Grantmaking beyond accession

The ambiguity in the title of the 2003 GEG meeting was quite deliberate: the intention was to look at the impact of EU enlargement not only on candidate countries but on the whole region. In the course of two days of excellent discussion and debate, one central conclusion could be drawn: grantmaking beyond accession will be a whole lot more complicated than ever before.

A common assumption heard in discussions of civil society post-enlargement is that new sources of EU funding will be available for NGOs to replace funding from private foundations, many of which have already begun to scale down programmes in the accession countries. Is this a reasonable assumption?

The answer from several speakers was very much on the lines of ‘yes, but…’ Mabel Wisse-Smit (OSI Brussels) stressed the differential impact of enlargement on funding of service-providing NGOs vis-à-vis what she termed ‘watchdogs’ (advocacy, campaigning, policy groups, etc). Structural funds from the EU will become available, but for all but the largest service-providing NGOs the bureaucracy involved in pursuing contracts is likely to prove daunting. Heather Grabbe (Centre for European Reform) pointed out that budgets for civil society funding in the European Commission (currently the source of most funding for the sector) will be cut, but that money will become available through the EU Parliament. This will increase the importance of MEPs, but make access a more complicated process.

Another common assumption about funding post-enlargement is that private funding is moving east. Certainly there has been a shift of emphasis in some larger (particularly US) foundations towards South-East Europe, but, as a speaker from Kyrgyzstan put it, If funders departed Central and Eastern Europe heading east, they lost their way.

The importance of raising local funds was stressed repeatedly throughout the meeting, though there was little optimism that in the short term local funding could replace foundation support, in part because of a general lack of fundraising capacity. Craig Kennedy, speaking in the closing plenary, challenged grantmakers to bring in new donors, extend partnerships, and attract public money to match private funds.

Another challenge for grantmakers will be to do much more to facilitate debate on policy matters and to maintain support for policy groups and think-tanks. Enlargement will bring new opportunities for NGOs in accession countries to get involved in policy issues as national governments begin to engage with EU-wide strategic polices such as defence and foreign policy. Similarly, enlargement will open the way for challenging issues such as minorities to be tackled at a European level. Ivan Krastev (Centre for Liberal Strategies, Bulgaria) stressed the need to greatly enhance the level of debate – something that requires both specialist NGOs to monitor EU policies and actions and NGOs in general to provide analysis and information to the public. This will be vital in tackling what Krastev referred to as the ‘provincialism of policy debates’, and also in challenging ‘ghettos of opinion’ – a phenomenon caused by NGOs rarely bringing together people of different opinions.

Andrew Kingman is director of Allavida. He can be contacted at andrewk@allavida.org

EVENT Grantmakers East Group Annual Meeting
Date 23-24 October
Venue Bratislava, Slovakia
Theme Grantmaking Beyond Accession