States and other “western” credentials are privileged over the same work conducted in developing countries. Some forms of human capital cannot be transferred from one country to another (Chiswick and Miller 2009; Damelang et al. 2020). So, those with nationalities within the Global North or those who were able to afford credentials from the Global North are more likely to increase the organizational legitimacy.

Elastic Transnational Stratification

Drawing on Gowayed, Mears, and Occhiuto’s “situational human capital” and Randall Collins’ “situational stratification,” elastic transnational stratification is the process whereby nationality and class (in conjunction with other social categories) influence the distribution of tasks and decision-making power among NGO workers and board members (Collins 2000; Gowayed et al. 2022). Elastic transnational stratification accommodates the flexibility needed within the international development sector. According to the location (physical or social) and organizational domain of the issues that staff and board members must respond, different nationalities and class backgrounds are more suited to take on the task or make the decision. Elastic transnational stratification also accommodates the international development sector’s reckoning with White Supremacy. Elastic transnational stratification aligns itself with postcolonial sociology and intersectionality; it recognizes the agency subaltern subjects possess as they constitute their identities according to power relations at multiple levels (Atewologun, Sealy, and Vinnicombe 2016; Edwards 2020; Go 2013).

Methods

I implement a series of qualitative methods to understand how nationality and class distribute tasks and decision-making power among the staff and board members. I used participant observation of the organization’s core activities; semi-structured in-depth interviews with NGO staff, board members, donors, beneficiaries, and government officials; and archival analysis of organizational and government documents.

Entering the field: I initially accessed STSK through Tasha, the founder, when I first moved to Kenya in 2016. Mutual contacts put me in touch with Tasha because of her own postgraduate experiences in Kenya. She then virtually introduced me to some of the staff at STSK and I formally reached out to Felicity and Judith when I decided to study NGO decision-making in graduate school. Felicity, the executive director, further facilitated my access because of her own experiences as a current Ph.D. student.

I began fieldwork and interviews in 2019 at STSK, ¹ an international NGO that primarily supports impoverished children in a peri-urban Kenyan town. I initially set out to study how the organization positions itself among international, national, and local institutions. However, I pivoted to focus on noting the ways nationality and class background distributed tasks and decision-making power within the organizational domains of crafting an organizational hierarchy, attaining resources for the organization, and establishing legitimacy.

Participant observation: I spent a total of seven weeks at the STSK’s office in a town located two-hours away from Nairobi, Kenya. At the STSK’s offices, I had my own designated workstation within the staff open-office plan. I had the opportunity to attend the weekly staff meetings, specialty workshops, and other programming at the organization. I observed the staff interact with students and their parents, sort school supplies for the children to take, chatted with the staff over tea, and visited the STSK farm. I looked at how each staff and board member brings professional experiences and how their identities influence their priorities for STSK. Each staff and board member’s background and experience mold his or her cultural meaningful practices. “Possessing cultural knowledge will have positive effects on long-term performance, even if the short-term profitability and financial performance would be difficult to ascertain” (Joutsenvirta and Uusitalo 2010, 380).

While conducting participant observation, I would occasionally ask clarifying questions or explanations of events that took place in Kikamba, the local dialect. I was able to communicate with the staff in English. Even though I was not fluent in Kiswahili at the time, my knowledge of intermediate Kiswahili enabled me to form closer relationships with my colleagues.

In the field, I wrote detailed fieldnotes about my observations each evening. There were also occasions on which I took photographs or brief notes on my cellphone to capture the nuances of interactions more accurately in the immediate moment.

Interviews: In total, I interviewed 24 people affiliated with STSK, including staff, board members, a grant manager, and the parents’ representative. My interview guide had questions that mostly focused on the person’s relationship to the organization, how decisions are made at the organization, and what the future of the organization should look like. I used a standardized interview guide to ensure systematic interviews. Most of my interviewees were forthcoming, albeit for different reasons. The U.S. board members viewed my role as a graduate student as an opportunity to get free evaluation services on the organization. They referenced other graduate students who conducted studies or expanded STSK’s monitoring and evaluation capacity and asked me to share any relevant findings. The Kenya board members and staff members viewed their participation as vital to my success in graduate school, therefore they answered questions to “ensure I had what I needed.” They wanted to give me enough information so that I would get a good grade, even after I said I wasn’t being graded on this research. For a full breakdown of my interviewees, see Table 5 in the Appendix.

At the end of each of my interviews, I asked respondents if there is anything else that they wished I had asked them or things that they wanted to expand on from earlier. Most of the time, my respondents said a couple of things or reiterated something that they had previously mentioned. In some cases, my respondents and I continued talking for up to an hour. During this open-ended period, I gathered a lot of nuances and insights that did not come up in other parts of the interview. Upon finishing each interview, I completed a post-interview profile of each respondent that included their name, age, occupation, relationships to STSK, key quotes from the interview, and my own reflections on how the interview went.

