On the whole, paucity of human resources is a
characteristic that is noted by different scholars. As Paulina Luong and Erika
Weinthal put it: “most LNGOs have a membership that only hovers around the high
single or low double digits: many, in fact, contain less than 10 members”
(Luong & Weinthal, 1999: 1270). According to scholars, this trend was
aggravated in 1990s “[a]lthough […] the number of NGOs has increased since
independence, both the size of their membership base and their political significance
has decreased” (Luong & Weinthal, 1999: 1280). Although this paradox was
discovered more than a decade ago, it is possible to assert that the given
atypical situation has not changed over the years. For example, Kazakhstan is
still included in the group of countries with low associational density
(Schofer & Longhofer, 2011: 563-564). Nezhina and Ibrayeva (Nezhina &
Ibrayeva, 2013) have also demonstrated that NGOs are not popular among
population in Kazakhstan. World Values Survey also demonstrates that
Kazakhstani civil society organizations have small membership bases (http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWV6.jsp).
On the whole, the overview of previous research demonstrates that the
non-profit sector in Kazakhstan can be characterized by the small size and the
poor membership base. At the same time, according to international indexes Kazakhstani
civil society can be defined as a ‘typical’ case of civil society from a
developing country. For example, Kazakhstan has a mid-level of sustainability
of NGO among countries covered by Civil Society Organization Sustainability
Index (CSO SI) 2014 (https://www.usaid.gov/what-we-do/democracy-human-rights-and-governance/cso-sustainability-index-methodology).
Thus, a focus on the Kazakhstani civil society should be useful.