Bulgaria’s non-government organisations, already under-financed, could experience severe financial difficulties after the withdrawal of foreign donors from the country, Bulgarian Centre for Not-for-Profit Law (BCNL) said on February 25 2008, as quoted by mediapool.bg.

Foreign donors provide more than 40 per cent of total financing to Bulgarian NGOs, a survey by pollster MBMD, commissioned by BCNL, showed. Although dependence on foreign funding has halved since 2000, it remained high.

The rest of the funding comes from NGO’s own activities (17 per cent), state subsidies (eight per cent), corporate grants (eight per cent), donations from individuals (six per cent) Bulgarian organisations (six per cent) and municipalities (two per cent).

A study by John Hopkins university in the US showed that American NGO largely counted on their own activities (53 per cent), with state funding accounting for 34 per cent, while grants and donations provided 12 per cent.

The biggest donors for Bulgarian NGOs are the US government through its Agency for International Development (USAID), the Dutch government through its MATRA programme, the Swiss government and UNDP. All have hinted that they planned to withdraw as Bulgaria has been moving to the category of developed economies and was no longer eligible for funds aimed at developing economies.

The void they would leave would be unlikely to be filled by local sources, while the existing legal framework did not encourage donations from Bulgarian taxpayers.

As a possible solution, BCNL proposed increasing state subsidies for NGOs and creating a competitive procedure for the allocation of state funds. More than 90 per cent of all state subsidies, which amounted to seven million leva last year, went to NGOs with privileged status such as the Bulgarian Red Cross. The Bulgarian state had a duty to help build up civic society, having destroyed it in 1946, BCNL said.

Of 25 000 NGOs registered in Bulgaria, only 2 500 were operational and the vast majority are small, according to the centre’s statistics.

Source: www.sofiaecho.com