A Business Project for a Civic Stance

The term civil society has gained much currency of late. Yet when we speak about the third sector in Ukraine, it’s difficult to define its role in society clearly. A friend of mine, a manager of an advocacy group for the disabled, visited the US, where he saw how the third sector should work. He saw the resource base of their civic organizations and the advocacy campaigns that they conduct. Most importantly, they are a force to reckon with in the US. After his trip, which made him see many things in a different way, he had to return to the complex reality of Ukraine, where he has to work his way through miles of red tape just to secure premises for his organization. Paradoxically, even though every official nods in agreement and never says “no,” nothing seems to help propel this undertaking forward.

Another friend of mine, who also works in the civic sector, visited Poland. She showed me photos of a neat cottage owned by a local civic organization and told me about the cooperation that exists between nongovernmental organizations and the local authorities. Again, this sharply contrasts with the Ukrainian reality, particularly in the sphere of budget allocations for nongovernmental initiatives. “Cooperation with NGOs is common practice for the Polish authorities. The government delegates programs for combating and preventing alcoholism, sports programs for youth, etc., to civic organizations and allocates funds from municipal budgets.”

Meanwhile, what is happening in Ukraine? “Local budgets in our oblast provide virtually no funding for nongovernmental projects,” says Mykola Markevych, president of the Sumy oblast charity foundation Blahovist. Existing laws, however, do provide for such allocations. In particular, the law “On Local Self-Government in Ukraine” provides for competition-based funding for social projects proposed by civic organizations. Several other pieces of legislation provide for allocations for youth organizations from local budgets. Yet there are no specific provisions that would regulate the principles and mechanisms of such funding. According to the youth projects manager at the Blahovist foundation, Viktor Bobyrenko, such mechanisms would enable civic organizations to receive funds from local budgets and influence the decision-making process at the community level. With this goal in mind, the Blahovist foundation has launched a project called “New Mechanisms for the Funding of Civil Society Organizations for the Benefit of the Community.”

Still, some positive, albeit limited, experience has been accumulated. In 1999 two partners, the Sumy Oblast Committee for Youth Organizations and Blahovist, secured a separate item in the oblast budget entitled “Funding of Youth Programs and Projects of Youth Organizations.” Since then, youth organization projects have been funded from the oblast budget via the family and youth department. City budgets remain uncommitted, however. For example, in this year’s city budget Sumy earmarked 87,000 hryvnias for youth policy funding, most of it used to finance entertainment events organized by private companies selected through the tendering system. Viktor Bobyrenko believes that this is happening for lack of an alternative funding mechanism, while the local authorities lack the knowledge or desire to work differently.

Therefore, the project “New Mechanisms for the Funding of Civil Society Organizations for the Benefit of the Community” aims to fill this gap by showing civic organizations new possibilities for securing funds and helping the local authorities to draft provisions that would regulate the funding of such projects. In Sumy oblast this project is being implemented as part of the USAID-funded program Ukraine Citizen Action Network (UCAN). The project covers three district centers: Okhtyrka, Hlukhiv, and Lebedyn. For local civic organizations it is an opportunity to learn a great deal, especially how to prepare project documentation in order to secure funding.

“We now realize how many opportunities we have lost,” says Oleh Lata, head of the Hlukhiv youth civic organization Muzhnist [Fortitude], adding: “After all, we could have been receiving grants from donor organizations for numerous projects to benefit the community. Yet we had no idea how to prepare project documentation or how to secure grants. We only heard rumors that this was possible.”

Although there are many ideas, they are not all that easy to bring to life because of lack of knowledge and experience in securing funds. For example, there was a joint initiative to set up a modern health center on the premises of a local hospital, “so that the locals could have rest and recreation, and take a dip in the pool.” Civic organizations conducted extensive preparatory work, calculated costs, and formulated a complex mechanism that envisioned actively involving local companies in the funding of the health center. But owing to lack of experience and knowledge, they were unable to execute the project and secure funding from donors.

Aside from the absence of mechanisms that would enable local budgets to allocate funding for nongovernmental initiatives, there is another major problem: civic organizations, at least those in the periphery, need guidance on how to draft these projects. The new possibilities that would emerge in areas where these problems are solved at least partially should promote the development of a civil society in Ukraine. This is the best-case scenario. Tellingly, the town halls of Hlukhiv, Okhtyrka, and Lebedyn have already agreed to join the project “New Mechanisms for the Funding of Civil Society Organizations.” Lebedyn Town Hall, for one, has passed a resolution to call a tender for social programs to be funded from the town budget. How fruitful their future cooperation will be depends on the efforts of civic organizations. As they say, no pain, no gain. It’s one thing when civic organizations want to work but lack the necessary skills and knowledge. It’s altogether a different matter when they are not all that eager to work. I find it puzzling that so few people show up for free training for oblast NGOs on how to prepare project documentation or conduct advocacy campaigns. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, given the fact that the authorities still view the third sector as something unimportant and efforts by NGOs as child’s play, which do not merit special attention. In big cities there are enough success stories, credit for which goes to civic organizations. But in the periphery such stories are the exception rather than the rule.