Kiadványok
Nyomtatóbarát változat
Cím:
TÉNY/SOROS II. - Summary
Szerző:
Nóvé Béla
Sorozatcím:
TÉNY/SOROS
A kiadás helye:
Budapest
A kiadás éve:
2004
Kiadó:
Magvető Könyvkiadó és Kereskedelmi Kft
Terjedelem:
625 oldal
Nyelv:
magyar
Tárgyszavak:
évkönyv, Soros Alapítvány, pályázat
Állomány:
Megjegyzés:
Annotáció:
ISBN:
963 14 2415 4
ISSN:
Raktári jelzet:
E

SUMMARY

FACT/SOROS II.

THE SECOND DECADE OF
THE SOROS FOUNDATION HUNGARY
1995-2004

Thisbookisanaccount,throughrecollections,studies,picturesanddocuments, of the second decade of the Soros Foundation Hungary, a private institution which has wielded a uniquely strong influence on public life, arts, literature, culture, research, education and health in Hungary.
Founded in the Orwellian year of 1984 by Hungarian-born American businessman George Soros with an endowment of one million dollars, the Foundation was intended to support independent intellectual, cultural and public initiatives that would serve the development and general democratization of Hungary, still under Communist rule. It was an experiment that was to form the precedent for another dozen Soros foundations throughout the region, and was in itself a striking success. Over the ensuing twenty years, the Hungarian Foundation has spent another 150 million dollars on the most diverse public causes and private individuals.
*

Thetwenty-yearlifeoftheorganizationhasbeenattendedbyacceleratingchange and a search for dynamic balance, within and without. Its history can be broken down into four successive, and highly distinct, periods:

I. 1984 to 1990
II. 1990 to 1994
III. 1994 to 2000
IV. 2000 to 2004

Thefirsttwoperiodswerecoveredinthelast“decadereport”(Tény/Soros - 1984- 1994. Balassi Kiadó, Budapest, 1999), but for the sake of continuity and to follow the changes, it is worth summarizing them brieflyhere.
I.
FROM THE BEGINNING TO 1990

It was in the late Kádár years, just about the time of the Gorbachov opening, that the “Hungarian Academy of Sciences Soros Foundation Committee” was set up. From the start, it was something of a cuckoo’s egg in the rigid, hierarchical, one-party Communist nest. The regime gave its blessing to the experimental initiative partly as a propaganda gesture to the West and partly from simple pragmatic considerations (general lack of funds and foreign exchange particularly in the areas of culture, education and research). The future of the new organization remained precarious in the first two or three years, because its struggle for publicity and autonomy set off waves of conflict in the system, as testified by contemporary documents that survive from the Ministry of the Interior, the party headquarters and academic circles. Nevertheless, with its immediately-popular literature and social studies grants - which were judged on a strikingly independent basis, sometimes clashing with the authorities - and a whole range of much-missed and innovative initiatives (like the substantial grants for libraries, the Xerox program and a raft of foreign grants and study trips) it earned greater and greater recognition and respect among both the intelligentsia and even reform-minded sections of the state apparatus. A breakthrough came on the threshold of the change of system: in 1988-89, when its popularity was at a peak, it attained the position of one of the main catalysts of the democratic transition, with generous donations backing up the “broad opposition people’s front policy”. The honors for this initial four or five years undoubtedly go to the founder’s personal representative Miklós Vásárhelyi and a handful of close, dedicated colleagues. ThesuccessoftheHungarianFoundation was undoubtedly a major factor in George Soros’ decision to launch, on what was now a well-tried pattern, a succession of new foundations in Poland, Russia, China and then further Central-Eastern Europe countries.

