The Virtual Foundation - your donation makes it happen

NGO Development in Cyberspace:

It has been a year since the international environmental NGO ECOLOGIA (with offices in Pennsylvania, United States; Moscow, Russia; Minsk, Belarus; Kolkhozabad, Tajikistan; Vilnius, Lithuania) started a new project with a rather intriguing name: "the Virtual Foundation". Not only the name is unusual.

The idea of the Virtual Foundation is to support local NGOs and to create international partnerships through the technology of the Internet. Although the Internet has established itself as a technology through which many people fulfill their own various personal interests and needs, up until now it has not been widely understood as a tool through which users can help others by philanthropic giving. This is where the Virtual Foundation fits in. The Virtual Foundation allows every person to choose to help others, even those living in remote parts of the world. It enables private citizens, church groups, community organizations, school classes and business people to become international grantmakers through electronic philanthropy. The Virtual Foundation places small project proposals on an Internet World Wide Web site which potential donors can visit, can learn about projects from around the world, and then select projects to support. In the very first year of the web site, donors supported proposals from Slovakia, from China, and from the former Soviet Union. Unlike larger and more traditional Western foundations, the Virtual Foundation has no endowment (no large inheritance producing yearly income from investments) - and has no plans to develop one. Its success, its future and its "endowment" are the good will and generosity of on-line donors.

New Way of Funding for Grassroots' Solutions

Most NGOs in Central and Eastern Europe and other developing countries depend on foreign funds for their activities and survival. Often, such foreign assistance is for large-scale projects and frequently becomes more scarce at the moment when NGOs are becoming more effective. In the face of weak local economies and a lack of local philanthropic traditions, it is often extremely difficult for NGOs in these regions to find funds for small-scale, low-cost projects that bring communities together and make a real difference in the quality of people's lives, their health, and the ailing environment. The Virtual Foundation offers a unique approach to "global community-fundraising."

How does it work?

The Virtual Foundation does not accept proposals to post on its site directly from local NGOs. Rather, local NGOs should submit their proposals to the regional partners of the Virtual Foundation. These partners include:

Environmental Partnership for Central Europe (Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Poland);
Horizonti Foundation (Georgia);
ISAR (Moscow/European Russia, Central Asia, Azerbaijan);
PERC (Siberia and the Russian Far East);
Sacred Earth Network (Computer technologies for the former Soviet Union);
Regional Environmental Center (Albania, Croatia, Macedonia);
ECOLOGIA (Baltics, China).

The regional partners of the Virtual Foundation are experienced grantmaking and project-monitoring organizations. They review and provide the first evaluation of proposals submitted by local NGOs. The regional partner forwards appropriate proposals to the Virtual Foundation's grants office in Vilnius, Lithuania. If approved by the grants office in Vilnius, the proposals are then forwarded to the ECOLOGIA headquarters in Pennsylvania for final approval and for posting on the Virtual Foundation's website. Through the website, donors inform ECOLOGIA headquarters about their decision to fund a concrete project and send their money to ECOLOGIA. Once the money is received, the bank transfer is then made from the US office to the regional partner. The regional partner is responsible for the grant's distribution and monitors the implemenation of the project by the local group. After the project is implemented, the local NGO submits a final report which is placed on the website to serve both as a model of a successfully accomplished project and to attract potential donors in the future. Virtual Foundation funding categories include: the environment; human health; sustainable economic activity. These categories may be further limited by regional partners based on what they see as greatest need for their particular geographic area. The geographic focus of the Virtual Foundation currently is: Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Asia. The Virtual Foundation actively seeks transboundary projects that increase the cooperation among different ethnic groups and nationalities. Budgets for projects accepted by the Virtual Foundation have reached up to 5,000 USD, but grant requests under 2,000 USD tend to be most fundable. The Virtual Foundation emphasizes relatively small grants for many reasons:

• small grants encourage individuals and organizations to think on a realistic scale;
• small projects are more likely to produce immediate visible results, providing positive feedback to the participants and funder;
• small grants match resources of many private philanthropists;
• small grants require recipients to contribute some of their own resources, which they often provide as matching services or technical support. Consequently, recipients and donors will be kept on a more equal footing that is the case with larger and less personal foreign aid programs. The likelihood of a longer term partnership is increased when partners perceive themselves as equals.

Having found a common cause, both the donor and the NGO can enter into a lasting relationship via electronic communications and continue to benefit from being partners. While donors to the Virtual Foundation project may remain anonymous to the grant recipient if they choose, the Virtual Foundation offers the opportunity to make philanthropy a more direct interaction between donor and recipient.

Success Story of The Virtual Foundation

Recently students at the Chenango Forks High School Model United Nations Club (New York State) chose to support a project of the Virtual Foundation addressing the problem of the quality of drinking water in a small town of Western Lithuania. Students decided to use delegate fees they received from running a one day Model UN conference, to fund this project. Club officers at Chenango Forks were intrigued by the idea of not only debating world problems but actually doing something to address world problems. Thanks to the American students living 7000 kilometers away the Lithuanian group now can start a clean-up campaign and monitoring of the quality of the municipality's well water. Both the student group in America and the NGO in Lithuania met through the Internet and experienced the joy of giving, and the joy of receiving, through a partnership and friendship which now helps to solve a real problem.

Reproduced by permission