The term “nongovernmental order” (NGO) did not exist before 1945.
“Nongovernmental organization” was a drafting convenience, coined while the United Nations Charter was being written to describe a class of private bodies the new order would work with but had not created. Article 71 gave that category a door:
The Economic and Social Council may make suitable arrangements for consultation with nongovernmental organizations.
Forty-one organizations held consultative status at the outset.
By the end of 2024, that number had grown to 6,494.
That is the first thing to understand about the apparatus now called civil society. Its defining institution was written, by name, into a structure designed to operate above the nation-state.
What began as a small category became a permanent feature of global governance.
ARTICLE 71 AND IMMUNITY
Article 71 was only half of the settlement reached in 1945.
The other half was immunity.
On December 29, 1945, Congress passed the International Organizations Immunities Act, allowing the President to designate international bodies by executive order and grant them protections normally reserved for foreign governments:
- Immunity from suit
- Tax exemptions
- Customs exemptions
- Special legal standing within the United States
The United Nations received that designation in February 1946. Today, dozens of international organizations hold similar status. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, both created at Bretton Woods the previous year, operate under comparable immunities.
Article 71 brought private organizations into the structure. The Immunities Act placed many of the structure’s own institutions beyond the ordinary reach of courts and tax authorities. Both foundations were laid before the decade was half over.
The question that everyone should be asking comes next.
What happens when private organizations are given a permanent consultative role inside institutions that themselves operate beyond traditional national boundaries?
THE ROCKEFELLER CONNECTION
When the structure needed a home, a foundation family supplied it.
In 1946, John D. Rockefeller Jr. purchased seventeen acres along the East River and donated the land to the United Nations. The organization’s headquarters has stood there ever since. That one gesture reflected a broader pattern of the period.
The Carnegie, Rockefeller, and later Ford foundations helped finance, convene, and support many of the institutions associated with the postwar international order.
A House committee documented that relationship in 1954 when the Reece Committee identified a connection among:
- The Carnegie Endowment
- The Council on Foreign Relations
- The State Department
- Major tax-exempt foundations
The committee’s conclusions were largely dismissed. The architecture it described remained.
The committee faded. The structure endured.
THE NGO EXPANSION
The category did not remain small or static.
The 41 organizations granted consultative status at the founding grew to more than 700 by 1992.
That same year, the United Nations convened the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. More than 1,400 accredited NGOs participated in the official conference, while thousands more attended parallel forums surrounding it.
What began as a consultation had become a permanent feature of international policymaking. The NGO did not lobby its way into the room. It had been given a seat at the founding and grew into it.
The sector did not fight for entry. It inherited entry.
THE FOUNDATION MODEL BECOMES INFRASTRUCTURE
The foundation model did not fade with time; it expanded.
In 2002, the Rockefeller family spun its philanthropy office into a freestanding nonprofit: Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA).
The organization traces its methods back to John D. Rockefeller Sr.’s 1891 decision to run philanthropy like a business.
Today, RPA:
- Has facilitated more than $4 billion in grants
- Operates across more than 70 countries
- Manages more than $500 million annually
- Serves as fiscal sponsor for more than 100 projects
Among those projects is the Trust for Civic Life, the organization established to implement the recommendations of Our Common Purpose, a plan for reshaping American civic participation by the nation’s 250th anniversary.
The Rockefeller model did not simply survive. It became infrastructure.
THE FISCAL SPONSORSHIP INDUSTRY
Around that infrastructure, a new industry emerged, and its mechanism is called fiscal sponsorship.
Under the model, a tax-exempt organization accepts funds and administers projects under its own legal umbrella. Sponsored projects do not need to be incorporated separately and often operate through the host organization’s existing administrative structure.
· The Tides Foundation helped pioneer the model in 1976.
· Arabella Advisors, founded in 2005 by a former Clinton administration official, scaled it dramatically.
Its network includes organizations such as:
- New Venture Fund
- Sixteen Thirty Fund
- Windward Fund
- Hopewell Fund
Together, those entities have taken in billions of dollars and supported numerous advocacy campaigns that often appear to the public as independent grassroots efforts.
Tax filings also show significant grant activity flowing among major institutions, including:
- Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors
- Tides organizations
- Arabella-affiliated funds
- The Clinton Foundation
The organizations do not own one another; they fund one another.
What if influence today operates less through ownership than through networks of funding, sponsorship, and shared infrastructure?
THE STRUCTURE REMAINS
The established model now exists at every scale.
From the Gates Foundation, the largest private foundation in the world, to temporary advocacy organizations formed for a single political battle, the structure is remarkably consistent.
Critics from across the political spectrum have raised concerns about transparency. And the criticism is not inherently partisan. The political right operates similar mechanisms through organizations such as DonorsTrust.
The structural questions remain the same regardless of ideology:
· Can citizens identify who is financing the campaigns, advocacy efforts, and public pressure campaigns that shape public life?
- Whether a cause is good or bad is a separate question.
- Can the public see who is funding it?
- Can the public vote on it?
THE NONGOVERNMENTAL ORDER
None of this requires a conspiracy. In fact, the documented record is stronger without one.
- There is no central office issuing orders.
- There is no hidden command structure directing every foundation, nonprofit, or fiscal sponsor.
- There is a model to apply and follow.
A private, tax-exempt institution identifies priorities, finances their implementation, and persists across administrations.
That model was written into the postwar order, granted a standing above the nation-state, and allowed to compound for eighty years.
What began with 41 organizations consulting an international council has become a sector comprising more than 1.8 million tax-exempt organizations holding trillions of dollars in assets.
Its reach extends into nearly every contested question in modern American life.
The record establishes the category, the standing, the money and the growth.
It does not establish a hidden hand. It does not need to.
The fact raised by Reece, by Patman, and by later congressional inquiries remains remarkably simple:
A structure of this size exercises immense influence over public life.
The questions focus on who authorized it. But more importantly, if it no longer serves the public interest, who can vote to change it?
Presidents arrive and leave. The sector remains. And it constantly grows.
It was designed to do that.
— Mel K
Follow The Structure. Follow The Money. Follow The Standing.
