Czech Giving in the Times of Economic Crisis

To analyse the impact of the economic crisis on the Czech nonprofit sector is a complex task, for which there are not sufficient data available to date. In this paper I limit myself to a probe into the level of giving as an important indicator of the support for Czech NPOs. I use several indicators to estimate the impact of the current economic crisis on the funding for NPOs from private donors, ie. individuals and businesses, and for the sake of comparison I also look at the funding from the state. My data indicate that the support from individuals and from businesses has been largely unaffected by the crisis, or has only been affected very briefly, while the funding from the state has decreased, even though not very dramatically. I attribute the sustained level of private individual giving to the prevailing mode of giving by Czech citizens, their disregard for the financial aspects of giving and the continued process of emancipation of civil society and the nonprofit sector from the state since the regime change in 1989. By way of conclusion, I suggest that the crisis can not only be a threat but also an opportunity for Czech NPOs, especially in their efforts to emancipate themselves from too much dependence on the state.