Financial sustainability remains one of the key challenges civil society organizations (CSOs) in Moldova face, as they continue to rely to a great extent on grants from foreign donors. One way to diversify CSOs’ funding is to increase the resources they receive from other sources, including from the state. In the last 3 years we have actually seen an increase in state funding for CSOs in Moldova: in the areas of social issues, youth, culture and healthcare funding grew from around 1,9 million EUR in 2017 to more than 3 million EUR in 2019. (In 2019 another area was added – monitoring state policies and their implementation with more than 500,000 EUR budgeted for CSOs). However, each ministry is working with different regulations and sometimes the process of distribution lacks sufficient transparency. The need to reform state funding for CSOs in Moldova has also been one of the key recommendations of the CSO Meter Moldova report.
ECNL supports Institutum Virtutes Civilis Moldova (IVC Moldova) to identify the problems in this area and bring together all stakeholders to discuss the best way to regulate this process. On 28 November 2019 IVC Moldova and ECNL organized the event “A step forward in building a new mechanism for direct state funding for CSOs” to initiate a dialogue between representatives of civil society, ministries and state agencies implementing grant programs.
The event sought to improve the mechanism for direct funding of CSO and analyze challenges, which include – among others – the lack of consultations with CSOs, the too short timeline of the projects (just 1 year), or the lack of financing for the administrative costs of CSOs. The State Chancellery not only hosted the event, but also took an active part in the discussions: the panels were moderated by Mr Adrian Ermurachi, deputy Secretary General of the State Chancellery and Ms. Emilia Cebotari, head of the Permanent Secretariats Department. There were more than 50 participants, including 18 from state institutions. As a result of the event, the dialogue between the State Chancellery and CSOs restarted. There was a common agreement on the need for a unified regulation on state funding and it was agreed that IVC Moldova would take the lead in developing it.