II.
1990-1994

The second period - which largely coincides with the four years of the first democratically-elected parliament and government - was marked by both continuity and the assumption of new roles. With the exception of a few board members, the team in charge of strategy remained largely the same, but alongside the President, Miklós Vásárhelyi, the newly-appointed director László Kardos assumed an increasing role. The Foundation also finally gained its full independence, breaking off its political “enforced marriage” to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, officiallyinearly1991,butinrealityin1990.
The budget grew and grew, grants and programs proliferated, but the creative momentum of the early years seemed to run out of steam. The “transition hangover” mood and the dirt of the “culture war” seeped even through the walls of the recently-occupied new Országház Street headquarters. The new government frequently declined its cooperation (particularly in cultural and educational matters) and in the crudely polarizing political situation, the Foundation was also caught up in the enforced party-politicization, pervaded with wicked intrigues and vulgar anti-semitic press campaigns.
It was also the time when the organization of the Central European University started up in parallel in three cities - Warsaw, Prague and Budapest - and when a dozen new Soros foundations were set up one after the other throughout the region. It was the wish of the Founder that we should cooperate, and draw up common principles and programs, although the “first-born” Foundation in Budapest was somewhat lukewarm in its support, beyond sharing its experience with the newcomers when asked. (“Networking = not working” was the prevalent view among the Hungarian management.) Public affairs and the intellectual side remained dominant, but now in a new, narrower, if not less feisty spirit of opposition. Coming up alongside, however, were a few initiatives that addressed increasingly severe problems, like the School Milk campaign, the Help to Help program or the support for the Hungarian Hospice movement. These were important first moves toward what became a shift of strategy.

III.
1994-1999/2000

Following the change of government in 1994, and closely connected with it, we witnessed a belated, but highly ambitious exercise in self-renewal. TheFoundation was suddenly faced with new opportunities, and, freed from its “opposition quarantine”, started to ratchet up its activity. Thefundingbudgetalmostdoubled, to a level at which it stayed for five years, five more members were added to the Board, and Éva Bakonyi replaced László Kardos as head of the operational team, which soon swelled in number to 50 and moved to the Foundation’s own headquarters in a renovated Buda villa. New programs and subprograms started up by the dozen, and there were 70 separate boards with 220 members judging the 20,000 applications received each year - the same number as had been received in whole of the firstdecade!
The Soros Foundation Hungary had grown into a big operation, with all the advantages and drawbacks attending it. Decision-making was decentralized, program management and grant administration became more efficient, but many new colleagues hardly knew each other, and it was difficult to get an overall view of the complex and sprawling system of highly specialized programs. It was, above all, the era of the Health and Public Education Development “mega programs”, the subject of several analyses, impact studies and documents included in this book. Both of these high-profile, new commitments, coordinated with work by government, local government, professional organizations and NGOs, achieved major results, even if they were unable, with their limited resources, to produce comprehensive structural reforms during these four years. They also radically remodeled the Foundation’s profile and its way of working, greatly widening the scope of causes and persons it supported. Patronage of culture and the arts, partly reflecting the changing value preferences of New York and the Founder, was by now forced into the background, and left to fight a rearguard action that nevertheless kept going right up to recent years. It was also at this time that some new and important initiatives took root: the Roma programs, and support for human rights, protection of minorities and civic initiatives. These were eventually to become dominant in the first years of the new millennium.
IV.
FROM 2000 TO DATE

Thelastfourorfiveyearshavebeenmarkedbya searchfora newroleandgradual withdrawal. The latter has been forced by the Founder’s declared intention, stated several years before, and by deeper and deeper funding cuts. In this, the Foundation, far from being alone, is sharing the fate of several dozen other foundations in the Soros network. The ultimate outcome, however, remains unsure. Therearesomegroundsforhope.OneisthattheHungarianFoundation has already survived many difficultperiods,andtheotheristhattheFounderhas been preoccupied for nearly a decade by the question, “What should our endgame strategy be?” The new period dawned with a reduction of the disposable grant budget for 2000 to 5 million dollars - hardly one third of what it had been the year before. Many programs were closed, or their funding was cut, and there was string of enforced staff departures. A similar indication of hard times was the change in Foundation leadership: in early 2001, Éva Bakonyi was replaced in the directorial post by Anna Belia, and Miklós Vásárhelyi, who died in May, was succeeded as president by Gábor Halmai. In the meantime, there was an almost complete
620
FÜGGELÉK
changeover among the board members. Downsizing gave way to new, integrated program groups, the system of special boards was radically reorganized, and new steps were taken in strategic planning. These were all increasingly constrained by ongoing budget cuts. In 2003, the last Soros Prizes were awarded, and by the end of the year the traditional grant-giving and donating profile had come to an end. Only two civil grant programs remained: East-East, joint with the Open Society Institute, and the similarly internationally-based “Trust”.
This is not to say that no inventive and successful programs have been started up or kept going in the last five years. Enough to mention the Community Health Program, the Roma Community Center, the Self-Developing Roma Schools, several programs involving the homeless and the unemployed, the Soros Studio Theatre Festival, the Contemporary Arts Program network, the Cultural Management program, the Mobile Legal Aid service and the 2002 campaign to encourage voting in the general election (“Exercise your right - go and vote!”). In these, forging virtue out of necessity, the Foundation has endeavored to make up for lack of cash with greater intellectual investment, organization work and collaboration, relying on its well-earned respect and widespread contacts in various professions and institutions.

