Funding and Philanthropy

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CSOs must have better access to resources and should be able to benefit from the opportunities of new technologies when raising funds.
On this page The Issue In Focus Strengthening the environment for fundraising Access, Diversity and Sustainability: how we support it? Blogs and Media
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The Issue

Access to resources is a cornerstone for CSOs to achieve their mission and serve communities. Nevertheless, financial sustainability is the primary challenge for CSOs worldwide. Sustainability can only be achieved if CSOs have access to diverse resources. There are four main sources of revenue available to CSOs:

  1. government funding (central and local level);
  2. income generating activities: fees for services, sales, membership fees, rents, investments, business ventures;
  3. domestic philanthropy (financial donations and in-kind support from volunteers); and
  4. funding from abroad (foreign funding, or cross-border funding).

The relative importance of all four sources varies among countries and regions and not one approach to strengthen one source independently will alleviate the sustainability problem.

In Focus

Digital technologies in fundraising: New technologies provide innovative and cost-effective means to raise funds for important social missions. Fundraisers use Artificial Intelligence (AI) and algorithm-based systems to launch global campaigns. The private sector is playing an increasing role in fundraising and the societal environment is rapidly changing, too. At the same time, the rise of the digital also raises multiple questions:

How can CSOs and fundraisers keep up and utilize these new technologies? Do country laws and practices allow them to benefit from these new opportunities and protect from the potential risks they pose?  What are the responsibilities of new intermediaries? Are there international and regional standards in place to safeguard the freedom of association and privacy? How can civil society capitalize on the proliferation of digital tools during the pandemic?

Despite the rapid spread of digital fundraising there is limited knowledge on these topics, particularly for legislators. With our research we seek to map out existing trends to help CSOs, fundraisers and policymakers to think through how the environment can be further improved for digital fundraising in their countries.

Strengthening the environment for fundraising
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heart and a jar of money

ECNL launched a flagship project to unpack approaches and legal frameworks that facilitate or restrict fundraising practices. As part of this we created knowledge base and produced guiding principles to support governments and CSOs to develop progressive legal frameworks that helps philanthropy and community fundraising to flourish.   

  • Overview of the Regulatory Framework for Fundraising in Europe is a comparative research with examples from 16 countries from all regions of Europe. The report was just a first step towards further research to assess the impact and implementation of legislation and self-regulation and launch a multi-stakeholder dialogue on how best to regulate or self-regulate fundraising.  
  • Principles for the Statutory Regulation and Self-regulation of Fundraising provide a global overview of current trends in fundraising regulation and self-regulation. They offer principles and recommendations addressing 7 key areas with the aim to support advocacy efforts to create an enabling environment for fundraising around the globe. 
  • Fundraising self-regulation An Analysis and Review: the study commissioned by ECNL to the Philanthropy Center, delves into the literature and practice of self-regulation regimes, with a focus on fundraising principles. 
  • Data Protection Standards for CSOs: the paper helps to identify how the right to privacy interacts with CSOs’ right to fundraise. It provides general guidance as to the application of data protection standards to CSOs’ fundraising initiatives. 
  • Digital technologies in fundraising and Good practices: We are also mapping out the opportunities as well as the risk of using digital technologies and AI for fundraising practices and how this manifests in the regulation. We delivered a session at FRO2020 online conference on this topic that was joined by 550 people from all over the world.
Access, Diversity and Sustainability: how we support it?

We support partners through creating knowledge base, designing standards and principles, empowering skills and strategies for reform. Where there is an emerging need or ongoing process of legislative reform or development of self-regulation, ECNL provides support to partners to assess the proposed regulation, facilitate dialogue and develop proposals to push back restrictions and advocate for an improved environment for access to resources. 

Creating Knowledge base 

ECNL monitors trends, documents legal responses and strategies by civil society, analysis developments and produces recommendations that support law reform. Highlight publications include: 

Economic activities and entrepreneurship  
Government funding 
Philanthropy 
Foreign funding

For other resources, see our publications.

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interconnected symbols and a text reading "principles for statutory regulation and self-regulation of fundraising"

Standards setting

The Fundraising Principles provide a global overview of current trends in fundraising regulation and self-regulation and offer principles and recommendations addressing 7 key areas.

Advocacy for reform 

  • Moldova: ECNL supported the development and implementation of the percentage designation mechanism that allows taxpayers to allocate 2% of their paid income tax to CSOs and religious organisations and provides additional income to hundreds of CSOs.
  • Bulgaria: In July 2020 a group of MPs proposed restrictive amendments to the Bulgarian CSO law that stigmatize the organisations for receiving foreign funding. ECNL supported the Bulgarian Center for Not-for-Profit Law (BCNL) with the legal analysis and the preparation of arguments against the draft law.
  • Armenia: ECNL supported Transparency International Anti-Corruption Center in Armenia (TIAC) to advocate for changes to the Regulation on state funding to CSOs to ensure that state funding is provided transparently and after a competition. Similarly, in Moldova ECNL works with IVC Moldova to create unified rules for state funding to CSOs. As a starting point, the new NCO Law (adopted in 2020) contains a list of principles for state funding to CSOs on which the regulation is based. 
  • Serbia: ECNL supports Trag Foundation and Catalyst Balkan to improve the legal environment of crowdfunding to ensure access to funding to smaller, rural communities and provide support to causes that are generally less visible in “traditional” philanthropy.

For other actions, see our news.

Blogs and Media