Winners of CSO (NGO) report competition
Winners of the tenth CSO report competition have been announced
The results of the competition were decided via an online format.
09.02.2021
On 9 February, the Donors’ Forum held an online exchange to decide the results of the tenth CSO report competition, Starting Point. The winners were presented during the forum.
Competition in the time of the pandemic
Given the circumstances in 2020, it was not expected that CSOs would be able to get their hands on their annual reports right away, but, contrary to expectations, applications for Starting Point began arriving early, said Alexandra Boldireva, the Executive Director of the Donor Forum.
In 2020, 361 applications were submitted and 285 were accepted, compared with 2019, when 343 applications were submitted and 280 were accepted. According to Natalya Medvedeva, Head of the Non-profit Sector of the Donors’ Forum, 108 contestants from last year did not reapply this year. It transpired that a quarter of these did not release an annual report at all.
Vyacheslav Bakhmin, an expert in the sphere of philanthropy and civil society, believes these were NGOs who were most preoccupied with the pandemic.
Nevertheless, competition experts concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic as a whole did not affect the competition or the number of participants. 85 reports received the gold award, 99 received silver and 69 bronze.
Moscow, Moscow region, Omsk and St. Petersburg remained the leaders in number of applications.
Best debut
In the category of CSOs registered in 2018 and 2019, the prize for Best Debut was taken by the Karitas foundation in Saratov. The organisation had been functioning for a long time, but was only registered with the Ministry of Justice in 2018 as an interregional CSO, spread over 23 regions of the country, with the aim of helping people living below the poverty line.
Second place was taken by the Yamal Centre for the Development of Cultural Tourism Land of Luguya. The Atlas of CSOs, from the Rostov Centre for Social Innovation, took third place.
Best content of an annual report
The category for Best Content, as nominated by the Agency for Social Information, was won by House of Childhood, a regional non-profit charity based in Samara. They had previously won third place in 2019.
Read more at the following link: “Working with orphans, I learned how to be a parent.” Anton Rubin from the House of Childhood.
Second place was awarded to the Perm charity Bereginya.
Third place was taken by the St Petersburg Foundation for Children with Cancer, and their narrative Light.
The ASI also noted the report by the Change One Life Foundation for best integration of text with multimedia.
Best expert report
In the nomination from Mail.ru, the Live Now foundation won first place. Charity Volunteers for the protection of Orphans won silver. The Bela foundation- Butterfly children was awarded bronze.
In this category, reports were noted for their contribution to the development of their sector, as well as intersectional interaction.
Best report indicating the organisation’s efforts towards citizens and local residents
In this category, judged by the Blagosfera Centre, it was not possible to rank the winners, said Natalya Kaminarskaya.
The top three reports were those submitted by the St. Petersburg centre Yom Yom, Second Breath foundation, and the Belgograd regional public organisation Holy Belogorie Against Childhood Cancer, in no particular order.
Small but mighty
In the category from the Russian Ministry of Economic Development for organisations whose annual budget did not exceed 1 million rubles, there were several sub-categories.
The winners in the sub-category for the best report by a CSO operating outside a city were:
- The Kormilovskaya local organisation for the Omsk branch of the Russian Society for Disabled Citizens Foundation;
- The Sherbakul district branch of the Omsk regional public organisation of veterans (pensioners);
- The Tavrichesky district branch of the Omsk regional public organisation of veterans (pensioners).
The winners in the sub-category of organisations located outside regional centres were:
- The Odessa public fund for the support of children and group sports;
- The Cherlaksy district branch of the Omsk regional organisation of veterans (pensioners);
- Aura, the Ural Centre for Social Development,
- The Nazyvaevsky district branch of the Omsk regional organisation of veterans (pensioners).
The winners of the subcategory Overall Rating were: in third place, the Right to Life Foundation, in second place the ANO Youth Helpline and in first place, the Centre for Environmental Protection, Environmental Consciousness.
Nominations by the Presidential Grant Foundation
In this category, the best reports were noted for reflecting their interaction and communication with donors and partners in order to ensure the sustainability of the organisation and the development of their fundraising system.
As Igor Sobolev, advisor to the general director of the Presidential Grants Foundation, noted, the current winners in this category received an average score in last year’s competition, indicating an overall improvement in the quality of NGO reports.
The winners in this category were: the St Nicholas Foundation (third place), the Perspektiva foundation for the promotion of the development of Crimea (second place), and the St- Petersburg organisation Nochlezhka (first place).
The best presentation of monitoring and evaluation results
Last year’s winner, the Elena and Gennady Timchenko Foundation, took first place once again in the nominations by the Association of Programme and Policy Evaluators. Second place was taken by the charity foundation Viktoria. The Second Breath Foundation took third place again.
SDG context
In the SDG Context category, organisations were recognised for reports that most clearly showed the contribution of the CSO to the fulfilment of Sustainable Development Goals. These winners were also chosen without ranking: charities Towards Change, We Need Help and SUEK- Regions all received commendation.
Larisa Ovchinnikova, the director for Development at the UN’s Global Compact, also noted 14 organisations that showed promise in this category. They included: the charity Art, Science and Sport, Nochlezhka, Second Breath, and Mercy. She advised NGOs interested in pursuing these SDGs to look further into this topic: there are 169 different targets in the 17 Sustainable Goals as set out by the UN. It is possible that one or more are already being fulfilled by the NGO.
Award for a systematic approach and non-standard format
In the category from D-Group, for a systematic approach, the Second Breath Foundation was given first place. In the category for non-standard format, the report-calendar from Doctor Lisa’s Help For All Foundation won third place, the report in the form of a mini-website from the GRANI centre won second place, and the animation video from the Life Path Foundation won first place: https://www.youtube.com/embed/qX0P-fHjN-s?feature=oembed
The list of prize winners can be found on the Donors Forum website.
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