In Moldova I researched the partnerships between various NGOs and the U.S. Embassy Democracy Commission’s Small Grants Program. My primary interests, as always, were whether the development projects represent grassroots movements or top-down reforms and the sustainability of the development projects and the organizations themselves.
My investigation of these topics was particularly information-rich in Moldova for two reasons. Since I was researching the U.S. Embassy, most of my interviewees spoke English fluently, and a shared cultural background made the important interviewer-interviewee dynamic easier to manage. Also, I had access to many different role-players in these relationships. At the U.S. Embassy Democracy Commission in Chisinau, I interviewed the Grants Specialist, a Moldovan working for the embassy since 2003, and the grants assistant, an American and former Peace Corps. Volunteer. I also interviewed the founder and director of the Independent Journalism Center, the administrator of Promo-Lex (a group of human rights lawyers in Moldova), and the director of a project for teaching youth about using media. Most interestingly, I spoke with several Peace Corps. Volunteers who worked in these organizations. Because they were American students interested in development, quite like I am, they had neither loyalty to their NGOs nor to the granting institution. In essence, I had a guarantee of their sincerity.
My first question is whether the U.S. embassy’s grants reflect grassroots movements that an NGO’s “constituents” have asked for or the priorities of the donor institution simply being implemented via local NGOs. In Macedonia, for example, the USAID project I researched seemed to have a major democratic deficit. The project, which was meant to increase transparency in local government, was proposed by USAID and contracted to a team of three NGOs who started civic centers and gave recommendations for increasing transparency in local government. Importantly, no one ever consulted the communities about whether they really wanted more transparent governance, or if they wanted something else more.
This previous experience contrasted with the Democracy Commission’s small Grants Program. Projects are proposed by the NGOs, and grants that are awarded have “no strings attached.” The U.S. Embassy funds according to a mandate of helping Moldovan democracy consolidate, but even this is interpreted liberally and pragmatically. For example, if regional or local governments are hostile to the idea of projects for strengthening democracy, the Small Grants Program may fund environmental or social projects as well.
Most importantly, the NGOs themselves claim to have a mandate from their constituents, which they have experienced or tested. In the case of the Independent Journalism Center, the director explained that, before her project:
“We did needs-assessments for the media in Moldova every two years or every year. We were asking managers of media organizations what kinds of projects were needed, what were their biggest concerns, what are the qualities of their employees, what are the problems with the graduates of the journalism departments . . . The graduates of standard journalism departments were educated academically, but when they came into the newsroom they didn’t know how to hold a microphone. They didn’t know how to construct a story. They didn’t have any practical skills.”Her solution was to found the School of Advanced Journalism in Chisinau with funding from the U.S. Embassy. At this school, the same members of the media sector who complained of a lack of professionally trained journalists now actually teach the classes. In this story, there’s a very clear demand from a group of Moldovan constituents, and the eventual project seems well-planned to address those constituents’ needs.
Likewise, the Promo-Lex director emotively explained the demand for his NGO in the community:
“People come here and they cry. They cry because we don’t have a mechanism to protect them . . . We ask them what can we do for you and for others in your situation? Many times they give us ideas you need to help us to do this this this. After that we have meetings, brainstorm, and we identify solutions. This is the difference between us and others. Others just look who propose some programs, some money for activities, and after that they decide what activities they can do.”
As the Promo-Lex director articulates, these projects are ideal because they respond to the needs of the community, not the donor agency, and because the grants are a means to serving that constituency, not the financial survival of the organization.
It’s important to credit these organizations, rather than the U.S. Embassy, with the virtues of these projects. They are not democratic and successful mission-driven organizations because of the U.S. Embassy’s grants. The U.S. Embassy’s credit in this situation is giving these NGOs the authority over their own projects, rather than imposing the will of the donor institution.
By far the most interesting aspect of my research in Moldova, with the most diverse range of insights, was how institutions address sustainability--after the money goes away, can the project and the organization survive?
In Macedonia I found that the institutions did not seem to have a clear idea or strategy for sustaining their projects in the future. In Moldova, the two very strong organizations I worked with talked seriously about how their projects and organizations are sustainable. But the U.S. Embassy Grants Specialist--to my enormous surprise--spoke very pragmatically about the sustainability of these projects:
“Sustainability is a long unreachable goal at this point . . . We’re working with the democracy-building NGO and they’re relying only on foreign funding because no local companies will fund democracy-building NGOs . . . Of course we want the results of our projects to continue. So far the only sustainability is the hope that someone else will jump in to fund this project for the next twelve months, or maybe the mayor’s office will jump in.”
