It is important to mention at the outset that the material presented in the next three chapters is simply a summary of opinions expressed by representatives from CEE NGOs, and not necessarily an accurate and objective portrayal of the day-to-day situation in the NGO community; a difference may exist, for instance, between what was reported by the NGOs and the actual facts. This possibility aside, the results of this study are assumed to be an accurate representation of the current state of the NGO community in CEE.
Chapter Three presents the results from each question in the mail questionnaire, and is organized in the following manner. First, the original question from the mail questionnaire is stated, followed by comprehensive statistical results, and any results for specific countries and/or subregions that differ significantly from the CEE average. Then, significant correlations between financial status, level of success, and experience with the REC are identified. Finally, an overall analysis of the results is provided. Additional information specific to each country can be found in Chapter Six.
Q2: Where is your organization located?
More than half of the NGOs (56 percent) are located in small towns (under 300,000 inhabitants), one-fifth (18 percent) are located in large cites (more than 300,000 inhabitants), and about one-quarter (26 percent) are located in capital cities.
In Albania and Bulgaria, significantly fewer NGOs are active in areas outside their respective capital cities. This is due in part to the fact that a much greater proportion of the population in Albania and Bulgaria resides in the national capitals than is true in other countries, such as the Czech Republic and Poland, where more people live in rural areas and smaller urban centers. Figure 3.2 clearly shows that not all NGOs are located in capital cities; overall, NGOs operate from a variety of locations across CEE.
Q3: Do you represent a whole organization or one of its particular subdivisions?
The majority of NGOs (70 percent) are unified, comprehensive organizations. About one-fifth (18 percent) are specialized branches of larger organizations, and about one-tenth (12 percent) are local branches of larger umbrella organizations.
Q4. How important is environmental work for your organization?
Just less than half of the NGOs (47 percent) focus only on environmental activities. More than one-third (37 percent) focus between half and all of their efforts on environmental activities, while roughly one-sixth (16 percent) of the respondents said that environmental work comprises less than half of all their work. These results show that about half of all NGOs conduct projects that are related to issues outside of the environmental field. (See Figure 3.3)
Q5: How many active members are in your organization?
The largest proportion of NGOs in the sample (32 percent) have between 11 and 25 active members. One-fourth of the groups (27 percent) have from 0 to 10 active members, while only 14 percent have from 26 to 50 active members. Many NGOs have only a few members, and only a very few NGOs have many members. For example, only 11 percent of the groups have 51 to 100 members, and less than ten percent (8.2 percent) have between 101 and 500 active members. A few NGOs (1.2 percent) have between 501 and 1000 active members or more than 1000 active (5.5 percent). (See Figure 3.4)
Q8: Is your organization officially registered?
The overwhelming majority of all NGOs (90 percent) are registered. The number of organizations that are registered in Estonia, Hungary, Poland, and Lithuania is well below the CEE average. While the problem of becoming officially registered is important to NGOs early in their organizational lifetime, it is not reported as a problem by older NGOs.
Q9: When was your organization officially registered?
Most NGOs (59 percent) were registered in the 1990s, after the fall of communist political systems across CEE. About one-fourth of current NGOs (27 percent) were already active in the 1980s, and only 8.5 percent of the current number of NGOs existed in CEE between 1900 and 1970. About 180 new groups became officially registered each year between 1990 and 1996. (See Figure 3.5)
In Albania, Bulgaria and Hungary, NGOs typically became registered between 1989 and 1996, while most NGOs in the Czech Republic were founded in the 1980s, and the majority of NGOs in Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia were founded in the 1970s.
Q10: Please indicate which category best describes the official legal status of your organization.
The largest number of NGOs (34 percent) label themselves as grassroots NGOs. The second largest identifiable category of NGOs are branches of larger, regional environmental groups (19 percent). Non-profit foundations and environmental professionals make up significantly less of the NGO community (13 percent).
Overall, the proportion of grassroots organizations is significantly less in Bulgaria, Slovakia and Slovenia, while the number of grassroots organizations in Macedonia and Croatia is greater than the CEE average. One the other hand, the number of NGOs made up of professional environmentalists is higher than the CEE average in Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania. Non-profit foundations are relatively common in Hungary and Estonia.
