Vibrant civil society in Slovakia? NGOs supported by the CEE trust are still largely dependent on external financing after 20 years

Large-scale funding of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) by states and corporations (external funding) can impact their functioning and diminish their civic character. It is therefore of importance to understand whether and how NGOs can become financially independent of external funding. In Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), many NGOs were kickstarted by large sums from foreign state and corporate sponsors with the hopes of creating an independent civil society reliant on domestic sources: a ‘vibrant civil society’. However, did these NGOs become financially independent? This article examines a sample of 14 NGOs in Slovakia financed by the Trust for Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE Trust), an organisation started by six private American foundations. Their funding is compared year by year, and it is found that between 2000 and 2020, foreign funding decreased from 97.2% to 55.2%, and corporate funding dropped from 92.1% to 31.2%. However, public sector funding increased from 1.2% to 35.6%. Civic funding remained low over the entire period, rising from 0.1% to 8.6%. Thus, external corporate funding was largely replaced by another type of external funding (public funding), and the role of one major foreign donor (the Trust) was largely replaced by another major foreign donor (European Union (EU) and European Economic Area (EEA) funds). The results suggest that it is difficult for NGOs kickstarted by external funding to achieve financial independence, at least on a timescale of 20 years.