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Description
A main objective of our project is to simplify formal and legal conditions for Polish social organizations. An indirect objective is to increase the capabilities of local organizations to conduct advocacy activities in this matter. The project responds to the problem of increasing formal requirements imposed on organizations, which render it more difficult for citizens to get involved and discouraging them from acting for others and a common good. Unfortunately, instead of lessening, such barriers are increasing year after year, which is confirmed by the report entitled “The condition of non-governmental organizations in 2018" prepared by the Klon/Jawor Association, which indicated that the red tape in public administration is a problem hindering activities of 59% organizations. Such a state of affairs results in leaders being fatigued and burned out as they are overwhelmed by the number of obligations - this fact was reported by nearly a half of them. This also leads to a decrease in the number of members in organizations (“Non-profit sector in 2018", Statistics Poland, 2020). We plan to organize 25 meetings, 64 webinars, conduct a monitoring office, a #prosteNGO campaign as well as to develop “Theses on simplifications", that is a collection of changes suggested in the most important acts regulating social activities. Our activities will result in engaging at least 100 local organizations in activities aimed at simplifying formalities in social activities, thus, increasing their organizational potential to i.a. conduct activities in the area of monitoring and advocacy. Our partner, the Polish Robert Schuman Foundation, is more experienced in cooperating with large entities and institutions, also with public administration - both national and European. Due to the above-mentioned experience, the Partner conducts the office of law monitoring, which is located in Warsaw, the Partner is also responsible for promoting and organizing a project kick-off meeting.
Summary of project results
The many formal requirements for non-governmental organizations (ngo''s) in Poland make it difficult and discouraging for citizens to get involved. Local ngo''s, even if they identify the problem, often do not know that it is inherent not only to them - that it is a systemic problem.
With this in mind, as part of the project we undertook educational activities aimed at ngo''s, as well as activities aimed at simplifying the formal and legal conditions. The work was - and still is - conducted under the banner of #prosteNGO. The intermediate goal of the project was the ongoing identification of formal barriers hindering ngo''s operations and increasing the capacity of local ngo''s to carry out activities to remove these barriers.
As part of the project, we held 26 meetings and 70 webinars with a total of 946 participants from 565 ngo''s across Poland. 99% of ngo''s participating in the above-mentioned forms of support declared an increase in knowledge, and 96% increased their capacity for monitoring and advocacy activities, which proves that the project''s results were achieved.
Due to the above-mentioned scale of activities and the range of content, participants belonged to both local organizations from the sector concerned (e.g., local sports clubs) and large organizations in the case of, for example, discussing systemic regulations (e.g., the Law on Benefits).
For 2 years, the project operated a Monitoring Office, whose tasks included identifying planned legal changes regarding ngo activity. As part of the Office, the #prosteNGO Bulletin was published (it is still published), subscribed to by 276 recipients.
The list of Theses has been steadily expanded - it currently has 100 entries, of which up to 70 have been one-pagers. Theses is an updated list of proposed solutions that can simplify social activities.
The Theses provide a starting point for advocacy activities. Among other things, the material formed the basis for the Declaration of Cooperation for Good Law for NGOs, signed on September 29, 2023 in Warsaw by the Civic Coalition, the New Left and the Third Way, as well as representatives and representatives of OFOP and the Donors Forum
To disseminate the products developed under the project, as part of the additional project "#prosteNGO! Why does it take so long?" the grantee carried out a two-month project aimed at promoting the results of the "Good law for social organizations - think centrally, act locally" project, in particular the "theses", i.e. postulates for legal changes, the implementation of which would facilitate the functioning of NGOs in Poland. This was achieved through expert meetings and dissemination meetings, publication of texts on the Ngo.pl website, as well as information and advertising campaigns. Thanks to them, we managed to reach about 100 people actively participating in the meetings, about 1,000 people reading the articles on the Ngo.pl website and more than 1 million recipients of the promotional campaigns on the Internet.
The above testifies to the relevance of the project intervention and indicates the real impact of the activities on the non-governmental sector in Poland.
The project was very relevant to the sector. Between 2021 and 2023, it was the sector''s main activity aimed at improving the law for ngo''s in Poland and increasing knowledge of the law among organizations.