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2016-10-01
Nordic Consulting Group;
The objectives of this rapid assessment were twofold. First, it was a summative assignment in that it sought to document the EEA and Norway Grants' efforts to promote gender equality (GE), reduce domestic violence (DV), and reduce gender-based violence (GBV) in the seven focus countries. Second, it was formative and forward-looking. It was formative in that it aimed to generate lessons learned based on an assessment of relevant achievements; it aimed to help improve the design, planning, organisation, and implementation of future interventions. It was also forward-looking in that it provided a context-based set of ideas on how things might be done in the future; it aimed to consider current contextual changes that may not have been reflected in the earlier programme experience.
The assessment addressed two aspects of gender – first, mainstreaming GE and promoting work-life balance (WLB), and second, addressing DV and GBV – in seven countries: Bulgaria, Estonia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, and Spain. Not all countries reviewed have programmes addressing both aspects supported by the EEA and Norway Grants. The assessment focused on the following three lines of inquiry: 1. Relevance of the programme and projects therein. 2. Effectiveness of the programme and projects therein. 3. The bilateral dimension, focusing specifically on the execution of programme and project partnerships involving the Council of Europe (CoE) and other expert organisations (primarily based in Norway).
2016-10-01
Hertie School of Governance;
The Hertie School releases its findings from an international research project "Foundation Successes and Failures: Implications for Policy and Management – Developing a Case studies Repertoire". Professor Helmut K. Anheier led the research project, which was made possible by the Robert Bosch Foundation. The project looks at 20 case studies of philanthropic foundations from a range of fields in seven countries including Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom. The primary intended purpose is to be used by foundation boards, foundation staff training and executive education. The vignettes may also serve teaching purposes at university master level programs, particularly in public policy and business schools. For example, several will become teaching cases at the Harvard Business School.
One major conclusion based on the collection of case studies is that 'success' and 'failure' are not as clear cut as it would appear. Any claims of failure or success should be approached with caution, and there are no simple solutions for high impact results or maximized philanthropic contributions. Despite ambiguity, planning and performance measures are better than none at all. A fuller analysis will be forthcoming as a book in 2017 published by Helmut K. Anheier and Diana Leat (London: Routledge).
2015-11-09
Migration Policy Institute;
While European countries struggle to manage the recent influx of refugees and migrants, a quieter trend has been occurring: large numbers of talented residents leaving. Deeply familiar to low- and middle-income countries, the phenomenon of "brain drain" -- the loss of precious human capital to opportunities elsewhere -- has recently become a concern in parts of Europe, including some high-income countries still trying to find their footing after the economic shocks of 2008 and the ensuing fiscal crisis. In the fallout from the global economic crisis, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain have in some ways returned to their earlier roles as significant countries of emigration.
MPI's Transatlantic Council on Migration convened its twelfth plenary meeting to discuss the implications of emigration for middle- and high-income countries. Participants examined the realities of today's complex emigration flows, which are younger and better-educated than in the past, and explored how sending and receiving governments can manage these flows and reap the potential benefits of emigration. Drawing on the conclusions of the meeting, this Council Statement by Council Convenor and MPI Europe President Demetrios G. Papademetriou outlines a series of guiding principles to help governments manage emigration effectively, which emphasize the importance of long-term structural reforms, diaspora engagement, and cooperation with destination countries on qualifications recognition. The Council statement also identifies two areas in particular where investment in proactive policies can make a substantial difference in drawing on the benefits of emigration while reducing its costs: engaging nationals abroad, and enticing them to come home by creating new opportunities for them to use their skills.
2015-10-01
PITIJA;
This study covers 47 programmes relevant to Roma inclusion in 12 countries, with a focus on the countries with the largest share of Roma (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia). The study included a review of literature and programme documentation, interviews with stakeholders in the focus countries, and online questionnaires and telephone interviews with Donor Programme Partners and authorities in the other countries. The cut-off date for data collection was March 2015.
