NGOs emerged as an alternative to direct government services during the latter decades of the 20th century. The first growth spurt came in the 1960s. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty saw NGOs as a means of fusing big-government spending with localistic sensibilities. According to the then-influential philosophy of “community action,” top-down solutions to social problems ran the unacceptable risk of race- and class-based discrimination. What’s more, adherents believed, if the government truly wanted to address poverty’s root causes, the poor needed to be involved in leading and running organizations meant to help them.