The study “Romania 2024. The Non-Governmental Sector. Profile, Trends, Challenges” (now in its third edition) provides the general public, decision-makers, and the NGO sector with a comprehensive overview of the current state of non-governmental organizations, recent trends, and their capacity to contribute to social development.
The study offers data on the number of NGOs, their activity rate, the financial size of the sector, its functioning (internal organization, use of volunteers, the state of people in NGOs), the relationship between the sector and society (civic engagement of the sector, involvement in public policy design, the sector's concerns with its own impact), contemporary challenges related to staff recruitment, workplace security, burnout, the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and specific presentations for several fields of action: social-charitable, educational, religious and sports organizations, organizations focused on democracy, human rights and governance, and youth organizations.
The data collected or prepared under the project for drafting this report are of two major types: administrative data, collected by public authorities and to which there is open access or for which access was requested (National NGO Register, ANAF), and survey data, collected under the supervision of the project team. Twelve experts (sociologists, political scientists, and members of civil society) with experience in civic activism, the NGO sector, and civil society were part of the research team.
Three distinct surveys were designed and conducted for this study:
- BOSC 2023: Barometer of Opinions on the Civil Society - an opinion survey conducted on a nationally representative sample of 1,200 respondents, allowing the assessment of the Romanian population's attitudes towards the NGO sector. BOSC is an interview-based survey (CATI), with data collection carried out by Mercury Research in November 2023.
- BLO 2023: Barometer of NGOs’ Leaders – a survey addressed to non-governmental organizations, primarily collecting data about the organization rather than the individuals driving it. BLO is a large sample survey (803 respondents), as an online applied questionnaire-based survey (CAWI) on a convenience sample. Its filling-in took place between November 2023 and January 2024.
- BMO 2023: Barometer of Members, Employees and Volunteers in the NGO sector - a new tool in the context of the FDSC reports on the NGO sector, which however uses some of the items included in BLO 2016. 2028 of useful responses were collected through a web survey (CAWI) between December 2023 and January 2024.
There are approximately 127,000 non-governmental organizations in Romania, which in 2022 had around 127,000 employees and total revenues of 21 billion lei (about 1.51% of GDP). The past few years have meant, on the one hand, the consolidation of public trust in NGOs and, consequently, donations and sponsorships to them, but also new challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the burnout felt by many employees in the sector.
