"95% of NGOs are useless, their occupation is unknown. They are set up to make money. If financing stops, they fall apart, because they have nothing else keeping them together. Only a small number of NGOs understand what they’re doing.”

"99% of NGOs have been created either to get grants or to satisfy individual ambitions. There is a small number that do something and their work plays an important role, but the number of non-working NGOs is so big that it casts a shadow on the work of the small group.”

“NGOs are a means of money-laundering”, etc.

These are the opinions of people who, to one extent or another, deal with NGOs. Why is the public so negative on the subject of NGOs – is it because of a lack of information or are there other reasons? We tried to find out from the leaders of several very active NGOs, chosen at random, how they meet the requirement of the Law on NGOs, in particular, Article 14 – “The working principle of an NGO is openness,” and Article 15 – “An NGO is required to disseminate information on its activity.” In other words, to what extent is the work of NGOs transparent, and what is their response to the public opinion regarding NGOs?

Interestingly, the NGOs mainly shared these public perceptions, but ascribed the faults to other organizations. “Of course, there are NGOs like that, doing things like that. There are NGOs consisting of three or four people who get grants by exploiting their connections. These NGOs aren’t hard to find, and journalists can follow what happens to the grants”, says Hakob Abrahamyan, Chairman of the Pyunik Union of Disabled People.

“Journalists share a lot of the guilt here, because they are indifferent to NGOs and they don’t fully present their work to the public,” he added. He thinks that the negative attitude toward NGOs is created because of journalists. “Like everyone else in our country, journalists are politicized. They rush to political action, but they are indifferent to the cause of presenting the work of NGOs to the public.”

Abrahamyan doesn’t find his organization’s interaction with the press to be fruitful: “We are thought of as an NGO that works actively with the mass media, but I’m dissatisfied, we have to improve our cooperation.” He noted that in 2002, Pyunik organized about ten events and sent invitations to 35-40 media organizations, and at best two or three journalists showed up. The Pyunik chairman believes that they work with the media in accordance with international standards, they send press releases about their events to news agencies, but they don’t get any press coverage.

As far as the openness of their work is concerned, Abrahamyan said that when they receive a grant they publish one or two articles describing the project in progress, and when a project is complete organize a presentation of the results of their work. Information about the NGO is placed on the organization’s Website, and once a year they publish an information bulletin. “We have big donors from the US and we send them monthly reports, and in addition, we send them a summary report on our activity once a year. Our annual financial reports are published in our information bulletins.” Recently, at its own initiative, the organization conducted an international audit in order to make internal transactions transparent and to strengthen donor confidence. “This was also helpful in applying for various grants; it solved the issue of confidence”, the NGO chairman said.

Abramyan explained that it happens very rarely that citizens want to learn about the financial matters of the NGO, but that many people want to learn about the work of the organization and they get this information. He noted, “Perhaps journalists, too, think that NGOs are closed, that it is not possible to get into them. In our case, we invite you.”

According to Susanna Aslanyan, Chairman of the Maternity Fund NGO, one way to disseminate information on the work of the organization is to distribute leaflets. Her organization doesn’t have a Website yet because they lack the resources. The media don’t respond to their invitations. “The professional journalists don’t want to work with us, all our attempts to cooperate with them have been in vain. The beginners who need material to write about are interested in us, but they can’t present our work properly”. Aslanyan said that at first, the organization presented its work through journalists, but because of “misinterpretations and slanted information” they decided to stop cooperating. “Naturally, we weren’t used to working that way, I was partly to blame for that-- we should find ways to work with journalists.”

As to how they keep in touch with the people who need their aid, and to what extent this group is familiar with the work of the Maternity Fund, Aslanyan informed us that in 1992 they organized a big project to locate families with many children in Yerevan, and created an electronic database, and now this circle knows them well. Aslanyan believes that the work of the organization she leads is transparent. “We present reports to the Ministry of Justice, to the government’s humanitarian department. We present our main reports to our donors.”

Regarding the negative attitude towards NGOs, she said, “The organizations are different. There are organizations that are born just to get a grant, there are organizations that are closed- perhaps they have something to hide- but it seems to me that this is just a lot of talk. A grant is a great support, but whether we have a grant or not, our doors have never been closed. Who has ever been interested in the fate of our grants--which journalists asked and I didn’t give them information?

Levon Nersissyan, Chairman of the Armenian Sakharov Center of Human Rights, believes that as a general rule, organizations should publish information on their work of the previous year. This will help to differentiate working organizations from non-working ones. “As far as financial reports, I present them to my donors and to the taxation authorities. But I don’t understand, for example, why I should report to the Ministry of Justice, which also demands reports from me”.

Nercissyan believes that his organization is completely transparent. “I work very well with the media, I give them our studies. We investigate house by house, not everybody gets that kind of results. We have a Website where we place important information, but I’m not satisfied with it.” The Sakharov Center provided us a pamphlet about the organization, with projects implemented since 1995, the kind of work they have done, etc, but no financial information.

Jemma Hasratyan, chairman of the Association of Women with University Education, told us that the public could learn about what their organization does on its Website. At the same time, she acknowledged that the site is not frequently updated. Like the others, they present their financial statements to the Ministry of Justice, the taxation authorities, etc. Their cooperation with the media has not been effective. Hasratyan said that the media, especially state-owned media, very rarely refers to the press releases they send out. “In the past there was a conflict between us and the media. Then we realized that we are both the part of society that should be a constructive opposition. This is extremely important, especially in a society in transition.”

Hasratyan said that although misinformation and negative commentary distance them from journalists, she doesn’t blame journalists much. “Why doesn’t it happen that the press agencies report on us in depth? Because the journalists are in harsh conditions, they hardly manage to make it to the beginnings of events, they don’t have time to look deeply into the subject. It seems to me that now our relations with journalists have changed. I think we should not only make demands on the media, we should do something for them. We organize seminars and find ways of keeping in good contact.”

Jemma Hasratyan disagrees with the negative attitude towards NGOs. “We can’t rule out that some organizations are inter-family, that’s not very acceptable, although if it weren’t for the money issue, nobody would blame them. People do public work. We work for the public, not for profit. One is paid for; the other has to be free of charge.

Philologist Anahit Haroutounyan, who has studied the activity of the first public organizations in western Armenia and Turkey in the 18th and 19th centuries, believes that that NGOs only succeeded in assuring real transparency in this period. “They were by definition mainly benevolent organizations dedicated to the common cause of national liberation, through the support and promotion of educational and enlightening pamphlets. Their money came from the sale of these pamphlets, fundraising and contributions by national benefactors” These organizations published their financial and project reports in the press in separate booklets, which can still be found in libraries today. And they provide a lot of material for studying the work of the organizations of that time.” She also noted that in years to come, if somebody wants to get a picture of the activities and finances of today’s NGOs, they won’t be able to.

Of the NGOs we looked at, only the Yerevan Press Club and the Association of Investigative Journalists place their financial reports, including grants received and expenditures for each project, on their Websites.

We believe that public dissatisfaction with NGOs can be minimized if the organizations report their financial situation to the public as they implement their projects. To summarize what we learned from the organizations we spoke to, what’s most important to them is to provide information to taxation and state authorities, as required by law. But by definition, NGOs are called upon to protect the interests of the public, and what’s really most important is to earn public trust.