RESEARCH ACTIVITY OF THE KLON/JAWOR ASSOCIATION

 

BASIC FACTS - NGO RESEARCH STATISTICS

VOLUNTEERING AND PHILANTROPY

COOPERATION WITH PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

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BASIC FACTS - NGO RESEARCH STATISTICS


 

Basic facts about NGOS - report of the 2006 survey

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NUMBER OF ORGANIZATIONS

NGOs were first defined legally in April 24, 2003, when the Public Benefit and Volunteer Work Act came into effect. According to art. 3 sec. 2 of this Act, NGOs are legal persons or units that have no legal entity and that are created on the basis of legal regulations, but not units of the public sector as defined by the public finance regulations. They are non-profit-making and include foundations and associations. The Act adopts a broad definition of NGOs; defined in this way, the third sector, apart from associations and foundation, also includes other subjects such as trade unions and economic or professional self-governing bodies.

At the end of the third quarter of 2006, the REGON register listed:
• 55 016 associations and
• 8 212 foundations
that in this report are named “NGOs”, and thus according to the narrower definition of the non-governmental sector.

However, if we want to estimate the size of the whole non-governmental sector, the following should be added to this number (data from REGON at the end of the third quarter of 2006):
• about 15,000 fire brigades,
• 3 703 grassroots organizations (parent-teacher associations, hunt clubs and public committees),
• 18 523 trade unions,
• 15 474 units of the Catholic Church, other churches and religious associations,
• 5 459 economic and professional self-governing organizations, and
• smaller groups of employers’ organizations and political parties.
 
Thus, if we wanted to treat all the above mentioned types as entities of the “third sector”, it would amount to more than 120 thousand registered entities.
In the survey “Condition of the Non-Governmental Sector in 2006” (as well as in the surveys in 2004 and 2002) we adopted a narrower definition of the non-governmental sector, and only for this group – associations and foundations – may the results of our survey be considered representative.

 
FIELDS OF ACTIVITY

The organizations that participated in the survey were asked to answer the question of what fields they carried out their activities in, and also which of these fields they considered the most important for accomplishing their mission. The structure of the sector as to the fields of activities, reconstructed based on the answers, was much the same as two years earlier.
• Organizations that work with sports, recreation, tourism or hobbies dominate – they constitute almost 40% of the whole Polish non-governmental sector.
• Next, but with a considerably lower number of answers, come organizations that above all identify with activities in the fields of:
– culture and arts (12.8%),
– education and upbringing (10.3%),
– social services and social welfare (9.9%),
– health protection (8%).

Least popular in the Polish sector are international activities, religious activities (however, it must be added here that entities directly related to the structures of the Catholic Church and other churches were not among the organizations from which the random selection was drawn for the survey) and activities that support civil initiatives, human rights or academic research. This hierarchy has remained unchanged for years.
It is it is worth emphasizing, that during the survey from 2006 the organizations had the possibility to select a new field of activity – essential from the point of view of the debate about the socio-economic development of Poland, and also from the point of view of promotion of the idea of social economy – namely “labour market services, employment and professional activation”. 2.3% of all NGOs consider this their main field of activity.
The second place as regards indication frequency (after “sports, recreation, tourism and hobbies”) is held by the field of activity related to education and upbringing (35.6%). The high percentage of organizations active in this field is not surprising – it includes organizations that conduct all kinds of training, information and preventive activities, regardless of the type of recipients, and also organizations that work with children, that is, conduct all kinds of upbringing activities.




NGOs in Poland - 2002 research results

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The information regarding the Polish non-governmental (NGO) sector presented here is based on research carried out in 2002 on a random, representative and stratified sample of associations and foundations in Poland. The data was collected by the Polish Sociological Society's Research Department over the period 21 June - 13 September 2002.

The research project was designed by a team at the Klon/Jawor Association in cooperation with the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and received support from the Polish-American Freedom Foundation, the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy, and the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development (PARP).

There are over 36,500 associations and over 5,000 foundations registered in Poland.

At least 58% of the total number of NGOs registered are active. In the case of 10% of the registered NGOs it was found that they are not engaged in any activities .

91% of the NGOs were founded after 1989 , whereas 30% of the NGOs are less than three years old.

49% of the total registered NGOs have their seat in large towns (current and former voivodship capitals).

The greatest number of associations and foundations indicate that among the most important fields of activity are sport (59.3%), education (48,2%), health protection, rehabilitation and assistance to the disabled (32,6%), as well as culture and the arts (27,4%).

Over half ( 55% ) of the NGOs do not employ full-time paid personnel.

35% of the NGOs employ staff on the basis of a labour contract. The total scale of employment in NGOs can be estimated to correspond to approximately 62,000 FTE positions , which is amounts to 0.58% of total employment outside the agricultural sector.

Volunteers (non-members of the associations) participate in the work of half of the NGOs . We estimate their number at about 1.6 million . Last year one volunteer worked an average of about 18 hours a month in an NGO.

