“Kommersant” got acquainted with the provisions of the report of the Public Chamber on the state of civil society

Vladimir Putin's message to the Federal Assembly may include theses on socially oriented NGOs. This is what Kommersant’s sources say in the Public Chamber, where a report on the state of civil society will be presented today. It states, in particular, that socially oriented NPOs need the same support as small and medium-sized businesses, as well as the elimination of bureaucratic obstacles in the provision of social services. According to House officials, these are the points that could be included in the president's speech.

“Kommersant” has at its disposal theses on the future fate of socially oriented NGOs, which will be presented today as part of the annual report of the Public Chamber (PC) of the Russian Federation on the state of civil society. In addition, sources in the OP say that these same theses will be included in President Vladimir Putin’s message to the Federal Assembly.

As stated in the document, a new version of the law “On the Fundamentals of Social Services for Citizens in the Russian Federation” has been in force since January 2015. Now NPOs can act as providers of social services, appropriate registers are being formed, and the concept of recipients of social services has been introduced. “The practice of interaction between government bodies and NPOs in jointly solving social problems of society and providing social services to the population is beginning to take shape,” the report says. Let us recall that earlier the president, speaking at the “Community” forum, proposed to open access to the budgets that the state allocates for social purposes to socially oriented NGOs. In 2016, this amount amounted to more than 230 billion rubles. NGOs from 36 regions where registers of social service providers have been formed will be able to apply for these funds.

However, the RF OP believes that so far the practice of participation of NPOs in the provision of social services has not become widespread. “The mechanisms of interaction between the state and the non-profit sector in the provision of social services have not yet been standardized. The mechanisms for transferring state functions to non-profit organizations in the field of social services remain unclear. The distribution of NPOs providing social services across regions is very uneven,” the document says. For example, in the register of the Leningrad region there are 20 organizations, although there should be 72 of them. In Moscow and the Moscow region, the registers are empty. The exception was Bashkiria, where more than half of the NGOs are socially oriented - 120 out of 211 organizations.

Also, a study by the RF OP showed that of the 54% of NPO representatives surveyed, only 12% attempted to join the register, and only 3% succeeded. At the same time, they name inattention from business and government authorities (46%) and bureaucratic obstacles in regulatory authorities (39%) as key barriers to their work as providers of social services.

In this regard, the RF OP proposes to adopt the roadmap “Supporting NGOs’ access to the provision of services in the social sphere” and the federal law “On Social Entrepreneurship”. According to the plan of the chamber members, it is proposed to extend the existing measures to support small and medium-sized businesses “in terms of property, tax and other non-financial support” to socially oriented NPOs. In addition, the report states that it is necessary to “introduce a targeted subsidy mechanism” for consumers of social institution services.

Grigory Tumanov

Socially oriented NPOs simplify access to consumers