The concept of voluntary organizations is not new they are in operation in various countries and being used as vehicles of reducing poverty, promoting democracy and to have an enabling environment for the society. At independence, India as a developing country had issues to be tackled; poverty ignorance and health. These problems could only be tackled by the government with the assistance of the international community and grass root organization working with the majority of the people in the rural areas through voluntary organizations such as non-governmental organizations, Community based organizations, and Faith-based organizations. In the development scenario of contemporary India; Voluntary agencies occupy a pivotal position. Spanning every sphere of community and human concern voluntary endeavors are visible even in remotest and interior areas. The roots of voluntarism or voluntary action as a concept may be traced from the functioning of social institutions in the ancient period and even outside institutions by the medieval period. But the history of voluntary organizations from the 19th century onwards has more tangible linkage with the voluntarism and voluntary action, as it is understood today.
During the pre-independence period, civil society initiatives emerged from motivating force of the social reform movements of the first half of the 19th century and the influence of the renaissance on Indian middle class in later part of the century. They have no formalized structure but had definite values and identity and focused mainly on helping the needy and providing services for those who were deprived. In the same period, the second stream of voluntary initiatives came from the work of the missionaries who were inspired by faith and came from other western countries during the British rule. Their main aim was extending educational and health services in remote and inaccessible areas. During 1920’s the need to involve people in India's struggle for freedom was realized and reaching out masses with an effective instrument of evoking people through constructive work started. This helped in expanding the horizons of voluntary action beyond regional and communal boundaries. Some sections of social reforms based voluntary action and constructive work joined the government and took the responsibilities of nation building. From the remaining, one stream found expression in social work and in the institutions of higher education set up for training young people, while other continued in the field of relief, rehabilitation, welfare, and charity. The motivations were the changing political scenario, the Naxalite movement, the J.P movement and also the disillusionment of the people. People started reflecting on their experiences and started looking restlessly for a constructive alternative to channelize their energies for a more human and just society. This period also saw more focused work with the target groups, landless laborers, and tribals, women, scheduled castes, and tribes etc. and with the growth in number and scope of voluntary agencies sectoral specialization gained momentum. With the entrance of the State as donors in the late seventies, the VO's became more institutionalized and we have also seen the crisis of value and identity in this period. In 1980's and onwards with the domination of the donor's new issues like women's concerns, environment, forestry etc., gained momentum and Voluntary Organizations began to get organized around the issues and campaigns like droughts, floods, deforestation, land alienation, housing rights, water pollution etc. The institutional and structural connotations of the Voluntary Organizations became clearer and domination of information and finance was the stream of Voluntary Organizations was set up by established business and industrial houses in India. In this period professionally trained social workers from different academic institutions joined the sector. Thus the voluntary action in India emerged from a specific socio-political context and was inspired by the emergence and continuity of the social reforms, social change and political movements in different parts.
A voluntary organization in our country plays a strategic role. The voluntary sector on the whole aggregates and articulates dispersed thoughts and voice of disadvantaged people. A person in power always likes to see the voluntary organizations as the subservient organization to the government. The voluntary organizations are expected to follow the predefined roles thought out by the government irrespective of the particular mandate of the voluntary organizations. In doing this the Voluntary Organizations have started functioning like extension workers of the government. Instead of being able to devote all efforts towards reaching out people their concentration gets focused towards meeting the targets set by the government and ensuring fund for survival. Thus the focus gets shifted from policy influencing, community development to fund drive, target oriented, time-based projects. Community confidence is not building up due to lack of a code of conduct and morale amongst the VO's. The Voluntary Organization in the process of sustaining themselves are forming little groups within a specific geographical area so the collective force that all the Voluntary Organizations were expected to build up is not found. The sense of solidarity and accountability is missing in the Voluntary Organizations. A situation arises when there is a confusion on "what are we working for" and "who are we working for".
Since pre-independence the Voluntary Organizations have gone through a series of changes based on their activities: from phases of Social Action to Social Welfare and then from Social Development to Social Advocacy and Influencing. The socio-political contexts have changed and there has been changing impact of funding on the Voluntary Organizations’. The international forces like the donors and the multinationals are again supporting the market. The state with all power has support from none and thus in a democratic set up where the state has failed to look after the welfare of the people the Voluntary Organizations are interfering. The connotation changes with changing level; activities at local level, Voluntary Organizations at the state level, NGO's at capital cities and civil society at international level. The voluntary organizations are professional delivering goods to the society. To deliver goods efficiently now the Voluntary Organizations are focusing on the evaluation and monitoring of the projects they are taking up. Redefining to become relevant in the present context is essential without being co-opted. For the voluntary organizations to function independently it is necessary to come together and work towards for fulfillment of their goals. In the present context, the government is working for development. Of recently, even the corporate sectors are venturing into the area of social development in lieu of their corporate social responsibility. In such a scenario the voluntary organization is often getting concerned by these actors of the society. To be efficient, to have linkage, to influence, thus the voluntary organization needs to come together. Often Voluntary Organizations goes for exploring new avenues and thus start bargaining and negotiating.
The Scope of the study:
The study is designed to understand the needs of the organization which will help in formulating capacity building programmes and workshops. Voluntary Organizations play a critical role in addressing several developments problems .Voluntary Organizations gets involves in various kinds of activities for the betterment of the society through undertaking different initiatives during different phases of development. However, over the years it has been felt that VOs lack the technical, financial and managerial capacity to arrange effective responses to these development challenges. These capacity gaps have limited the effective use of resources for developing programs and have resulted in the limited impact of several interventions carried out by these VOs. In the development discourse, these not-for-profit leaders take different management decisions in a dynamic and changing environment. Different key institutional players like the business, government and profit organizations that relate and react to one another, forming an exchange of ideas, resources, and responsibilities. This convergence of evolving factors creates the environmental context in which capacity building initiatives must operate. The ways in which Voluntary Organizations play their development roles have been shaped by their nature and the interest, their capacities and the resources at their allocations.