Ann Eveleth
Many non-governmental organisations entered NGO Week this year on the precipice of financial uncertainty, with further delays predicted in the establishment of the long- awaited National Development Agency.
Parliament approved legislation last week paving the way for the agency, which will channel state and donor funds to struggling organisations, but NGO commentators said this week the new Bill may prove to be a case of “too little, too late”.
The government is optimistic the agency could be up and running early next year.
However, Paul Jackson, general manager of the Transitional National Development Trust – set up in 1995 to fill the interim funding gap – told the Mail & Guardian this week it would be “optimistic to expect the agency to open its doors before July 1999”.
Jackson warned the government was underestimating the time needed to get the agency up and running.
“The Bill went through Parliament last week, but it still has to go through the National Council of Provinces. Legislation was supposed to go through in June 1997.
“Once the Bill goes through, there still has to be an open process to appoint the board, then the board has to appoint a CEO, the institution has to be established, staff must be appointed and policy must be developed and debated. Then the agency will have to accept and scrutinise funding applications,” said Jackson.
But Shaheed Rajie, the Department of Finance chief director in charge of piloting the legislation through Parliament, said much of the start-up work is already being completed by the transitional trust.
“We will have a public process to select the board. The members will be chosen by a panel comprising development experts and government representatives, and it will be an open and transparent process,” he said.
“However, the trust is already doing support work to get the National Development Agency up and running. It is considering [funding] applications on behalf of the agency,” he said.
Rajie offered early 1999 as a “conservative” estimate for the opening of the agency.
In the meantime, many established NGOs are struggling to continue existing programmes, while “urgent poverty alleviation projects just can’t be funded”, said Jackson.
The trust’s limited one-year funds have long since been allocated. It received R50- million from the government and R70-million from the European Union in mid-1996, but this was allocated to 500 projects approved by November 1996.
Although R30-million of this is still to be disbursed, the trust has no further resources to allocate. “Some NGOs have been forced to retrench staff; others are complaining they spend so much time fund-raising there is little time left for project work.”
Adult training and education NGO Prolit is one of many NGOs feeling the funding gap.
CEO Andrew Miller says the R1,2-million training grant the organisation received from the trust last year ended last December. The grant provided more than one- third of its total training budget.
“We’ve curtailed our community-based training to the extent that now we say to community-based groups, `Unless you pay for the training, we can’t do it.’ We’ve done very well with the shift to self- sufficiency, so that last year 60% of our R13-million budget was earned through government tenders and contracts with Eskom and Telkom.
“At the end of the day, if we can’t get donor money, we can’t work with poor people. That’s the real tragedy of the funding gap,” says Miller.
That gap has proved particularly difficult for education and training NGOs, with the sector’s main funders cutting back or closing down over the past year.
Penny Smith of the maths promotion NGO Count says the R300 000 her organisation received from the trust amounted to 25% of its total budget. The money paid salaries and enabled the organisation to provide materials and services to train maths teachers and trainers.
Waiting for the National Development Agency, in addition to the closure of the World University Service last year and an abrupt end to USAid start-up funding, has forced Count to seek local funders. “We have been able to make ends meet, but it hasn’t been easy,” says Smith.
Other NGOs are still crossing their fingers in the hope alternative funders will rescue their projects.
Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel told Parliament the government will contribute R160-million to the National Development Agency in the 1999/2000 financial year, followed by R265-million the next year. “In addition, a financing proposal is under consideration by the EU for … about R210- million over a period of three years,” he said.
This budget is, however, contested by the NGO sector. The South African NGO Coalition lobbied for R1,5-billion, a sum equivalent to the amount the previous government channelled into the Independent Development Trust at its inception.