2015-09-01
Center for Strategy and Evaluation Services;
The EEA Grants in the current period have been allocated to programmes defined at national level, instead of to individual projects. These programmes have been implemented according to the Regulation and after a process of negotiation between the donors and the European Commission and then between the donors and the beneficiary countries. This negotiation has concerned, first, the Memorandum of Understanding and, second, the specific Programme Agreements. The process of negotiation and of preparing open calls for proposals has taken significantly longer than expected. This has led to severe delays in the allocation of funds and significantly reduced the time available to implement projects. However, there is broad support for the programme-based approach, as it could further improve the strategic focus and simplify the management arrangements. Given the time and effort that has been expended in setting up the programme-based approach, consideration should be given as to whether this approach should be retained for the next period. Stakeholders from the donor and beneficiary countries should consider whether negotiations can be concluded much more easily the second time round and whether programme management capacity can be retained. Where this is the case, the programme-based approach should be continued. There would be potential benefits from extending the end-date for completing expenditure and/or extending the programme period from 5 to 7 years. Monitoring indicators are appropriate, although many outcomes do not easily lend themselves to measurement and quantification. Qualitative reporting therefore remains important alongside monitoring of quantitative outputs.
2015-07-01
European Commission (EC);
This report provides a thorough and comprehensive analysis of the contributions that foundations make to support research and innovation in EU Member States, Norway and Switzerland. Over the last 25 years, the role of foundations as supporters of research and innovation in Europe has grown significantly in scope and scale. However, the landscape is fragmented and, till now, largely uncharted. Little is known about the vast majority of such foundations, their activities or even their number, and information about their real impact on research and innovation in Europe was very limited. A team of national experts in the EU 27 (and Norway and Switzerland), led by VU University Amsterdam, has therefore been commissioned by the European Commission to study foundations' contribution to research and innovation in the EU under the name EUFORI. This study helps fill this knowledge gap by analysing foundations' financial contributions, and provides useful insights into the different ways they operate. It also identifies emerging trends and the potential for exploring synergies and collaboration between foundations, research-funding agencies, businesses and research institutes.
2015-04-01
Fundacion Once;
Increasingly, foundations talk about ways of breaking down silos in their grant making approaches in order to step away from the single-issue focus to improve effectiveness and to achieve long lasting solutions to deep rooted problems. In this framework, the effort of many foundations that are taking action to breaking down those silos by developing joint grants across different priority areas is remarkable. This publication's main aim is to communicate these greatest efforts to provide a source of reflection and inspiration for foundations. Since we are working in a systemic framework, it would be ineffective to address disability without acknowledging its relationships with gender equality, education, employment, ageing, research, cooperation and development.
This booklet aims also to demonstrate through a solution-based approach, the broadness of foundational programs in the field of disability that also have a clear focus on social innovation. The best practices showcased show how foundations consider disability a cross-cutting and inclusive issue, integrating it into programs that reach out not only persons with disabilities but connect them with very different fields of civil society. This practical tool can serve as an inspiration for other foundations to act taking into consideration the cross-cutting approach.
2015-01-01
European Foundation Centre (EFC);
This publication aims to provide the reader with a comparative overview of the diverse legal and fiscal environments of foundations in 40 countries across wider Europe: the 28 EU Member States, plus Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Montenegro, Norway, Russia, Serbia, Switzerland, Turkey, and Ukraine. It includes charts, draw on the basis of the updated online EFC (European Foundation Centre) Legal and Fiscal Country Profiles, which are available to download at www.efc.be. The EFC online profiles include more detailed country information and further explanation of the information presented in those charts. (Edition translated from English to Chinese)
2014-12-01
CREDA Consulting;
The EEA Financial Mechanism (2009-2014) have committed € 160,4 million to support seventeen NGO Programmes in sixteen countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia and Spain. The overall objective of the EEA Grants NGO Programmes is strengthened civil society development and enhanced contribution to social justice, democracy and sustainable development in each of the beneficiary countries. As of 30 of June 2014, 957 projects in total of € 53,793,561 have been supported mainly in the fields of democracy, citizen participation, human rights, social justice and empowerment, sustainable development and provision of basic welfare services. The mid-term evaluation of the NGO Programmes funded by the EEA Financial Mechanism (2009- 2014) is an independent formative evaluation. Its objective was two-fold: 1) to assess the progress and needs for improvement of the current Programmes, and 2) to inform policies for the next financial period. The main purpose of this evaluation was to provide an expert independent mid-term assessment of the contribution of the EEA Grants 2009-2014 to the NGO sectors in the beneficiary states operating NGO Programmes. The evaluation was of dual nature: (1) of a formative evaluation to identify progress and needs for improvement of the current Programmes and (2) of a forward oriented strategic review to inform policies for the next financial period.