Q11: Do the activities of your organization comply with the organization's officially registered status?
Most groups (75 percent) stated that their activities basically comply with their legal status. However, about one-sixth (17 percent) perform activities that fall outside of their legal status, and a few (4.3 percent) do not work to the full scope of their legal status.
Q12: At which level does your organization operate?
Almost half of environmental NGOs (43 percent) operate mainly at the local level, while just less than one-third (30 percent) operate in a particular region of their country, and one-fourth (24 percent) operate nationwide. Only a very few NGOs (2.4 percent) operate internationally.
Countries with NGOs that are more active on the national level include Estonia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania. Albania and the Czech Republic have a higher percentage of NGOs that are active mainly at the local level. These results show that it is more common for NGOs to operate locally or within a particular region of a given country than at the national or international levels.
Q118: What kind of membership does your organization offer?
Almost half of the groups (48 percent) have fixed memberships with dues. At the other end of the spectrum, one-sixth (16 percent) do not have any type of membership. The other two membership options, "fixed membership without dues" and the "combined model," are utilized by only 18 percent of the NGO community. While many NGOs have fixed memberships with dues, this type of membership is characteristic of unsuccessful NGOs and does not contribute much to NGOs' financial resources.
Q119: Which of the following options best describes your organization's office accommodations? (Suggestion: Include options in brackets.)
About half of all NGOs (49 percent) have a permanent office of some kind; on the other hand, almost half of the groups (43 percent) don't have any type of office at all, and a large portion (38 percent) only work informally. Just over one-fourth (27 percent) rent an office, and about one-fifth (22 percent) own their own head office. A few (8.3 percent) occasionally rent rooms to conduct their work, or do not need any office space at all (4.7 percent).
The majority of NGOs in Estonia, Macedonia, Poland, Romania and Slovakia have some sort of permanent office. Administrative assistants are more often present in NGOs from Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Poland and Slovakia, and there are also more professional managers in Bulgaria, Poland and Slovakia. Employing activists from the West occurs most often in the Czech Republic and Poland.
Q120 to Q122: How many paid personnel or specialists (both part-time and full-time) are employed by your organization?
Three-quarters of NGOs (74 percent) have no paid administrative staff. Most (80 percent) have no salaried professional managers and almost all (97 percent) have no paid staff members from the West. A small number of groups do employ up to three paid staff members. In general, administrative staff are present in about one-fifth (22 percent) of the NGOs, professional mangers in one-sixth (16 percent) of the groups, and Westerners in only a very few (3 percent) NGOs. Most Western employees working in CEE NGOs are paid by Western organizations. Overall, few NGOs (3.5 percent) have from 4 to 10 paid staff of any kind.
Q123 to Q130: Does your organization have access to modern communication equipment?
An NGO's communication and networking potential seems to be determined by the amount of communication hardware it possesses. Overall, while most groups have telephones (86 percent) and typewriters (74 percent), many do not have other basic office equipment. A little more than half of environmental NGOs (57 percent) have personal computers or fax machines (45 percent). Almost half of NGOs do not have television sets (40 percent), video recorders (35 percent), or access to e-mail (20 percent). (See Figure 3.7)
NGOs in Albania and the Czech Republic have less access to telephones than NGOs in other countries. In general, measured by the accessibility of telephones, fax machines and e-mail accounts, NGOs in Estonia, Lithuania, Hungary and Slovenia are much better equipped than the average CEE NGO. Overall, Albanian and Latvian NGOs are not as well equipped as NGOs in the rest of CEE.
Q131 to Q136: Are members or representatives of your group able to communicate in English and/or another international language?
Many groups have personnel who can communicate in languages other than their native tongues. English is understood by most NGOs (88 percent), followed by German (63 percent), Russian (53 percent), and French (32 percent). Italian (13 percent) and Spanish (5.7 percent) are much less common. (See Figure 3.8)
The most significant deviation from the CEE average occurs in the Czech Republic, where the ability to speak English is less than average but still quite high (79 percent). Hungarian NGOs also score lower in English-language abilities, but the proportion of German speakers (78 percent) is much higher than in most other countries. It is important to note that while some NGO employees, members or volunteers may speak other languages, most probably do not. Therefore, providing environmental information in the local language is still very important.
