www.macfound.org

Project 'Development of Cooperation between the Russian Nonprofit Sector and Institutes of Social Sciences and Independent Universities'

Donors: The John D. and Catherine T. Macarthur Foundation

Implementation: May 2006 – April 2008

Goal: To make the academic community interested in the Russian non-profit sector through stimulating research into various aspects of the third sector and implementing joint educational and research projects with implications for the local communities. These can be developed by NGOs and interregional research institutes for social science (http://www.ino-center.ru/mion/).

Activities within the project:

1. Developing an e-catalogue of the library collections in the NGO School Foundation and CAF Russia with subsequent transfer of the catalogue and the collections of books to the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences.

2. Publishing a newsletter for researchers, entitled “New Resources for Researchers of the Non-profit Sector.” This is important to inform the third sector researchers about new publications in the field, namely books that comprise the project’s outputs that are published with a small circulation, annual reports, documents that are issued by international agencies and the RF government and related to the non-commercial sector. Six digests are to be issued within the project, too.

3. Developing a web resource “The Russian Third Sector for the Academic Community. The web resource offers its users information about the Russian third sector, about NGOs electronic libraries and international resources such as societies of the third sector researchers, foundations that sponsor studies and scientific journals.

4. Working meetings of the representatives of interregional institutes and NGOs in the project cities. Mutual interests and needs as well as themes for applied research with implications for the local communities will be outlined at the working meetings.

5. Seminars for researches in the participating cities

The seminars will highlight the following issues:

• Characteristics of the non-commercial sector in Russia and in the region.
• The third sector studies in the developed countries and in Russia
• Review of the information resources developed during the implementation of the project.

Events Held by the NGO School:

25 August 2006, Moscow – The project managers and the representatives of interregional institutes of social science took part in a working meeting to discuss their collaboration within the project.

September 2006 – Rostov-on-Don, Kaliningrad, Saratov and Novgorod were chosen as the regions participating in the project “Development of Cooperation between the Russian Non-profit Sector and Institutes of Social Sciences and Independent Universities”.

September 2006 – The NGO School Foundation in partnership with the Polish Association "European Cooperation Centre" submitted a proposal to the Stephan Batoriya Foundation. The grant would enable the two organizations to organize seminars for the project participants with recognized Polish third sector scholars as lecturers and to arrange internships for Russian scholars in Polish NGOs.

December 2006 – Part of the Foundation’s library collection was transferred to Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences (130 volumes), to Moscow State University (30 volumes), to Russian State Social University (2500 volumes) and to the Institute for Civil Society Issues (200 volumes). Any students or the third sector and civil society researchers have access to these books.

The collection includes:

1. Reference books in Russian and English about grant making foundations;
2. Manuals on fundraising, writing proposals, establishing and running an NGO, public relations;
3. Reports on the third sector research findings and on the charity activities of businesses;
4. The materials of seminars for NGO staff and executives on the legal, and accounting and operational issues ;
5. Books and brochures on legal and accounting issues in NGOs;
6. Books with the focus on problems of people with disabilities, children’s protection and education, AIDS prevention, social partnerships, social work, the establishing and operation of a public foundation, civil rights protection activities and other issues,
7. NGOs periodicals published in the RF,
8. Digests and bulletins published by the Agency of Social Information.
9. The library collection is supposed to be an informational resource for non-profit and charity organizations. For ten years its resources have been available for any readers, and based on their feedback the materials offered are unique and interesting not only for NGOs staff but also for researchers.

Upcoming Project Events:

We are currently working on the web resource “The Russian Third Sector for the Academic Community”. The brief reviews with references to the Internet sources are placed on the NGO School site. The distinctive feature of the developed resource is that it is compact, systematic and can be easily renewed. Finally, the email catalogue will include up to 15 addresses of NGOs electronic libraries, information about 30 sites of the largest Russian NGOs which operate as networks or resource centres and up to 50 references to the international resources for scholars. The web resource available from January 2007.

We are also developing an e-mail catalogue of the Foundation’s library collection. The catalogue will be placed on the site of the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences.

Working meetings will be held in the regions participating in the project, which will enable the NGOs and interregional institutes involved to discuss their joint research projects.

Studies of the NGOs mission and contributions to the development of civil society as well as the dissemination of the findings will foster positive changes in non-commercial organizations, raise public awareness of the non-profit sector and make charity organizations and the third sector in general more popular with and attractive to the citizens.

The project is being implemented in Kaliningrad, Saratov, Novgorod and Rostov-on-Don. We invite NGOs in these regions to join the project.

Project Manager: Olga Kaverina, tel. +7 (495) 792-59-88, E-mail: Kaverina@ngoschool.ru

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