Mail & Guardian reporter
With foreign donor funding drying up, South Africa’s non-governmental organisations and their donors this week formed an agency to devise creative means to make them financially sustainable.
The South African NGO Coalition (Sangoco), the South African Grantmakers Association (Saga) and the United Kingdom’s Charities Aid Foundation joined hands to set up the Non Profit Partnership as a lifeline for cash- strapped NGOs.
The new partnership said: “Recent announcements by funders that they would begin considering withdrawing from South Africa at the end of the millennium and the small amount of start-up funding allocated to the National Development Agency have forced many NGOs to explore more creative ways of raising funds for their work.”
Many NGOs have already closed down because foreign donors are rechanneling their funds to the government.
Donors and the NGOs said drastic steps were needed because they did not believe the National Development Agency – the government body that is the custodian of NGOs – has enough money to keep them alive.
Said Eugene Saldanha, director of the Non Profit Partnership: “There is a general agreement that the state cannot meet all the development needs on its own. On the other hand, a financially weak NGO sector cannot deliver. This is one creative way in which we can ensure the sector will continue working to eradicate poverty and distress.”
Among the services the partnership will offer are a provident fund for NGOs, high- interest bank accounts and other investments, medical aid, corporate services to develop closer links between South African companies and non- profit organisations, fundraising assistance, loan services for NGOs with cash-flow problems and advice on tax and legislative matters.
The Non Profit Partnership plans to release NGOs from fundraising and allow them to concentrate on the work they were established to do.
Its services will also halt the brain-drain the sector has been experiencing since the introduction of multi-racial democracy, and improve the benefits of NGO employees.
ENDS