The last sentence is certainly disconcerting, and by all accounts an accurate depiction of Moldova‘s civil society sector. Essentially, the strategy for the sustainability of organizations and the sector as a whole, in the view of the U.S. Embassy Grants Specialist, is donor dependency. Pursuing this question further requires an understanding of the legal and cultural barriers that face the civil society sector, and thus necessitate grants for NGOs.
Legally, there aren’t policies to incentivize donation, like giving tax credits for donation to NGOs. Also, companies fear that donating to charities will bring unwanted attention from financial authorities. This is related to the high levels of corruption throughout Moldovan society. According to the grants specialist at the embassy, many companies use double accounting, and might report very low or negative profits to the government. Thus, donating to charity would make their reported income dubious. There is legislation now that might address some of this, which would allow companies to divert 2% of their taxable income to foundations and charities, rather than paying it to the government. The NGO administrators I spoke to all felt that this would be a positive development.
A more long-term barrier is Moldova’s cultural disposition toward NGOs. The U.S. Embassy Grants Specialist described NGOs as being associated with “mismanagement of funds and doing nothing for really high salaries.” He continued,
“Partly the NGOs are to blame because they do not work good enough with the constituency . . . You only hear about all the money that is coming to Moldova, and since NGOs aren’t transparent . . . You have this lack of trust and this negative attitude because the NGO doesn’t work with the people and try to explain what they do . . . Only about three or four percent of people have very high trust in NGOs. Since there’s only three percent of trust in NGOs, a company doesn’t have the motivation to fund NGOs because they’ll be funding structures that are negatively viewed by people.”
A Peace Corps. Volunteer echoed this observation saying,
“In Moldova there’s a distrust of NGOs . . . There’s an active resistance to the services of an NGO by the church in my town . . . The whole notion of volunteering your time, fundraising, giving to charity, is completely foreign to them . . . There’s also the element of corruption . . . NGOs are mistrusted because they think people are getting funding and just pocketing, which sometimes that’s true.”
What results is a civil society sector financially dependent on foreign donors because of a lack of support from their constituents, private companies, and the various levels of government. Across the board, my interviews reflected that the civil society sector in Moldova was awash in grant funds, and there was a myriad of theories about how this might negatively affect the society.
The group of Peace Corps. Volunteers explained how many NGOs select broad mission statements, for example, “helping disadvantaged groups,” with which they can “jump from grant to grant” and adjust their mission statements according to the donors’ priorities in a given year.
The U.S. Embassy Grants Assistant suggested that the abundant funds in the civil society sector may be diverting talented individuals away from government service and private sector jobs.
The U.S. Embassy Grants Specialist even suggested that the donor agencies which pay higher salaries than NGOs and try to hire locals were in-effect poaching the most talented staff from the civil society sector to help implement their own grants programs.
From talking to the NGOs, it’s clear that NGOs do not even ask the private sector for money, since apparently enough is available through grants. For example, Promo-Lex, which claims it could be financially sustainable without grants, says it receives no funding from private companies. When I asked why, the director explained, “Because we didn’t ask. Because we have a lot of activities and we’re full. It’s not necessary.” The NGO director who implemented a project to educate youth about using media likewise said, “I have experience getting funds from businesses, which is really complicated.”
It appears that NGOs have stopped asking for funds from private donors, because it‘s become accepted that companies won‘t help and because there is enough funding from grants that it‘s not “necessary.” Most striking are the comments that getting funds from businesses is complicated, or that the NGO is too busy to be financially independent. This reflects an unhealthy relationship between donors and civil society. Presumably with fewer grants, these NGOs would find time, due to necessity, to ask more private companies for support.
In fact, there is evidence within Moldova that this is true. According to the Grants Specialist from the U.S. Embassy, one NGO comprised of college students, AIESEC Moldova, does get financial support from companies. When AIESEC applied to the U.S. Embassy for funding, the Grants Specialist negotiated a deal in which the U.S. Embassy would fund half the money for a project, but AIESEC would have to get the rest from private donors, so as not to become donor dependent. “The donors have to take this into account, not to destroy something that has been built,” he said.
One Peace Corps. Volunteer echoed my sentiments on sustainability in development exactly:
“Helping Moldovans to solve problems by themselves and improving their ability to solve problems for themselves should be the overall goal of development. If grant money was spent on helping organizations look past getting grant money, then that would be a better use for this money.”
If sustainability is a priority in Moldova’s civil society, and I think it should be, donor institutions would better spend their time and money lobbying for changes in policy and funding projects to change the cultural stigmas surrounding NGOs in Moldova. The U.S. Embassy is doing an admirable job of this, evidenced in its negotiations with AIESEC and their encouragement to NGOs to be more transparent to the public. More institutions doing the same would be a much greater help to Moldova than the status quo.
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