Archival analysis: I supplemented my interviews and observations with documents that contextualized STSK within Kenya, the broader international development space (e.g., Kenyan newspaper articles related to NGO governance and education reform, funding priorities from major NGO donors, the millennium development goals, and the sustainable development goals), and validated my observations garnered through ethnography and my interviews (e.g., annual reports, social media posts, the staff policy book, and other materials from the organization).

Role in the field: Over the course of my interactions and relationship building with the STSK staff and board members, I frequently reflected upon my positionality. As a black American woman from an Ivy League university conducting research in rural Kenya, the process of elastic transnational stratification enabled or prevented my access depending on the context. I employed affects and mannerisms and participated in informal, non-research-related activities to lend credibility, approachability, and respect to my participants (Adu-Ampong and Adams 2020; Mayorga-Gallo and Hordge-Freeman 2017).

In the field, I introduced myself as a researcher and sought formal consent for participation. All respondents were given an overview of my IRB-approved safety measures and a consent form detailing their participation rights. Once signed, all interviews were conducted in a space of the respondents’ choosing. All names of respondents and organizations have been changed, and all data collected are saved to a secure folder only accessible to myself and my approved faculty advisors.

Data Analysis

I used flexible coding for each of my data sources (Deterding and Waters 2018). After each interview, I wrote post-interview memos in a spreadsheet. I then ensured that I meticulously linked attributes to each person to facilitate the categorization of my respondents. For my study, these attributes included education, prior NGO work experience, residency, gender, ethnicity, nationality, and languages spoken. I chose these categories to get a broad sense of each respondent’s identities and how they may relate to other staff and board members in other situations.

I used a similar approach in reviewing my fieldnotes and coding the organizational documents (social media posts, donor reports, etc.). Each set of fieldnotes includes a recapitulation of my day at STSK and my reflection on the events I witnessed. For documents external to STSK, I entered relevant evidence into a spreadsheet that mirrors the index and analytic codes I applied to my interview data and fieldnotes.

Research Case

The Kenyan Context

Kenya’s complex civil society and robust number of international and local NGOs makes it well-suited to analyze the many intersecting identities of NGO staff and board members. Kenya is often viewed as the “gateway to East Africa” and is also a locus of resource distribution to other countries in the region. Even though Kenya is a prominent actor in East Africa, Kenya still receives a vast amount of foreign assistance. According to the World Bank’s Kenya September 2019 overview, “[Kenya’s] key development challenges still include poverty, inequality, climate change, continued weak private sector investment, and the vulnerability of the economy to internal and external shocks.”

Kenya has many diverse NGOs, including small community-based organizations like STSK, as well as large multinational NGOs like the International Rescue Committee (Kane 2013). While most of the field staff of these organizations are Kenyan nationals, a large proportion of the leadership teams and board members are from Europe and the United States (Brass 2012; Brass et al. 2018; Hailey and James 2004; Jackson and Claeyé 2011). In addition, many of the NGO jobs available to Kenyan nationals are highly competitive and offer more status and job security than other industries within Kenya. We can see power and influence along the axes of class and nationality.

In recent years, the NGO Coordination Board, the national office that oversees NGOs and other development projects based in Kenya, has increased actions to hold NGOs accountable, ‘including more stringent registration procedures, to ensure Kenyan citizens receive quality services and curb corruption. According to journalist Kevine Omollo’s April 2019 report in The Standard, “National statistics indicate that out of the total 11,000 NGOs registered countrywide, only 3,000 had managed to meet the tax compliance requirement. In a bid to level the playground for all registered NGOs, the [NGO Coordination] board has put on notice over 7,000 NGOs which have not complied with the tax laws that they risk deregistration.” The NGO Coordination Board runs the Institute of Charity Management and sponsors “NGO Week” to train staff and board members on the rules and regulations of operating an NGO in Kenya. As NGOs try to maintain their place within Kenyan civil society amid increased government scrutiny, including workplace raids where government officials check the immigration status of foreign NGO workers, they also must contend with the priorities of international development institutions and donor communities. These conditions provide an important backdrop to study how STSK staff and board members conduct nationality and class background.

