Online discussion "How much  society is open to various forms of support to strengthen civil society" took place on 10 November. During the discussion, representatives of the Civil Alliance-Latvia, Network of Estonian Nonprofit Organizations (Estonia) and Giva Sverige (Sweden) presented an overview of civil society in each country and the main findings of the survey on the types of support to civil society, influencing choices to support or not to support civil society organizations, including how and whether support is affected by Covid - 19 crisis.

In the second part of the discussion, the representatives of the foundation “Plecs” and Hooandja (Estonia) shared their experience in various support attracting. And some important conclusions were made during the meeting:

• becouse of Covid-19 pandemic, there is a lot of uncertainty from both individual donors and the business sector about whether and how to support civil society.
• it is necessary to have more easily accessible information (including centralized) on how potential supporters can help organizations financially, materially or through volunteering;
• a significant support in raising funds could be the Facebook donation button, With this help many Sweden organizations have raised funds for themselves, but unfortunately in Latvia and Estonia this function does not work.

The aim of this discussion was to find sustainable solutions to encourage public involvement in civil society initiatives and to motivate individual and corporate donors (volunteering, donations of services, goods and finance) to support civil society organizations.

A summary of the discussion and survey, as well as the recommendations and conclusions, will be summarized in a research paper, which will be more widely available in the first half of December in all languages ​​of the countries involved in the project. We also invite you to take a look on the presentations used during the discussions. You will find them here.

The discussion is organized by the association “Civil Alliance-Latvia” within the project “Increasing citizen investments in a sustainable civil society in the Baltic Sea region”. The discussion has taken place with the financial support of the Nordic Council of Ministers. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of the project leaders and can in no way be taken to reflect the views or policies of the Nordic Council.