Profits for Nonprofits [antikvár]

Foreword "PROFITS FOR NONPROFITS" represents the culmination of a yearlong process undertaken by NESsT and its partners to investigate the issue of "sustainable financing" for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)1 in Central Europe. Starting in 1997, NESsT joined forces with Lotos o.p.s. in the Czech Republic, the Civil Society Development Foundation (CSDF) in Hungary, the Centre for Nonprofit Management (CNM) in Slovenia, Partners for Democratic Change (PDCS) in Slovakia, and the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC) to launch the Sustainable NGO Financing Project (SNFP) .2 Our intentions were not to solve the puzzle of NGO sustainability or to identify a panacea for all NGO financing problems. Instead, our goal is to learn from existing experiences and to increase opportunities for NGOs to diversify their financing sources. Of primary concern to NESsT and our NGO colleagues throughout the region are the recurring financing difficulties of individual NGOs, as well as trends in donor funding in Central Europe that threaten the financial sustainability of the nonprofit sector as a whole. Several large donors are phasing out support or closing their doors altogether in Central Europe. Others are simply decreasing their contributions or are changing their funding strategies to focus on particular issues, for example European Union "approximation." Fortunately, numerous efforts are also under way to help NGOs increase their fundraising potential. These include training on grant proposal writing, as well as efforts to stimulate greater individual and corporate philanthropy, to establish greater tax incentives for charitable giving, and to improve the relationships between NGOs and local and state institutions. 1 NESsT uses the term "nongovernmental organization" (NGO) herein to refer to the wide diversity of formally-registered nonprofit, non-state organizations as well as community-based associations and groups which fall outside the sphere of the government and business sectors. 2 Information about all SNFP partners is included in Appendix II.