Launched in 1997 by NESsT, the Sustainable NGO Financing Project (SNFP) was a project focused on building support, understanding and capacity in the area of self-financing for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Central Europe (i.e., Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia). NESsT identified five organizations to work in a collaborative partnership to achieve the objectives of the project. The SNFP partners consisted of four NGO support organizations: Civil Society Development Foundation (CSDF) in Hungary; Lotos Foundation in the Czech Republic; the Centre for Nonprofit Management (CNM) in Slovenia; and Partners for Democratic Change-Slovakia (PDCS) in Slovakia; and a local grant-making organization: the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC).

The objectives of the SNFP project were:

- to document and evaluate the effectiveness and feasibility of NGO self-financing strategies in CE;

- to strengthen the individual and institutional capacity of CE NGO support centers and individual NGOs to initiate and effectively manage self-financing strategies; and

- to increase awareness and support of NGO self-financing among CE donors, the public, and NGOs themselves.

SNFP was a three-year program implemented in three phases:

• Phase 1 included action research to document the use of self-financing among CE NGOs, legal and regulatory environment and infrastructure of support for NGO self-financing;
• Phase 2 included the development of tools and services to support NGO self-financing activities and disseminate the lessons learned; and
• Phase 3 included the development and pilot test of a financing and capacity-building strategy to support a group of NGOs starting up and/or expanding self-financing activities.

Key results from the SNFP can be found in the two NESsT publications: 'Profits for Nonprofits: An Assessment of the Challenges in NGO Self-Financing' and 'The NGO Venture Forum: Lessons in Self-Financing from the International Gathering.'

Read more about the SNFP.