Social Responsibility Situation in Lithuania

Social responsibility in Lithuania is fairly new phenomenon appearing in the beginning of this century. As Lithuanian non-governmental sector started its’ first steps in late 1990s, the first 10-15 years of the development of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were supported by various international foundations and foreign charity organizations. International donations were supposed to strengthen Lithuanian civil society in the transitional period. Together with the access to the European Union in 2005 Lithuania had to be ready for the task to maintain the so called „third sector“ on it‘s own: laws and budget allocations from the government, philanthropy and social responsibility from private sector, and sustainability including fundraising from NGOs themselves.

Although it is early to estimate the results of the task last 5 years showed that Lithuania‘s third sector is still in an early childhood. Even if there are some positive changes, such as:

• a legal framework is advanced enough comparing to other Eastern European countries,
• the corporate social responsibility has obtained progressive form of The National Network of Responsible Business under the UN Global Compact Initiative,
• the donations are increasing 20 per cent each year, except from the last year (in 2007 and 2008 comprised 300 million Litas, The Department of Statistics of the Republic of Lithuania),
• the number of NGOs increased up to 14 thousand in 2008;

The real situation which Lithuanian NGOs face is still quite tough:

• despite of numerous lobbying activities in the government, the state budget still doesn’t allocate any single Litas for the sustainability and organizational development of NGOs,
• although business community are increasing sponsorship and charity giving, they allocate their funds chaotically and indefinitely; individuals still hardly participate in public activities neither donate (according to the Civic empowerment index, more than a half of respondents have never donated by any means),
• NGOs still implement poor activities to increase their sustainability and organizational development.