“Dare to be small!” might be the motto for the new Foundation strategy which, in the absence of spectacular quantitative results, aims for quality.
*

By putting the Popperian ideal of the “open society” into its own practice, the Foundation has from the beginning lived courageously out in the open, putting its operation under broadly-based social and professional control. Much has indeed changed over the last ten years - literary and social science grants have given way to prizes, and public grant programs have been joined by invited schemes - but the Foundation has nonetheless largely safeguarded its fundamental openness.
The membership of every board, and the names of all program managers and staff, have been public right from the start. The grant schemes have always been publicly announced, and their scoring criteria, results lists, grant sums, and even sometimes the reasons for judgment, were open to scrutiny. These were regularly published in the press and in the Foundation’s annual reports, and the result of every grant program in twenty years can still be found on the Foundation’s website, www.soros.hu. Every board decision likely to arouse public interest was also made public. As the recollections of the board members in this volume attest, most decision-making bodies did their work in an open and constructive atmosphere, although vigorous professional debates broke out in some of them. These differing viewpoints sometimes met with wide publicity, like the hotly-debated reorganization of the book and journal publishing funding system in 1996. For as long as it has existed, but particularly in the last decade, the Foundation has assumed the organization and funding of many Hungarian and international conferences, civil forums, and debates on professional and public affairs, another major contribution to free exchange of ideas and the public airing of issues.
Another of its major roles has been in reviving civil society. From being an isolated entity of dubious future when it started out in 1984, the Foundation rapidly grew into an institutional prototype of civil society. On the eve of the political transition, the Foundation was one of the main supporters of self organizing groups of citizens, and a crucial factor in the reborn Hungarian non profit sector. With its “Democracy Program” launched in spring 1989, it provided hundreds of newly-founded NGOs, independent journals and movements out of a special funding of over two million dollars, as a kind of “emergency transition assistance”.
Even after 1990, it continued to regard the widening of the democratic base and the strengthening of civil society as a prime task. For many years, several hundred impecunious organizations received indispensable infrastructural and/or regular upkeep support. (These included school foundations, research institutes, book and journal publishers, artistic companies, professional organizations, public affairs movements, human rights and Roma organizations, etc.) In the last decade, it has put even more emphasis on seeking broad collaboration with the civil sector. Of the many practical examples of this, two will suffice in illustration:
One is the Nonprofit Service Center, which the Foundation accommodated in the reception floor of its own headquarters and ran for three years. It provided the hard pressed NGOs, mainly in Budapest and surroundings, with free use of the office and legal, financial and grant-application advice. The other, and most recent, example is the Institutional Support Program that goes under the name of “Trust”. This, an initiative by five large American private foundations currently withdrawing from the region, is providing 100 million dollars, in a multi-round application scheme, for distribution among key local NGOs. The management of the program - also awarded by tender - was assigned to the Budapest Soros Foundation, in cooperation with two other organizations. As well as than acting as redistributor and applications manager in the Hungarian arm of this program, the Foundation itself recently ran a similar experimental program out of its own funds and on its own initiative. The novelty of the scheme is that, in a reverse of former practice, organizations judged worthy of support are provided with substantial funds specifically to meet their operational costs and thus facilitate their long-term survival.
Could there be a more worthy farewell gesture from a much-reduced organization with a great past?

Kiadványok