The vexed question of exit
The power of partnerships
1 June 2004
Alliance magazine
Fifteen years ago, the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe fell. In the exhilaration that followed, there was an outpouring of support from public and private sources – more than 60 North American and European foundations responded. Between l989 and l994, they provided over $450 million for civil society and democracy assistance programmes in the region (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia).[1] However, by 1996 the first funders began to phase out their activities or to focus them further south or east, and they left a hole. A new concern surfaced: how could funders leave without endangering the work they had begun?
