Description

NGOs are an effective instrument to bridge the needs of various groups with innovative solutions, an efficient way to solve community issues and an authentic source of innovation and creativity for the wellbeing of all. In order to achieve their missions in the best possible way, NGOs need to be transparent in their everyday operations, to have enough organizational and financial capacityto accumulate trust of decision-makers, donors and wider public. Howeverin Eastern European countries there is a tendency of negative media campaigns and decreasing funding opportunities that requires NGOs to invest more incapacity building of theirstaff and board members.

There are around 47 000 NGOs in Bulgaria. Most of them operate on campaign or voluntary basis and use grant funding as main resource. Other funding sources are still underdeveloped (mission-related economic activity and fundraising) which makes it difficult for NGOs to afford professional trainings. There is no university specialization in Bulgaria that focuses on NGO management and development. There is no official qualification program that allows NGO activists to upgrade specific knowledge and skills. The existing NGO capacity building programs use mainly offline training courses which increase the expenses for organizers and participants and limit the opportunity for participation.

In the last 15 years BCNL invests efforts in NGOcapacity building believing that They are the main engine for civic energy and innovation. We are the only organization in Bulgaria that provides professional NGO capacity building programs and we are searching for various ways to make them affordable for all NGOs. We imagine a solution that will allow:

· Provision of online capacity building trainings;

· Development or modification of the content depending on various factors;

· Developmentof template audio-visual materials for the content;

· User-friendly management and participation;

· Flexibility of topics and combination of training methods and tools;

· An easy way of communication and review of participants’ improvement;

Analysis of individual needs and motivation of potential participants and planning of based on the results.
Location: Bulgaria (national)

The target group includes all NGOs and all experts who want to develop as NGO trainers.


It is described based on our 15 years of experience in organizing and providing trainings for NGOs. We usually have more than 60 applicants per training but we are able to invite not more than 20 per training. The demand is strong, but our resources are limited. We are also trying to involve various experts and to build a community of NGO trainers. We however do not have the resources to organize training of trainers and to share training methods, tools or specific knowledge for the sector.We manage 3 main capacity building programs in Bulgaria – the first NGO Entrepreneurship Program, the only one Summer School for NGOs and the Fundraising Program for NGOs. Besides we organize short trainings on various topics – advocacy, organizational capacity, financial management, etc. BCNL performs various analysis and researches on the NGO context in Bulgaria. We are the managers of the only Informational portal for Bulgarian NGOs – www.ngobg.info with a database of more than 10 000 NGOs. Also BCNL is the only organization in Bulgaria that provides free of charge legal consultations to NGOs and their teams on various issues so we have a direct source of information on the difficulties and the needs of the NGO sector.
All available platforms that we know about are either designed to be used for topics of importance to businesses, entrepreneurs or to people searching for pre-qualification programs, not focused on NGOs specific issues in Bulgaria (advocacy, financial management, management of volunteers, networking, etc.).

The solutions that we are searching for are:

· an online educational platform that could be redesigned for the needs of the target group or

· a specifically designed educational platform for training of NGOs

a platform that allow streaming and/or webinars and discussions but that can be used in an easy way without the need to invest in machinery.