On 2 April 2008 in Radisson Hotel, Sofia, the Bulgarian Center for Not-for Profit Law organized an international conference on Financing Non-profit Organizations. The conference was organized with the financial support of the Trust for Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe and in partnership with the Open Society Institute – Sofia and the Tulip Foundation.
People from more than 120 NGOs, as well as representatives of Bulgarian ministries and state institutions took part in the conference. Different mechanisms for financing NGOs were presented to the participants by David Moore (USA), the essence and the advantages of the 1% mechanism were revealed by Nilda Bullain (Hungary) and Milan Andrejkovic (Slovakia). Vanja Skoric (Croatia) presented the structure and management of the National Foundation for the Development of Civil Society in Croatia. There was a big interest in the lecture of the President of the Association of the Charitable Lotteries in the European Union (ACLEU) – Mr. Wim Jacobs, who spoke about the Dutch experience of generating 220 million euro income from charitable lotteries and allocating it to NGOs. An important part of the conference program was the discussion of the situation in Bulgaria and the possibilities for creating alternative financial sources for NGOs e.g. establishing a Fund for Civic Initiatives.