Research Site: STSK

STSK was founded in the late 1990s by Tasha, a black American woman who had recently graduated from an elite university in the United States, and Amos, a Kenyan teacher. Before STSK was founded, the Kenyan Ministry of Education sent Amos to a semirural Kenyan county to develop a plan to rehabilitate children who were living on the street, colloquially called “street kids.” ² At the time, the ministry was attempting to eradicate the number of indigent children through various programs across Kenya. Amos used donations from local churches to feed the children and provided basic literacy and mathematics lessons. Tasha, who was in Kenya on a postgraduate fellowship, became his intern. She helped teach the children and began paying for some of their school fees. After a few years of this informal intervention, Tasha sought donations from her network in the United States to pay for more children’s school enrollment fees and to cover the cost of meals for the children during school holidays.

In the mid-2000s, STSK was a formally registered NGO with full-time paid staff members. Since then, Tasha stepped back from daily program operations. Felicity serves as the executive director and Judith, a Kenyan national, serves as the second-in-command staff member. STSK relies on major grants from organizations like the Thompson Family Foundation (TFF) (pseudonym) and the United Nations Development Program, in addition to receiving individual donations and fundraiser proceeds from the United States. However, in recent years, there have been more efforts to increase the number of local in-kind and monetary donations. For example, the Kenyan board organized a golf tournament to raise funds to purchase a new water tank for the STSK’s campus in 2015.

Two boards—one based in the United States and one based in Kenya—manage the strategic vision of the organization. This two-board model is common in many NGOs as they attempt to achieve capacity-building goals and indicate a willingness to engage local stakeholders (Chorev and Schrank 2017; Compion and Cliggett 2018; Daniels 2012; Fechter 2012; Riusala and Suutari 2004). The U.S.-based board focuses on fundraising (major gifts and grants from the United States) on behalf of the organization and evaluating the job performance of Felicity, the executive director. The Kenya board evaluates the organization’s programs, forges local partnerships, fundraise within Kenya, and maintains compliance with the NGO Coordination Board’s audit requirements.

Currently, STSK serves over 200 children from vulnerable backgrounds. While STSK started as an organization that provided emergency relief for street children and enrolled them in Kenya’s formal education system, the organization now has several programs for children. STSK places students who do not receive the necessary marks to continue to secondary school in apprenticeships around the local municipality so that they may prepare to take the Kenyan vocational certification exams. The staff also runs a parent empowerment program that trains parents to do various job skills so that they may provide for their families. In addition to these services, the staff also provides mental health services, sexual and reproductive health courses, daily breakfast and lunch, and scholarships for students to attend school.

STSK is currently transitioning to a more democratic decision-making system to balance the power between the U.S. board, the Kenya board, and the staff. This transition period was a unique time to see how the staff and board members’ elastic transnational stratification activated nationality and class in diverse ways to accomplish organizational reorientations. Despite the best intentions of STSK, they are still operating within a larger system that privileges the Global North. Some development locations (physical and social) may support more people from less privileged backgrounds, while in others it is not possible.

Findings: How Elastic Transnational Stratification Distributes NGO Tasks and Decision-Making Power according to Nationality and Class

This article suggests that elastic transnational stratification delegates tasks and decision-making power according to which NGO worker’s nationality and class background can best navigate the given location (physical and/or social) and type of organizational activity. While I propose evidence of the international development sector as whole privileging actors who possess Global North citizenship and/or have upper-class status, I also found instances when staff and board members with traditionally less-privileged identities are given discretion in running the organization. The prevailing asymmetries of power between nationals of developing countries and nationals of developed countries are nuanced, showing that these relationships are not static or unidirectional.

Nationality, Class, and Organizational Hierarchy

Over the last five years, STSK has undergone several changes in its organizational structure, including changing executive directors and hiring more Kenyan staff. To rebound from the early years of instability and to build a stronger, more cohesive team, STSK has developed internal protocols and systems, increased the number of professionalization opportunities for the staff, and increased their monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.

Under the leadership of the current executive director Felicity, STSK has implemented professional development workshops and continuing education policies that mirror U.S. workplaces. She views these opportunities as increasing the professional experience of the Kenyan staff members:

“I find that [some of the staff have] limited educations but now most of them are now pursuing further education opportunities. Whenever there is a training or workshop, they attend. In the United States, training, workshops, and talks [happen] all the time so you get jaded and there is no urgency to attend. But I find that the team in [Kenya] is very eager and enthusiastic. When we do workshops and trainings, they take it very seriously. Six months to a year later you see the results of that workshop in the organization.”

These trainings lead to credentials more easily recognized by the U.S. board (Damelang et al. 2020).

This emphasis on staff professionalization has led to the ratification of a budget line item that sets aside funds for staff to pursue training and other educational opportunities. Felicity, through her proximity to the nationality and class background of the U.S. board, advocated the U.S. board to invest in the Kenyan staff’s professional development. In turn, these investments in professional development facilitate the Kenyan staff members in their nationality and class background to leverage more responsibilities within the organization. They gain exposure to American-style work environments and increase their educational attainment.