2014-08-01
Robert Bosch Stiftung;
The alarming rise of youth unemployment rates following the recent economic turmoil has challenged national as well as European labour market policies. With more than 5.5 million young people in the EU struggling to find jobs, there is an urgent need to develop strategies for combatting youth unemployment, in order to avoid a lost generation of European youths threatened by lasting disadvantages in terms of labour market and social position.
Against this background, the Robert Bosch Stiftung has commissioned the present study from the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim. Its aims are to survey the development of youth unemployment in Europe, to identify the relevant institutional and economic drivers and to discuss the necessary courses of action to achieve a better integration of young adults into the labour market. While the study covers the perspective of the EU member states as a whole, it strongly focusses on southern European countries, which are especially suffering from the current youth unemployment crisis. Its core part is comprised of three country reports which detail the situation in Italy, Spain and Portugal, and review current and potential future policy initiatives that could help in reducing youth unemployment.
2014-03-01
Vodafone Group;
This report explores how mobile services provided by Vodafone and the Vodafone Foundation are enabling women to seize new opportunities and improve their lives. Accenture Sustainability Services were commissioned to conduct research on the services and to assess their potential social and economic impact if they were widely available across Vodafone's markets by 2020.
It showcases the projects and the work of those involved and also poses the question -- what would the benefit to women and to society at large be if projects such as these were taken to scale and achieved an industrialscale of growth? This reflects the Foundation's commitment not solely to the development of pilots but rather the Trustees' ambition to see projects which lead to transformational change.
In order to understand this more deeply, the Report looks at the benefits for women and society and providessome financial modelling for how the engagement of commercial players could achieve industrial, sustainable growth in these areas. Accenture has provided the modelling and, given the public benefit and understanding which the report seeks to generate, these are shared openly for all in the mobile industry to understand and share. It is the Trustees' hope that the collaboration with Oxford University and Accenture in the delivery of this Report will stimulate not only the expansion of existing charitable programmes but will also seed other philanthropic, social enterprise or commercial initiatives.
2013-03-11
Center for Civil Society Studies at Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies;
A "global associational revolution," a major upsurge of organized, private, voluntary and nonprofit activity, has been under way around the world for the past thirty years or more. Despite the scale and scope of this development, however, official data to portray it have long been lacking. This report takes an important step toward remedying this situation by presenting a summary of new findings from the implementation b statistical offices in sixteen countries of the United Nations "Handbook on Nonprofit Institutions in the System of National Accounts".
Developed by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies in cooperation with the UN Statistics Division and an International Technical Experts Group, and issued by the U.N. in 2003, this Handbook calls on national statistical offices to produce regular "satellite accounts" on nonprofit institutions and volunteering for the first time, and provides detailed guidance on how to do so. The result is a far more complete official picture of the scope and structure of the nonprofit or civil societ sector than has ever been available in these countries.
This report presents the findings from the implementation of this UN NPI Handbook in 16 countries aound the world, including data on the comparative workforce, contribution to GDP, expenditures, revenues, and distribution of activities, and an in-depth look at the advantages off the Handbook approach over the traditional SNA methods of measurement.
It is our hope that this report will help to encourage civil society and foundation leaders, volunteer promotion organizations, and statistical offices in other countries to promote the implementation of the UN NPI Handbook in their countries. The result will be to make the nonprofit and volunteer sector more visible, enhance its credibility, enable more effective partnerships between NPIs and public and private institutions, open new research opportunities for scholars, improve the clarity with which national accounts statistics portray national economies, and ultimately to improve citizen well-being.
