From February to March 2004, a questionnaire was given to participants attending presentations of the “ United Way” publications and the Portal. The purpose of the questionnaire was to find out the basic problem areas for Belarusian NGO activity.

The following basic success factors were considered:

·       The intrinsic NGO potential (its strong and the weak areas);

·       The NGO’s target group;

·       The financial position of the organisation, both now and in the future and also the degree to which various basic funding sources are needed.

They were also asked to briefly describe what the basic obstacle was to their organisations.

Of those who participated in the questionnaire: 28% were NGO heads; 26.4% were members of staff; 37.7% were NGO members and 5.7% were volunteers;

Of those who participated: 41.5% were representatives of local NGOs; 47.2% were representatives of national NGOs and national NGO unions; 11.3% were representatives of international NGOs.

The most commonly identified issue amongst those who participated was a problem with financing. However, the wording of this issue should be noted: from defining the nature of the issue (answer options: “few financial resources’ and ‘inadequate funding” etc.) to the cause-effect wording of the issue. NGO representatives ascribe reasons for the lack of financing to external factors (“No permanent source of funding” etc.), or as internal (“Lack of experience in attracting funding”, “No commercial (fund-generating) aspect to the organisation’s work” etc.). Based on these results, it can be said that an organisation’s road to development lies either externally or internally.

NGOs also identified the following issues:

Problems with the infrastructure, e.g. an organisation’s lack of offices, technical equipment etc; legal problems, connected with the changeability and imperfections of the Belarusian legislation responsible for registering NGOs, the lack of legal support for NGOs; problems concerning the organisation’s degree or activity i.e. the inactivity of its members, the organisation of management (management of personnel, work with clients, fundraising etc.), administrative work, a development strategy for the organisation etc.

So called informational-communication problems are quite widespread (according to 13.2% of NGO representatives taking part). During the survey, the following issues were identified: adapting available information for various socio-economic groups; a lack of information on grant-giving organisations; contacts with local authorities; absence of contacts with foreign funds; Attracting socio-economic groups to the organisation’s activity; contacts with mass-media organisations etc.

As the analysis of NGO activity shows, informational-communication problems are the cause of NGO financing issues as well as other NGO problems. Important factors in solving an organisation’s informational-communication problems are firstly, knowledge of the non-profit sphere and secondly, an ability to interact an area which NGO resource centres should be assisting with. The internet is an extremely effective means of solving all of the aforementioned problems.

The basic goal of the NGO Portal – a special resource for NGOs – is to improve interaction between civil society structures in Belarus. Indeed, Interaction during this survey was found to be the key to solving all NGO related problems.