These investments in the professionalization of its staff led to attracting more Kenyan job candidates who have higher levels of education and prior NGO work experience compared to earlier rounds of hiring. Patrick, a Kenyan board member who is a veterinarian and business owner, shares how the staff interview process has changed over time:

So that expansion and in terms of staff, they have more staff [now]. And even the caliber of staff they are now taking. . .they can attract professionals. Because I can remember [being on the] panel doing the interviews and our concern was mainly on the salary someone will be requesting because we had limited resources. So, you find that you recruit somebody, but this person is not able to deliver or within a short time this person deserts. I can see the [newer] staff we have been able to [hire], they have [remained] here, which means they are getting job satisfaction. They are getting satisfaction on what they have been employed to do. So that one is also a success.

Six of the eleven STSK staff members I interviewed have prior NGO work experience, and three of the current staff members have advanced degrees.

The proportion of staff salaries has also changed. As Table 1 (see appendix) shows, between 2015 and 2016, more of the organization’s resources are going toward paying the Kenyan staff members. At that time, STSK hired Kenyan workers who had higher levels of education and prior NGO professional experience. However, this increase in Kenyan staff remuneration did come with some hesitancy from the U.S. board members. In most of the conversations I had with U.S. board members about fundraising, they mentioned how difficult and “unbecoming” it was to ask for donations that would go toward staff salaries. ³ They argued that any increase in donations should go toward the beneficiaries of STSK. Even though several of the staff members make hardly more than some of the highly impoverished children and parents they serve. The U.S. board members’ valuation of the Kenyan staff is rooted in the belief that the Kenyan staff members are mostly based on the cost of living in the small Kenyan town and not their professional work experience. ⁴

The amount of money listed for Kenyan staff salaries is divided by all the Kenyan workers. Some of this is justified based on the differences in cost of living between the United States and Kenya, but the pay discrepancies are also due to Felicity being much more highly valued. Rebecca, a U.S. board member, justifies this large compensation discrepancy because Felicity brings in so much money on behalf of the organization. Rebecca says, “Felicity is [someone] we can trust like the volunteers on the [U.S.] board. She really wants to help.” Even though Felicity did not actively do nationality and class background to get a higher salary, the U.S. board uses her position as a U.S. national to justify the pay discrepancies between her salary and the Kenyan staff.

Several Kenyan board members expressed frustration at not receiving payment for their work as compared to receiving stipends from other boards of which they are members. The Kenyan board members view the work they do as a professional service for which they should be compensated. Felicity, who is often caught in the middle of disputes between the U.S.-based board and the Kenya-based board, attempted to reconcile the opposing viewpoints. She tried to explain that because the U.S.-based board members are often asking their friends and people within their networks for donations, it’s hard to justify asking for money to pay board members when requesting funding. In addition, she relayed that the U.S. board members viewed their role as completely voluntary and held the same expectation for the Kenya board members. This shows an example of how both boards’ nationality and class background results in frictions.

Using Nationality and Class to Acquire Resources

Like many NGOs, STSK is continually fundraising to have enough money and other resources to complete its mission. Currently, STSK staff and board members are working to increase the number of individual donors and diversify the types of donations and grants they receive. This work expands the organization’s monetary safety net and leaves the organization less dependent on any one source of income. The STSK staff and board members who are best able to conduct nationality and class background that results in leads for access to money and in-kind goods will be most successful.

STSK faces a few challenges as they pursue various funding opportunities. In conversations with me, many staff and board members stressed that the organization struggles to find grants that will cover operational expenses; most grants will only fund specific projects. Patricia, a STSK Kenya board member who runs her own nonprofit organization in Nairobi stressed: “I think the one thing I have learned at STSK is that success is not getting a grant to do a program. It is making sure there is enough market demand [interest from funders] to sustain the program even after the grant runs out.” To try to overcome this challenge, she emphasized that the organization should try to find projects that are “trendy” and more likely to get repeat funding, such as a recent grant STSK received from the United Nations to fund a project for the parents of their students to sell eco-friendly cookstoves to reduce carbon emissions. This speaks to two phenomena. One, the nationality and assumed cost of living for Kenyan staff members limits the opportunity for a raise. Two, funding is tied to the goals and priorities of the Global North (Bowman 2006; Bromley, Schofer, and Longhofer 2020)

However, the market demand Patricia mentioned is dependent upon who can broker relationships with donors or grant agencies. Many of the grant opportunities and access to individual donors are made possible through the nationality and class background of U.S. board members. Based on lists of donor contributions in annual reports of STSK, I found that most cash donations come from individuals within the U.S. board members’ networks. In addition, many of the fundraisers take place in the homes or offices of U.S. board members. The U.S. board members leverage their upper-class and highly educated networks on behalf of STSK. I attended a virtual fundraiser for STSK in April 2021, and most of the people present were U.S. board members and their friends. At this event, Kenyan staff members provided updates from town and urged attendees to donate so the organization could continue their work through the COVID-19 pandemic. Notably, none of the Kenyan board members attended.