Half associations have no more than 46 members . One in four associations has 100 or more members, whereas about 5% of them have over 750 members. \

In 2001, the revenue of half of the NGOs did not exceed PLN 19,000 ($5,000) .

In the case of all association and foundations the financial means for 2001 were made up principally of: public sector funds ( local and regional government) - 19.6% of the NGOs' income; public sector funds ( central government ) - 13.5% ; donations from individuals and firms - 16.5% ; income from economic activity - 10.4% . Funds from foreign donor funding , such as that of the European Union, amounted to 5.7% of the sector's income.

57% of the NGOs feel that the introduction of the law on public benefit organisations will improve the situation of NGOs , 3% disagree, while the remaining NGOs feel that there will be no change or express no opinion. 62% of the NGOs express a desire to gain recognition as a public benefit organisation, while 54% consider that they already fulfill the requirements required to achieve this.

69% of NGOs use computers in their work. 33% have internet access in the NGO's office, with another 11% making use of internet access outside the office in respect of their NGO's activities.

Difficulty in having the basic financial or material means required to work is the problem that most ( 78% ) NGOs feel they face more often than any other. In the opinion of 68% of the organisations, unclear and unstable legal regulations regarding the NGO sector are a serious problem. The same number of organisations considers unclear rules regarding cooperation with public administration to be a problem.


VOLUNTEERING AND PHILANTROPY

Volunteering, philantropy and 1% - research report 2006

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In 2006, 21.9% – that is, about 6.6 million adult Poles – dedicated their time to unpaid work on behalf of others. Although this is twice as much as in 2001, for the first time in a long time the development of volunteering halted in 2006.
 

Who are the volunteers? Women engage in volunteering somewhat more often (last year, 24% of them engaged in volunteering, compared with 20% of men). Most volunteers are people with higher education. As in previous years, in 2006, young people more frequently engaged in volunteering (students and pupils) and much more rarely people over 55 years of age. Also people working professionally volunteer more often, while old-age and disability pensioners more rarely. The popularity of volunteering is clearly different from region to region – in western and southern Poland, this type of activity is declared more often than in eastern, northern and central Poland. These regularities are not explicitly associated with the level of urbanization in different regions.


Volunteering and Philanthropy in Poland - research report 2001

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The report presents results of a survey conducted in October 2001 by the KLON/JAWOR Association, the Volunteer Center Association and SMG/KRC Poland Media Research Institute. One thousand people were chosen at random in an attempt to represent adult Poles. The survey concerns the willingness of people in Poland to offer bona fide help both directly to individuals and through institutions and organisations. We asked about material help provided (money and goods), and the amount of time spent giving help. 

The results are unfortunately not optimistic. As many as 90% of those surveyed could not name an institution or organisation to which they had donated time in 2001. In other words, just 10% of those who responded were volunteers [1] . There is a lack of accurate, solid research in other countries, which makes comparison difficult. We can be sure, however, that this percentage is quite low when compared to other countries (USA 49%, Ireland 33%, Slovakia 19%). It is also low in comparison to surveys in previous years in Poland. The number of people who are willing to be a member of an organisation has decreased significantly as well (currently it is 4.5%).   In this context, philanthropy is faring much better - donating money and goods are a much more common way of supporting an organisation.

COOPERATION WITH PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN DELIVERING SOCIAL SERVICES

Cooperation between non-governmental organizations and public administration in delivering social services in Poland

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The Report you are about to read is a result of a joint undertaking of centres from Romania, Hungary and Poland. The aim of it was to share experiences (often difficult) in just one field, namely solving social problems, concerning mutual relations in each of these countries between public administration and non-governmental organizations. And this is where the simple part of the undertaking ends. The material gathered in Poland was subsequently divided according to the following scheme: From a very broad range of issues that comprise social problems, we chose four fields. They will serve as examples and it seems, despite significant differences between the three countries, they all constitute serious challenges in each of them for both public administration and non-governmental organizations. These issues are:

·          Orphanhood

·          Homelessness

·          Mental illness

·          Civil information

Each of the above issues was described both generally and in detail. In the general part, we tried to provide information about the scale of a problem, factors responsible for it and the diversity of forms of institutional response to it, as well as the framework of conditions of co-operation in a given field that exists at the intersection of public administration and non-governmental organizations. In the detailed part we included descriptions of selected real life example of solutions to each of the four problems. We tried to choose them in such a way as to include positive examples of mutual relations as well as those that are problematic or simply unsuccessful. We assume both types of situations may be educational.

Selecting examples to be included in his report was not easy, especially because there is a lot to choose from. Each case is in a way interesting and at the same time unique, in the sense that it does not fit any of the clear-cut labels "success" or "failure" but it is a mixture of them.

We hope the material we gathered   will provide inspiration both for the administration and non-governmental organizations in other countries - just like for us in Poland the reports from Romania and Hungary are inspiring. These countries, even though so different, share a number of difficult experiences both past and present. It gives us hope we can help each other. Even at present, there are numerous organizations that carry out joint international projects - we hope this report will increase their number.