Recipients of Kremlin civil society grants should make progress reports - foundation
MOSCOW. March 27 (Interfax) - Russia's Civil Society Promotion Foundation has proposed setting up a Web floor where nonprofit organizations that have received Kremlin grants for civil society promotion projects would report what they have done under the projects.
A report prepared by the foundation and entitled "The 'Third Sector' in Russia: its Current State and Potential Development Models" points out that no such reporting is prescribed on a mandatory bases by the Ryussian president's program of civil society grants.
However, "the compulsory publication of reports from grant recipients would provide more resources for the public monitoring of the use of funds provided as state support for NPOs," the report says.
Such reporting would make it possible to build a system of pressure on NPOs that have failed to fulfill their commitments under the program terms, and "would help increase the information transparency of the system as a whole," it says.
The paper suggests that it should be made one of the conditions for seeking a presidential grant that an applicant NPO have its own website or a page in a social network where it would be able to report how the money had been used.
According to statistics cited in the report, the president allocated 7.4 billion rubles between 2006 and 2012 under the support program for NPOs involved in civil society construction. Grants averaged 474,400 rubles in 2006, 980,400 in 2007, 1.3 million in 2008, 1.6 million in 2009 and 2010, and 1.7 million in 2012.
