On May 30, 2008 ECNL in cooperation with its local partner in Azerbaijan, the National NGO Forum (NNF), held a Conference on Public Funding for Civil Society organizations (CSOs) with participation of local and international experts. The event provided a comparative analysis of international experience in distributing state grants to CSOs and convened some thirty participants: representatives of the newly established NGO Council, members of Parliament and civil society representatives.

The topic is especially acute for Azerbaijan in the light of recent establishment of the NGO Council by President's order last year. Members of the Council could benefit from direct interaction with ECNL international experts and their counterpart from Croatia during the Conference.

The Conference was opened by Rauf Zeyni, the NNF Acting President, followed by the local expert, Aydin Karimov, who spoke about prospects and challenges of state financing for civil society organizations in Azerbaijan. Dr. Dragan Golubovic, ECNL's senior legal advisor, provided comparative information on models of public financing to CSOs. ECNL's Executive Director, Nilda Bullain, talked about Hungarian experience of public funding to CSOs. The participants of the Conference also heard about Croatia's first-hand experience in establishing and running a similar NGO Council. Mladen Ivanovic prepared a presentation on Institutional Mechanisms for NGO Funding. This presentation evoked numerous questions from the audience, in particular about how the Croatian NGO Fund managed to increase their grant making capacity in such a short period of time.

For more information about the Conference, please, see Dragan Golubovic's, Nilda Bullain's and Mladen Ivanovic's presentations in Azerbaijani and English.