Poland: NGOs move away from constituencies and local communities

Research and the very observation of the Polish NGOs show that Polish NGOs are moving away from their constituencies and local communities. Although there are a few reasons for that, the most important seem to be lack of own financial endowment and, resulting from it, high dependence of Polish organizations on external, typically government or business funding. 76% of Polish organizations do not possess any endowment or reserves and those that have endowments or reserves would use it, without additional funding, within nine months, on average. Given low culture of philanthropy in Poland and the general poverty of many people, government grants and business support appear to NGOs as the only alternative to the lack of own endowment. Organizations then prefer to seek grants and business support rather than to rely on membership fees. Therefore, a great number of organizations do not engage in organized and effective activities to encourage new individuals to become members of their organization. For most associations, membership is more of a formality, or a necessary condition of registering an association, than an important basis and reference point of their functioning. At the same time, an organizational lack of support for people who would be eager to volunteer for organizations is identified as the second, most important problem for NGOs after funding. To avoid the problem of membership or support of local constituencies, many people establish foundations that, according to Polish law, do not require neither membership nor endowment, that act like associations, which will be discussed later on. Most organizations then do not have a membership base or consistent local support they can rely on. What is more, there are organizations that seek funding from many sources. This, however and unfortunately carries the risk that seeking funding and reporting on funds received will almost become the main mission of organizations as they demands a great deal of time, strategic thinking and other resources. As a result, the needs of constituencies are not taken into account. Dependence on grants make most organizations operate ?from one project to another? and hardly ever look beyond the next grant. If some larger organizations seem to have more strategy than the smaller ones, it is only the result of the fact that they are awarded longer-term funding, which is becoming available, fortunately more often, both from central government and the EU. If we look at the work of those larger organizations over last ten years or so we will see that their priorities also changed according to the priorities of the available funding. Responsiveness to the community is then a rather weak aspect of the functioning of Polish NGOs. As previously stated, Polish NGOs do not rely much on the support of local constituencies, but rather more on the support of grant-makers from business and government sectors (including the EU level). In consequence, the goods and services that NGOs provide tend to reflect the priorities of their funders and grant-makers rather than the needs of their constituents. Over time, therefore, it seems that NGOs are becoming more and more detached from groups that might otherwise be their constituencies. If they take into consideration the needs of people living in the area of their activity, it is mostly with respect to looking for customers for the products and services they wish to sell for profit. The Act on Public Benefit Activity and Volunteer Work from 2003 enabled some organizations to be designated public benefit organizations, a status which allows such organizations to campaign to receive up to 1% of an individual?s tax liabilities. Over the last two years many organizations received such status, and others intensified their campaigns to encourage individual taxpayers to make contributions from their tax liabilities. As a result, the number of citizens that paid 1% of their tax liabilities to chosen nonprofits increased from less than 3% in 2004 to 4.85% in 2005. In 2005 therefore, one in twenty individuals used the 1% law. It seemed that the campaigns for 1% of individuals? tax liabilities could be a part of efforts to build local constituencies for NGOs. This might be true in some regions, but some developments suggest that this is not necessarily the case. First, there is a difference between long-term, consistent local constituency building and support for an organization?s initiatives overall and the once a year effort to get the 1% contribution from individuals from the local area. Furthermore, many citizens give the 1% contribution to a different organization every year or to a national, rather than local organization. The field of work of an organization seems to be more important for many individuals than the area of operation when they are selecting organizations they want to support. The discussed throughout the text situation of low level of endowment of Polish NGOs and low level of connection with local constituencies is particularly visible in the case of Polish foundations. Foundations in Poland operate according to the Law on Foundations, which came into force in 1984. Unlike foundations in many other developed countries (particularly the U.S.), the vast majority of Polish foundations do not have endowment and do not give away grants. In fact, they are operational organizations that fundraise and apply for various grants and contracts to be able to carry out mission-related activities. It has to be stressed that, although the recent proposals of amendment to the Act on Foundations wanted to change that, according to the law currently in force, there is no requirement of the minimal initial capital to set up a foundation. In reality, the most common are foundations with initial capital equivalent to 250 Euro. In consequence, most Polish foundations act like associations without members. And this also shows that having no endowment people prefer to set up a foundation rather than an association to avoid the necessity of having members. Polish NGOs are then moving away from their constituencies and local communities, even though responsiveness to the needs of local communities has been often considered as one of the main roles to be played by nongovernmental organizations.