This year state support for socially
oriented NGOs is to be significantly boosted

Around
8.3 billion roubles will be allocated to socially oriented NGOs from the state
budget this year in accordance with the government’s support programme, in
contrast to the 4.7 billion allocated in 2012. Also the ministry of economic
development has announced that applications to enter a competition will be
available for such NGOs between 1 and 15 March. The winners will be announced
at the end of April and in June regional NGOs will receive grants.

Representatives
of the ministry spoke about the above at a seminar for officials from various
administrative units in the Russian Federation. Furthermore, the NGOs’
accountancy and reporting systems have been simplified and the cost of
insurance premiums lowered which will allow payroll costs to be reduced.

Grants
will be allocated to socially oriented NGOs working in the following priority
areas: support for mothers and children, development of supplementary
education, popular sports, recreational activities for children and youth, and
so forth. They will be allocated on a competitive basis along two main lines —
direct transfers to the regional authorities and help with infrastructure for
NGOs in the form of resource centres. It is planned to spend about 280 million
roubles on the latter in 2013 (cf.162 million roubles in 2012). The planned
increase in expenditure is linked to the need to deal with the most pressing
social problems such as parentless children, help for people with disabilities,
pensioners, the homeless and suchlike.

Organisations
have until the end of March to apply to take part in the competition. The rules
and procedure for the competition will be unchanged except for the application
form, which has been settled by federal ministry of economic development order
No 32 of 31 January 2013. The department has also issued an order confirming
the levels of joint financing being made available within the framework of
providing state support to socially oriented NGOs area by area for 2013.
Furthermore a set of recommended criteria has been drafted by which socially
oriented NGOs are to be selected to receive a grant from local budgets. This
has been made available for public discussion until 28 February.

A
report of the proceedings at the above seminar may be read on the ministry’s
website.

http://www.asi.org.ru/ASI3/rws_asi.nsf/va_WebPages/A153D37D609AF02244257B10005021FFRus