Tasha, the founder of STSK and U.S. board Member, reported that she started the organization with funds raised through her and her parents’ networks in the United States. After graduating from an elite private university in the United States in the late 1990s, Tasha moved to Kenya on a postgraduate fellowship. She began informally working with street kids under the supervision of Amos, a Kenyan teacher whom the Kenyan Ministry of Education sent to work specifically with street children. As Tasha worked with Amos, she saw that he was not receiving enough funding and other support from the government to complete his work. She decided to leverage her transnational networks and ask her friends from college and her parents’ friends for donations to cover the children’s school tuition and meals. This initial investment in Amos’ work helped many of the town’s street children to enter the formal education system.

She told me:

“. . .I was very cognizant that I didn’t know Kenya very well. . . . So, I was trying to give Amos the resources he needed because nobody [in Kenya] invested in him or what he was doing. Everybody came by to give him orders. He took orders from the department of education, from the corrupt pastor; like everybody just came by and gave Amos orders. Nobody came by and said, ‘here is milk for the kids, here is chalk for your chalkboard’. They did not give him resources. So that is what I was trying to do.” While Tasha did not understand all the cultural norms in this Kenyan town, she did have access to a pool of resources in the United States.

This vignette illustrates differences in the networks Tasha and Amos could draw on for resources like food, school fees, and other resources for the children. Tasha, a young American woman, was able to interrupt the Kenyan hierarchy because of her access to monetary resources. Amos could only get donations from local pastors or improvise to provide for the students. His personal network could not offer money for the children, nor could he break the hierarchical protocols of the Kenyan government to get more support.

On the other hand, Tasha could activate networks of support outside of Kenya. Evenually, Tasha and her group of friends and colleagues who have been supporting STSK formed a board of directors to administrate the organization more formally. These steps towards formalizing the work of STSK changed their eligibility for grants, pushing the U.S. board to coordinate annual fundraising appeals and brokering relationships with larger foundations. Rebecca told me that STSK was no longer eligible for early-stage grants and that they needed to seek out new sources of funding:

. . . And then my friend, who was a big donor, said they weren’t going to give anymore because they only fund beginning things. [My friend] put us in touch with the Thompson Family Foundation (TFF). We had to do a lot of stuff for them, and while they did not initially fund us, they gave us a lot of positive things we could do and training in communications and selling ourselves.

Eventually, Rebecca’s connection to the TFF paid off, and they are now one of the largest annual donors to STSK. In addition to monetary resources, TFF enfolded STSK into their large network of other NGOs in Africa and provided professional development for the Kenyan staff.

Since becoming the executive director of STSK in 2016, Felicity has worked to increase the number of donations and other resources from within Kenya. However, the access to these local donations and resources are made possible through Judith, the second-in-command staff member who is a Kenyan national and shares the same Kikamba ethnic group as many of the children and families where STSK is based. Felicity said during our interview: “. . .[Judith] is fantastic in advocating for the organization and trying to get resources that are available in the community.” Felicity may have made in-country donations an organizational priority and convinced the U.S. board members to be supportive of such an initiative, but the actual brokering of these resources was done by Judith. All the Kenyan board members, who refer to Judith as “Madam Judith,” agree that Judith has been pivotal in acquiring donations and other resources on behalf of the organization. Martha, a Kenya board member, says of Judith: “I think STSK is working closely with quite several partners and especially with the new country director, Judith. So, in as much as tapping into resources and sharing what they have with organizations within the local community I think they are doing a tremendous job.” In addition, Judith has been able to exchange her own experiences working at an NGO based in a Kenyan refugee camp for resources and increased partnership with the local county government. In this instance of elastic transnational stratification, Judith’s local expertise enables her to have more decision-making power relative to Felicity. She understands the deference one must show officials to receive the resources one needs.

While all the staff and board members from both the United States and Kenya agree that they need to increase the number and type of resources (e.g., in-kind donations versus individual donations), tensions do exist in how each person believes this should be achieved and who should be getting the resources. Rebecca, a White American woman and one of the first people to join the U.S. board and is the current board chair says: “The thing is, I trusted everyone on the [U.S.] board. They were doing it as volunteers. . .getting the feeling of being good. [Also] you can’t trust people who are being given money in a foreign county, especially if they are poor. That’s why we had to go over every single receipt.” Rebecca’s mistrust of the Kenyan staff and board members speaks to larger issues around racialized stereotypes about corruption in Africa (Transparency International 2023 Kenya Corruption Index). She cannot see the Kenyan staff and board members as trustworthy because of the negative stereotypes associated with their nationalities. She also viewed their status of having and donating less money than the U.S. board members as a reason to have more oversight over them.

