How do civic organizations in the region mobilize resources

Trust is basic in the fund raising  

The people present on this presentation could hear about the three examples of fund raising for the civil society sector in Central and Eastern Europe in Bulgaria and in Serbia and Montenegro 

“It is not possible to obtain sustainability to the whole civil society sector, but to individual civic organizations“- noted Plamen Dimitrov, the representative of the organization 3Net from Bulgaria and one of the key-note speakers on the panel “Practices and Methods for Individual Organizations’ Resources “ organized by the Centre for Institutional Development (CID).

Regarding the experiences of the civil society sector in Bulgaria, Dimitrov emphasized that the civic organization should not forget that their true capital is the trust that citizens should have in the civil society sector. “Trust”, said Dimitrov,  “will bring money with certainty, but what is basic and essential is trust itself. The target of a civic organization not in one moment should be fund raising only for fund’s sake, making money is the target of the business sector, of the banks, not of the civic organizations” said Plamen Dimitrov..

According to the model for a sustainable capital of the civil society sector, a strong civil sector helps sustaining the capital of the civil society and the relations in the community in a way that generates civil and political trust, commitment and cooperation among the citizens on a high level of citizens’ engagement and participation. Thus they create conditions for a social integration, public consciousness, actions for development and democratic stability.

The Bulgarian example has shown that care and efforts for sustainability have changed the priorities of the civic organizations. While in 1990 60% of funds of the civic organizations were targeted towards the social development and towards democracy strengthening, in 2001 this percentage has reduced to 25%. On the other side, the funds for projects for the local economy have raised from 36% to 62%.

Veronika Bliski explained the example for Partnership for life environment in Central and Eastern Europe. The Partnership is consisted of 6 independent foundations from Central and Eastern Europe. The mobilization of means was started through creating a constant fund, whose fixed capital would not be used, but the financial means for operations of the organizations would be provided by the interest rates.  According to Bliski, the constant funds have been started in the second half of the 90s, and in some countries there is a legal frame developed on their account. They are suitable for organizations with long history and business plans for the following decades.  “ The raised means must be used for the accomplishment of the mission of the organization” said Bliska ”on contrary the organizations could be faced with the danger of losing the citizens’ trust”

Tanja Ignatovic from the Balkan Fund for Initiatives in the Communities from Belgrade talked about the resource mobilizations in the organizations in Serbia. The research that this organization conducted, has shown that citizens and other sectors are interested in participating in the fund mobilization but there is no strategy for development of philanthropy, that the access to the local donors is not transparent, that there is no simple way of organizing of the citizens, and the range of topics for which have been raised funds is very tight, firstly on account of the restrictive tax regulative.