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The Regional Environmental Reconstruction Programme for South Eastern EuropeREReP Record |
| Funding gap grows in green movement Green West Balkan is a civil society group formed after 2000 with an annual budget of EUR 17,175. Out of its rented office, the group works on environmental education, nature conservation and waste issues — sometimes locally, sometimes on a regional scale. But the group is often forced to adapt to donor priorities and finds it hard to define a fundraising strategy, giving its two paid staff members a sense of financial insecurity. Green West Balkan relies on 155 volunteers and 304 members. The group is dissatisfied with the provision of official environmental information and has difficulty influencing decision makers. Sound familiar? Probably yes, if you work for or with environmental civil society organisations (ECSO) in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, or Serbia and Kosovo (territory under temporary UN administration). In fact, Green West Balkan is not a real group but a composite of ECSOs across South Eastern Europe. Its figures are taken from statistical averages from a recently completed survey by the Regional Environmental Center (REC).
The survey assessed environmental groups by five main determinants: legal and regulatory factors, resources, human and organisational capacities, their information and knowledge base, and level of public accountability. All of the determinants were viewed from both the internal organisational and external operating environment perspectives, to try to get as clear a picture as possible of the nature of ECSOs and the factors affecting them. The results show that the groups face many difficulties in developing and that a financial gap is widening between the haves and have-nots. Methodology The REC survey was carried out through a general questionnaire open to all environmental groups active in the target region in addition to a series of targeted interviews with a cross-section of ECSOs and other stakeholders, including support organisations and government representatives. Other published surveys and research was collected as a part of the assessment. In all, more than 400 groups responded to the questionnaire and more than 100 cooperated in face-to-face interviews during a three-month period. A number of the survey questions were asked in a previous directory survey carried out by the REC in 2001. In comparing the results of the two surveys a number of trends emerged. For example, more people have begun working in the movement as paid employees, from 326 in 2001 to 959 in 2006 (and note from slightly fewer surveyed groups). However, the number of members reported went down markedly from 403,837 to 131,776 people, while the number of volunteers increased from a mere 2,840 in 2001 to 67,144 in 2006. These numbers seem to indicate further professionalisation of ECSOs by involving more people as full-time or parttime employees and engaging more people as active volunteers. The decrease in membership may suggest that the organisations are generally more careful — or realistic — in defining who is a member, or it could indicate a wane in the environmental movement’s popularity. However, the increase in the number of volunteers working for and active with the groups suggests that the organisations are gradually getting better at involving people qualitatively into their actions. As indicated in the accompanying table on budgets and workforce, the total annual budget for the sector is EUR 7,436,750 (comparing favourably with EUR 3,400,250 in 2001). In all countries in the sample we see an increase in estimated total budgets, but the degree of increase varies. One should also realise that the estimated average size of the ECSOs’ budgets has increased in all territories except Kosovo. However, if we look country by country at the percentage of ECSOs whose budgets are in the bottom two categories (zero or less than EUR 500) an interesting picture appears. In most countries — despite an increase in overall total budgets — the percentage of groups in the lowest budget categories has increased. These comparisons suggest there has been a measurable concentration of financial resources into bigger organisations, coupled with an increasing number of organisations with no or minimal budgets. We might conclude that a situation of haves and have-nots is developing, which could have implications in both the activity and diversity of the sector. Narrow support base Most ECSOs in the Balkans depend on donations and grants from foundations, be they domestic, foreign or international. The resource base for ECSOs is too narrow. Membership dues were listed as a common source in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Domestic government and other publicsector grants and donations gained importance in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. It is interesting that domestic business and corporate sponsorship donations and grants were marked as one of the most common sources only in Croatia. This perhaps indicates an important link between general economic and social development in a given country and the ability or willingness of the private sector to contribute for nonprofit activities. On the other hand, it may be a reflection of Croatian groups broadening their funding base to make up for the withdrawal of foreign aid programmes.
Concerning the groups’ scope of activities, few differences can be seen between 2001 and 2006. The top five priority topics are: - environmental education/education for sustainable
development; This result is very similar to the 2001 topics, when nature protection, environmental education, public participation, biodiversity and tourism had the highest scores. However, the introduction of more “brown issues” in the top five, such as waste, is perhaps an indicator of changing priorities. The survey also evaluated the means with which the work is carried out. The top three ranked were: - awareness-raising campaigns; This shows a continuing pattern from 2001, when the main activities were education, awareness raising and conferences/ meetings. Donors of ECSOs should perhaps bear in mind these topic and activity priorities when setting their own funding priorities as clearly the number of groups working in certain fields is sometimes limited. Another pertinent set of data concerns the groups’ ages. Results showed the number of ECSOs registered during each of the following time periods: - Before 1990 (33); These figures indicate that the majority of Balkan ECSOs are less than five years old, reminding us that support for building their capacity as institutions is still required. The survey was conducted within a four-year programme of support to ECSOs in South Eastern Europe. Called SECTOR and funded by the Swedish International Development and Cooperation Agency (Sida), the programme will consider findings from the survey to guide its support. In addition, the REC intends to widely disseminate the results, both to the movement and to those that support it. A country-by-country summary of the survey results can be found in the new directory of ECSOs (fully searchable on the REC website), as can the full version of the survey report. A similar survey is being carried out in the new member states of the EU by the REC and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Robert Atkinson is the director for civil initiatives, REC. More information on SECTOR can be found at the following website: <www.rec.org/sector>. |
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