Ultimately, everyone wants the organization to have enough resources to continue its work. However, the amount and type of resources available to staff and board members is dependent upon spaces afforded one’s nationality and class. The Kenyan board members and Judith, the Kenyan country director, are all mid-to-upper class relative to the community where the organization is based. They can broker and negotiate in-kind resources like books, school supplies, food, and feminine hygiene products among colleagues and church friends. The U.S. board members, who are all upper-middle-class Americans, leverage their personal networks for monetary donations and have formal experience writing major grants.

Nationality and Class as Markers of Organizational Legitimacy

STSK is working toward increased recognition, legitimacy, and visibility within the local community and the international development community. Elastic transnational stratification allocates the level and type of legitimacy STSK staff and board members have in different spaces according to their nationality and class background. While legitimacy is often discussed in relation to the people who possess the most obvious forms of power—those who could travel without visas, are wealthy, have high levels of education, etc.—using an intersectional and postcolonial approach enables us to see the advantages and unique perspectives of people with perceived lower statuses.

STSK’s relationship with the major U.S.-based funder TFF signals legitimacy to other international development actors. STSK is assigned a TFF grant manager, Flora, TFF to ensure grant compliance, share professional development opportunities, and connect them to other NGOs. Flora explains the struggles small NGOs like STSK face when attempting to compete for resources and recognition alongside major development actors:

Just because you bear the name USAID then they [the Kenyan Government] are like you’re someone high up. But if you are STSK, it is not as easy. And so, there is a lot of back and forth before you get there [to that level of recognition]. It is going to take much time and lobbying and advocacy. So, there is that dynamic, how much support does the government give local organizations given that it isn’t always a guaranteed thing?

Because of the difficulties associated with forming these prestigious and lucrative relationships, organizations like STSK need leaders who have prior NGO work experience and the nationality and class background of someone who can travel internationally to donor meetings. In other instances, STSK needs leaders with the nationality and class background of someone who has the knowledge and experience to navigate Kenyan governmental bureaucracy.

This is when elastic transnational stratification applies Flora’s intersectional identity as a Kenyan national with extensive donor agency work experience and works on behalf of STSK. She utilizes her connections to introduce STSK to other agencies and leads culturally relevant leadership development workshops for Kenyan NGO workers hoping to advance their careers. In fact, both Judith and Paul received scholarships to attend national NGO leadership workshops through STSK nurturing its relationship with Flora and TFF.

STSK also increases its legitimacy through relationships within Kenyan civil society. While it is required that STSK is registered with local officials, George, the former executive director who is Kenyan, finessed these relationships. Now, Ronald and Mutua, officers of the Kenyan government’s Child Protection Office within the Ministry of Education, refer children and families who are in dire circumstances to STSK. George leveraged his Kikamba ethnicity and similar upbringing to engage Ronald and Mutua. George’s connections to local contractors and his ability to navigate the bureaucracy of purchasing land impressed Ronald and Mutua and also reassured the U.S. board that things would run smoothly without their constant, direct oversight.

Legitimacy is also established through its internal decisions. When STSK was in the process of hiring a new executive director in 2016, one of the main concerns of both boards was hiring someone who could raise the organization’s profile. Patricia, an STSK Kenya board member, discussed how the organization came to the decision of hiring Felicity: “One of the reasons they didn’t appoint an executive director who is local [Kenyan] is that [they would need] need to apply for a visa anytime they travel to the United States.” ⁵ Felicity, who is White South African and now a naturalized U.S. citizen, was hired not only because of her extensive work experience at other NGOs, but also because her U.S. and South African passports would enable her to travel between Kenya, the United States, and other places more easily (see also Arp, Hutchings, and Smith 2013; Hailey and James 2004; Riusala and Suutari 2004). Patricia and other STSK U.S.-based and Kenya-based board members recognized Felicity’s passport privilege as highly elastic—able to enter transnational spaces at multiple class levels.

Patricia continues:

Felicity belongs to neither world. I think that the Kenyans see her more as US [person]. Like they see her as an American. She is seen as a mzungu. ⁶ Just to be honest. Even though she really is not. She has a weird mix of. . .she is African, but she has the advantage of looking Caucasian. [However], Felicity is well adjusted. She understands she needs to rough it out. I think it helps that she has a child and a husband because those things build into the perception of “you are mature and responsible.” Because you know if she was just this single little girl then no one would listen to her. And she does try to speak Swahili, which I honestly appreciate. She really does not have to. We understand she is from a different part of the continent, and we respect that.

