URBact // ACTive NGO's - Dubrovnik

URBact
#2_Spaces, access, funding programmes & economic sustainability
ACTive NGOs
29th - 30th May 2019
Dubrovnik, Croatia
Spaces, access, funding programmes & economic sustainability
Space is a crucial factor of the NGO House. As expressed by civil society representatives at the first Citizens Forum in Riga, all civic organisations and initiatives need space for their activities.
After years of preparation, the Riga Municipality made available an unused school building for the purposes of the NGO House. In most European cities, however, space is scarce, and municipal properties are in an even shorter supply. Therefore, a diversity of strategies is needed to secure spaces for civic uses, whether in municipal buildings or when they are not available, in private properties.
The NGO House works in close cooperation with specific municipal funding programmes. Financing trainings and inclusion initiatives on the one hand and neighbourhood activities on the other, municipality-led funding programmes are a means to diversify civic activities, improve NGO capacities, help them grow more sustainable and to use better the spaces of the NGO House.
Furthermore, they can be incentives for new activities in certain urban areas or encouragement for the cooperation of a variety of actors.
The Riga Municipality covers all the costs of the NGO House, including the building’s running costs, a 3-person staff as well as a solid budget for events and activities in the building.
The economic sustainability of the building is therefore guaranteed as long as there is political support to the project. In many European cities, however, suffering from budget cuts and austerity measures, similar resources are rarely available: local adaptations of the NGO House therefore need to develop a solid economic model where a part of the renovation and operating costs is covered by revenues.