Spain: Spanish NGOs depend too much on public money

According to an audit carried out by Fundación Lealtad which has recently surveyed more than one hundred Spanish NGOs, the weakest points of them are an excessive dependence on public funds and a faulty performance of their governing bodies. A third part of NGOs lacks any significant private support while also in around the third part of them either some members of their steering committees or boards of management do not regularly attend meetings or their governing bodies are not renewed according to planning. Although private funding reached 50,9% this year, a percentage four points higher than in 2005, those responsible for this auditing state that some NGOs are in need of increasing and diversifying their sources of funding so as to ensure continuity of their activities and to achieve that no external organisation contributes with more than half the total income. This excessive dependence on public funds is to be particularly found in NGOs involved in social action. As for the problem of non-attendance to the meetings of steering committees or boards of management, one of those responsible for the audit stated that solving this matter does not call for much effort: members of these bodies must assume their role and be liable to partners. Nevertheless, according to the same source, 88% of them, a percentage which must be praised as very high, comply with basic principles such as controlling the use of funds, monitoring projects and submitting annual economic reports. But this picture must not be extremely accurate, as the NGOs audited by the Fundación Lealtad are amongst those more concerned about proving their transparency and good governance. Another of the conclusions of this audit is that particular givers still do not gather enough information about the NGOs they finance: responsible giving is still at an initial stage, as people decide on what their relatives or friends tell them or on what they see on tv. This is the fourth year in which the Fundación Lealtad has carried out this audit, which has affected 15 NGOs more than the previous year. This group of NGOs represents 40% of the total budget of the non-profit sector in Spain. www.fundacionlealtad.org