The intersection of Felicity’s race and nationality enables her to be a sort of “neutral party” among the Kenyan board and the U.S. board. Each board uses her to represent their interests, while on the other hand, Felicity leverages her middle position to advocate for her Kenyan who do not have the status themselves to directly appeal to either board.

The hiring of Felicity enabled STSK to have a spokesperson who can represent them on an international scale and have the flexibility to spend several months at a time in Kenya. Patrick, one of the first Kenya board members, says: “You see Felicity lives with us in Kenya. She also meets with the other board. Nzoka [the previous executive director who was Kenyan] was not going to the United States. So, Felicity now has closed that gap and things are working much more.” Patrick highlights another reason why Felicity has greater social skills through which to bargain in the organization is that she can spend time in both Kenya and the United States. When Tasha was the executive director, she could only spend two weeks out of the entire year in Kenya.

However, the organization is also attempting to maintain its standing within Kenya’s civil society. Martha, STSK Kenya board member and Kenyan national, says of this goal: “I would like to see us closer with the Kenyan Ministry of Education. They have already done a lot. And one of the suggestions was for STSK to become a center for examination. But I think if that happened, it would open doors for many other opportunities.” If STSK were to become a national testing center, thousands of children and their parents who are not already affiliated with the organization would have to engage with them. In addition, becoming a national testing center would mean STSK is an official partner of the Kenyan government. However, to leverage those relationships, STSK relies on the nationality and class background of the elite Kenyan board members.

Constance, a wealthy Kenyan woman, who is very vocal about the tensions between the Kenya board and the U.S. board, has been instrumental in raising STSK’s profile within Kenya. As a former bank manager and school inspection agent, Constance has many connections in Kenya. Felicity says of Constance: “She knows these people and will connect Judith or myself to them. Like she is personal friends with the guy who owns hotel.” In fact, Constance was able to convince him, one of the wealthiest Kenyan men in town, to donate money for a large holiday party at the STSK campus in December 2019. The children and parents received food, clothes, and other supplies from the event staffed by his hotel workers.

Another question that arises as one discusses organizational legitimacy, especially in the international development space is: who is legitimately able to offer help? Legitimacy is more than just the organization’s profile, but also it speaks to the right of the organization to do its work. In a conversation with Tasha, she recounted her first time to Kenya, illustrating how her position as a black American woman from an elite background could imbue legitimacy even though she ended up in Kenya as a matter of convenience:

[During] my second year of college I was somewhat miserable at [my elite college] listening to our professor. . .talk about Africa. And it occurred to me that I could just go there for the same price that I was paying [my university] to teach me. So, I started applying to study abroad programs and I ended up in Kenya because it was an English- speaking country. I spent one semester studying abroad in [semirural] Kenya at [a local college]. It was amazing. My head exploded. I fell in love with Africa and just with this world where it was so different than my [elite] college. Anything was possible. It was so full of adventure.

For Tasha, ⁷ traveling to Kenya presented her with opportunities for adventure and the chance to bring about change. Elastic transnational stratification overrode her student status and positioned her American, upper-class status into spaces of expertise and authority. She was presumed to have more knowledge because she was from the United States and her “foreignness” enticed children to work with Amos on a more regular basis. She facilitated Amos’ work with the street children and eventually registered STSK as an NGO in Kenya and a 501(c)3 nonprofit in the United States. The first board members of this new organization were largely composed of Tasha’s college network. Tasha leveraged the privileges associated with being a well-off American on behalf of Amos.

Where Tasha was able to offer legitimate help vis-à-vis her nationality and class privilege, four current STSK staff members—who are former STSK beneficiaries—experience positive benefits of elastic transnational stratification because of their less-privileged nationality and class backgrounds. Paul, Monica, Delia, and Maggie all participated in STSK’s programming when they were children; Paul and Maggie even received high enough scores to continue receiving support through university completion. All four STSK alumni contribute to the organization’s legitimacy in two ways. First, they are used as examples to show the effectiveness of STSK’s programming. This tokenization has given them more practice to interface with donors during in-country visits. Second, their unique knowledge of receiving support from STSK allows them to speak with current beneficiaries with an authority unavailable to anyone else in the organization.

