About 80% of the civil society organizations in Moldova are dependent on external funds. These obtain funds from individual donations and the private sector of Moldova only partially. These are the findings of a team of national and foreign experts who carried out a study to assess the process of collecting funds from domestic sources, IPN reports.
According to the experts, the legislative shortcomings are one of the reasons why the organizations do not collect funds from national sources. Expert Daniela Vidaicu considers the law on philanthropy and sponsorship is unclear. That’s why the organizations prefer to apply to foreign programs, to work out projects and then benefit from donations. By instituting exemptions, the state could support and develop local sponsorship and philanthropy so as to help the organizations implement different programs.
Director of the Center “Contact” Sergey Neicovcen said the filling of applications to obtain funds within projects launched by foreign donors is the most commonly used method of collecting funds. On the other hand, when they want to collect funds from domestic sources, the NGOs prefer to use conservative methods such as concerts or charity events.
According to the study, which covered a sample of 30 NGOs, only two of these have a specialist dealing with the collection of funds from local sources. More than half of the questioned organizations do not have strategies for attracting funds from internal sources.
To stimulate the collection of funds from national sources, the experts recommended immediately adopting amendments to the Tax Code so as to make the mechanism for redirecting 2% of the income tax to NGOs functional and restoring the 10% deductions for persons who make donations for philanthropic or sponsorship purposes. They also recommend introducing a simplified procedure for confirming donations, including electronically.
The study “Collection of funds by the civil society organizations of the Republic of Moldova from internal sources: opportunities and prospects” was supported financially by the United States Agency for International Development.
