Meeting CEE Trust goals

• The Trust in the CR:

• Impacts and Achievements
  • Overall impacts
  • Meeting CEE Trust goals
• Program Map
• Program Components
  • Creating Favorable Environment for NGOs
  • Creating Favorable Environment for Advocacy and Public Policy
  • Institutional Support for NGOs
  • Knowledge Fund
  • Consultants’ Guild
  • Strenghtening Regional Foundations
  • Model Community and Regional Projects
  • Ensuring Access to the EU funding
  • Increasing Support from the Private Sector
  • Increasing Support from Individuals
• Program In Spotlight
  • CEET in facts and figures
  • CEET in the eyes of grantees
  • CEET in stories
  • CEET in pics
• Annotated Summary of Grants( pdf 153 kB)

Meeting CEE Trust goals

• Enabling Environment
• NGO capacity
• Sustainability

Sustainability

The CEE Trust Objective: To support the long-term financial sustainability of nonprofit organizations

Background:

Despite the significant progress made thanks to the CEE Trust program, many challenges still lie ahead in terms of financial sustainability and developing a fundraising portfolio that would allow NGOs to consistently follow their mission and avoid organizational crises. The EU funding proved to be a prospective source for only certain types of NGOs - those with a relatively high capacity and potential for developing cross-sectoral partnerships and/or service-providing NGOs. At the same time, corporate giving is still rather low compared to Western standards, and - similar to the EU sources - corporate donors tend to support "media-attractive" projects. Individual giving, despite the fact that it is permanently increasing in quantity, still lies primarily in anonymous, one-time gifts. The vast majority of NGOs suffer from a lack of unrestricted resources that would allow for investments in fundraising and the development of operating funds. Especially those NGOs that cannot reach and/or cannot accept funding from public administrations and the EU - especially those running "unpopular" agendas, such as advocacy groups and watchdogs - face an extremely challenging situation that puts their mission, their independence, and their survival at risk.

In this light, the accomplishments achieved thanks to the CEE Trust program take on even higher importance. They have laid the foundation for future efforts by both individual NGOs and the nonprofit sector at large.

Program Response:

Firstly, the program aimed at strengthening funding opportunities in regions, through

• working with regional and community foundations to make them strong and transparent funding sources for local NGOs that are, at the same time, able to substantially stimulate local philanthropy;
• generating models of local cross-sectoral partnerships that would enable NGOs to raise EU support for their community-oriented projects.

Secondly, the program strived to assist NGOs in addressing new funding opportunities that emerged due to the EU accession through

• ensuring a wide range of technical assistance tools, from concise, regularly updated information, training and consultancy programs, up to networking opportunities and stipends that would allow Czech NGOs to become acquainted with potential partners in Brussels and other EU countries;
• policy work to involve NGOs in the decision-making processes, on both the national and international level;
• direct technical and financial assistance to selected NGOs, in order to gather experience and provide models for NGO applicants of EU funding.

Thirdly, the program aimed to highlight the importance of support from individual non-anonymous donors as a source of stable unrestricted income, which could become a crucial tool for achieving long-term sustainability, while unwaveringly pursuing the organization's mission. At the same time, the program strived to stimulate both corporate and individual philanthropy and make it easier for donors to give.

Program Results:

• Regional / community foundations were strengthened and became more transparent funding sources for local NGOs. The organizational capacity of participating regional / community foundations has substantially increased: The planning phase helped them to develop their future visions and to better define their role in the given community. The institutional grants, together with seminars, workshops and consultations, provided them with skills and resources to follow their vision. Thanks to re-granting funds, the foundations further elaborated their grantmaking skills, developed grant schemes and mechanisms for running open, transparent grant rounds. Moreover, the success in meeting the conditions for challenge grants has proved their increased capacity to raise funds in their communities for both re-granting and endowment building - a capacity that is crucial for regional / community foundations to carry out their role in funding small local projects. Their achievements are even more impressive in light of the fact that they were based on both attracting new donors and the effective employment of new fundraising methods. The program provided them with a unique opportunity for the exchange of experience and testing new approaches in their organizational development.

All in all, the program represented an unprecedented stimulus for regional / community foundations to increase their creativity, to undertake efforts in terms of thinking and experimenting, investing in organizational development and taking new steps. This increased dynamics and capacity of the participants represents the most valuable impact of the programming, making it more than just a one-time intervention and resulting in long-lasting benefits. On the other hand, the introductory phase of the program, in particular, also clearly revealed that Czech domestic grantmakers - even the most developed ones - are still relatively underdeveloped and under-resourced.

• Various tools were developed helped increase the capacity of the NGO sector to address EU funding - from information resources, networking within and outside the Czech Republic (including developing access to decision-making processes at the public administration level). On the regional level, a set of model local-partnership projects was developed and documented in order to serve Czech NGOs and cross-sectoral partnerships applying for EU funding. The case studies provide a list of recommendations for both NGOs and public administrations, along with the experiences of the individual organizations to learn from. With this in hand, NGOs can better judge whether or not they have the required capacity available to apply for and implement EU-funded projects. The extensive know-how that was gathered illustrates both the potentials and the threats linked to cooperation with local administrations and businesses. At the same time, the high success rate of the projects submitted to the EU (16 out of 23 project applications succeeded and were awarded approx. 3.43 mil. USD from EU funds) also verified the soundness and importance of comprehensive technical assistance for those NGOs that have had no prior experience with EU funding mechanisms.
  
  
• The CEET program substantially contributed to both the quantitative and qualitative growth of NGO capacity and skills related to fundraising from individuals. It promoted systematic fundraising based on a strategic approach and regular planning, in contrast to the prevailing practice of ad-hoc fundraising for specific projects. The NGOs learned how to plan effectively and realistically, how to diversify their funding portfolio in order to adapt to the new funding environment and to cover their running costs, and how to evaluate the results of their fundraising activities. At the same time, this process helped better integrate fundraising into the organizations through highlighting success stories that dispelled the myths that Western fundraising methods cannot work in the post-communist countries, and thus increased the self-confidence of fundraisers. The program also provided the participants with the opportunity to test and develop new techniques, such as direct dialogue, telemarketing and online giving, and to make use of fundraising databases and the internet. Last but not least, the program identified the potential of fundraising from non-anonymous, long-term supporters as a source of unrestricted, reliable income.
  
  
• The CEE Trust program gave birth to a broad coalition of over 50 Czech NGOs jointly striving to improve the environment for individual philanthropy, e.g. to introduce easy-to-give payment systems in banks and more favorable postal fees.
  
  
• The CEE Trust program assisted the development of the SMS charity giving system and funded the initial stage of the Donors Message Service Project run by the Czech Donors Forum.
  
  
• The program stimulated close collaboration between NGOs, individual fundraisers and fundraising experts. It helped develop an informal Fundraisers' Club that serves for experience sharing and informal coaching, increased the number of fundraising consultants, and produced a series of publications and materials on various aspects of fundraising.

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