Paul and his “touching story” came up in conversations with most board members, both U.S. and Kenya board members. Paul, a self-described former street child, now has his master’s degree and is one of the senior staff members at the organization. Many board members recall him as being particularly bright and able to communicate how grateful he was for STSK’s support during donor visits. Jason, a U.S. board member who met Paul during one of his first visits to Kenya, said: “We now have somebody like Paul who is doing this [work] and sort of taking on that [leadership] role.” As the first former beneficiary to be hired at STSK, Paul was heavily featured in the organization’s annual reports and social media. Much of the language around him, and now Monica, Delia, and Maggie, is that donors who invest in their work will be investing in creating more success stories. During a retrospective of the organization’s almost 30-year existence, Paul shared his vision for the future of the organization based on his experience as a staff member who sees how the needs of the children have changed since he was a beneficiary. In fact, many of the ideas he would suggest would receive greater support from the U.S. board to make it happen. The credential of being an STSK alum changed what kind of Kenyan national they were.

In addition to legitimating the organization’s work and donor investments, Paul, Monica, Delia, and Maggie are also in a unique position to interface with current beneficiaries. Because they share ethnic, national, and socioeconomic identities with the constituents of STSK, many of the children and their parents seek their counsel. The other staff and board members also look to the four of them for their opinions on program changes or outreach strategies.

I spoke with Obadiah, the president of the STSK Parent Committee and a beneficiary of STSK’s parent empowerment program, to learn more about STSK’s constituents. He told me that most of the parents have low levels of education, are unemployed, or have informal jobs like housework. Very few parents speak English, with most of them conversing only in Kikamba and occasionally Kiswahili. Paul, Monica, Delia, and Maggie’s ability to relate to these parents closes the gap between service providers and service recipients. I also witnessed how the parents would first voice concerns to the STSK alumni staff before raising issues with non-alumni staff, Felicity, or Judith. This is an example of how elastic transnational stratification may present lesser-privileged people with authority (see also Sackett 2022).

During a conversation with Felicity on staff who bring in resources, she emphasized that assumptions about Monica and Delia lacking “social capital” because of their socioeconomic statuses are incorrect. Felicity sees their value not necessarily in how much money they are able to access on behalf of the organization, but in how they are able to make STSK more visible within the local town. I would see this myself when I would run errands in town with Monica and Delia after work. We would be stopped in the street every few meters by parents, students, and other alumni of STSK who would ask them questions about upcoming events or update them on how they have been since finishing the programming at the organization.

Elastic transnational stratification uses nationality and class to assign tasks and decision-making power to achieve organizational goals through various means.

Discussion

Prior research has focused on the triumvirate of race, class, and gender within organizations. While these identities are important, in the international development space, studying the role of nationality and class invites a more dynamic analysis. This article examined how the board members and staff at STSK, an international NGO based in a peri-urban town in Kenya, use elastic transnational stratification to create an organizational hierarchy, seek resources, and establish legitimacy according to one’s nationality and class background. This article engages theories of identity and intersectionality and organizational decision-making, as well as provides an international case study through which to explore the relationships within and between actors in one organization and with other institutions. “Actors without resources are most often constrained by institutions but under certain circumstances can use existing rules in unintended ways to create new institutions” (Fligstein 2001, 107). My work shows that the location where organizational tasks occur matters when determining power and influence within an organization.

Felicity’s leadership encompasses multiple ways that elastic transnational stratification uses nationality and class to assign tasks and decision-making power within STSK. The prevailing asymmetries of power between nationals of developing countries and nationals of developed countries are examined and eventually challenged. Felicity alongside the Kenyan staff reverses the taken-for-granted power dynamics to show how the “disadvantaged” nationality and class background of the Kenyan staff are assets. This reformulation of nationality and class background highlights a shift in how international development work is done. The relationship between developed countries and developing countries is inclusive of the multidirectional flow of resources and knowledge. Through understanding how nationality and class work within STSK, scholars can incorporate decolonial and postcolonial sociology into their analysis of international development. These observations provide insights into the multiple hierarchies that exist within the international development space.

There are several directions for future research on elastic transnational stratification. Within my own research site, I witnessed how STSK hired parents to sell eco-stoves as a means of economic development. Future research could investigate how elastic transnational stratification complicates the meanings of success for NGO beneficiaries. Another direction for the future scholarship is how elastic transnational stratification enables organizations to activate social capital from multiple social networks—challenging tropes of Global North Hegemony. Through understanding how elastic transnational stratification employs the nationality and class status of STSK staff and board members, scholars can incorporate decolonial sociology into their research on international development.

Supplemental Material

sj-pdf-1-jce-10.1177_08912416231160778 – Supplemental material for “SHE CAN GET A VISA”: How Nationality and Class Shape Decision Making at a Kenyan NGO

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-jce-10.1177_08912416231160778 for “SHE CAN GET A VISA”: How Nationality and Class Shape Decision Making at a Kenyan NGO by Shaquilla Harrigan in Journal of Contemporary Ethnography