Bulgarian Center for Not-for-Profit Law organized an international conference “Financing of Non-Profit Organizations” on 2 April 2008 in Hotel Radisson, Alexander Hall. The conference was possible thank to the financial support of the Trust for Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe in partnership with the Open Society Institute – Sofia and the Tulip Foundation.

The conference was the first step from the campaign for increasing the financial sustainability of NGOs that has begun in the beginning of March 2008. More than 120 NGO representatives from the whole country as well as representatives of different state institutions, such as the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the National Tax Agency, the Ministry of Justice, ect. were invited and appeared on the conference.

David Moore (USA) presented the different mechanisms for funding of NGOs, Nilda Bullein (Hungary) and Milan Andreikovich (Slovakia) presented the essence and the advantages of the mechanism of 1% in their countries where this mechanism is applied. The mechanism and the structure of the National Foundation for Development of the Civil Society in Croatia were presented by Vanya Skorich (Croatia). There was a great interest in the lection of the President of the Association for Charity Lotteries in the EU – Mr. Wim Jakobs, who told about the experience of the Nederland in distributing income over 220 million euro from charity lotteries to non-profit organizations.

The main purpose of the conference was the discussion of the situation in Bulgaria and the possibilities for creation of alternative sources for funding NGOs, as for example the establishment of a Fund for civic initiatives.

With the beginning of the campaign, the Bulgarian Center for Not-for-Profit Law will insist on increasing the money for the state subsidies, distributed after a competition; the legal regulation of the mechanism of 1% and will seek for support for creating a Fund for civic initiatives.