Vaidotas Ilgius

Vaidotas Ilgius is steering Lithuania's citizen sector toward long-term sustainable growth by cultivating a powerful network among sectors.

Vaidotas sees the need to create a holistic approach to the development of a vibrant civil society. A sustainable system relies on a synergy between different sectors, both public and private. "Civil society engineers" such as legislators, information and training providers, or civil society activists need to know, understand, and help sculpt the citizen sector.
Vaidotas brings parties together, creating mechanisms for effective communication and negotiation, and overcoming barriers to advancing civil society and philanthropic giving. His approach consists of lobbying for policies friendly to civil society, providing training opportunities and networking experts, and creating a virtual gateway to information about philanthropy and civil society.
Vaidotas has two focuses: concrete education and advocacy, and the building of the necessary infrastructure for a strong civil society. Holistic and comprehensive, this model is replicable in other countries with similar histories.

Lithuania's citizen sector experienced a huge growth spurt in the last 10 years. During Soviet times, the communist regime restricted and manipulated civil society. This system of almost total control prevented active private initiatives and civic participation in public life. In 1988 national liberation movements brought revolutionary changes. The early 1990s were marked by massive and active participation in public life and the birth of a tremendous number of citizen organizations.
But because of growth, most citizen organizations did not emerge as strong and sustainable social service providers. While countries with old democratic traditions have had a long time to develop the framework for philanthropic and voluntary organizations, countries once a part of the Soviet Union have been forced to create this framework. As a result, many citizen sector organizations maintain a short-term focus and are primarily fighting for survival.
To compound the problem, politicians and civil servants usually do not have enough knowledge and understanding of the civil society environment. Connections with politicians are affected by their other priorities and challenges, enormous time pressure, and high turnover rates. Prescriptive legislation dominates, and weak administrative decisions block many organizations from vital resources, and poor or inadequate monitoring and control systems leave doors open for corruption and fraud.
Foreign aid agencies that were the most concerned about the development of the citizen sector are leaving the region one by one, and they provide three times more support than do Lithuanian businesses and individuals put together. Philanthropic behavior and traditions are weak in Lithuania; only 9 percent of Lithuania's population have become members of citizen organizations, and only 11.6 percent have ever donated to these organizations. Vaidotas sees that favorable conditions must be created in order to encourage philanthropic behavior of citizens and businesses. Laws and regulations must be passed, but also sufficient and accessible information and advice have to be offered to the general public in countries like Lithuania in transition.
According to Vaidotas, new systems must be established in order to build the legal conditions and basic infrastructure for civil society and philanthropy growth. These systems must bring together policymakers, donors, service providers, and representatives of the target group. The systems should facilitate the negotiation process in order to develop long-term national strategies for citizen sector development. If these systems are not created, many citizen organizations in Central and Eastern European countries which are seeking accession to the European Union, will face a harsh reduction of resources, obstacles to providing services to their beneficiaries, and even a challenge to their existence.

Vaidotas's key strategies include promoting greater legal backing for effective citizen sector work, designing training programs, creating networks of experts, and developing an information gateway.
Vaidotas is promoting the creation of laws that advance the public sector. He inspired the creation of the Parliament Temporary Work Group for Solving NGO Problems and facilitated the establishment of the Permanent NGO Commission to the Prime Minister's Office. Thanks to the efforts of these structures, new legislation regarding voluntary labor, citizen sector economic activities, and tax benefits were passed in Lithuania. Vaidotas also consulted with the Lithuanian Ministry of Finance regarding amending and implementing the Charity and Sponsorship Law; this led to a significant increase in charitable donations. He intends to improve collaboration with state officials and to help build financial sustainability for organizations through the Lithuanian tax payers' right to dedicate up to 2 percent of their paid tax to charitable organizations of their choice. Vaidotas intends to facilitate the creation and adoption of a civil society development policy concept. The core element of this concept is to create a new empowered advisory body to the government to serve as a channel of information and advocacy between policymakers and implementers, beneficiaries (citizen sector organizations), researchers, and donors.
Vaidotas has created formal trainings for a variety of ministries, municipalities, and foreign aid donors. His work immediately increased the number of successful grant applications and additional grant support in Lithuania.
In order to bridge sectors, Vaidotas is building powerful networks of interested parties. He recently launched a network of local citizen sector resource centers and information points. As a result, 18 local resource organizations (centers, councils, coalitions, info-shells) have been established in Lithuania. Eleven municipalities adopted or improved their grant-making regulations and ways of communicating with local organizations. Together, the informal coalition for philanthropy, local networks of resource organizations, and e-groups encourage social change advocates and nonprofit professionals to work together to improve the overall working conditions for Lithuanian citizen organizations. Lithuanian Ashoka Fellows already actively participate in the networks Vaidotas created.
Through the cultivation of these networks, significant information is generated and exchanged. With Vaidotas's coordination of several listservs, a wealth of information has been collected and is now funneling into Philanthropy Gateway, an interactive Web site containing a multitude of materials related to philanthropy. For example, representatives from government and the citizen sector were recently plugged into a discussion regarding relevant legislative initiatives and procedures. Through discussions like this, the Web site has become a main source of information and an important forum for discussion about civil society organizations in Lithuania.
After developing and testing his model of philanthropy development in Lithuania, he plans to pilot it in the Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, and the Kaliningrad region of Russia. If the pilot is successful, Vaidotas plans to spread the model to other posttotalitarian countries. In expanding the geographic coverage of his work, Vaidotas will be able to make use of his international activities. He is a member of the Advisory Board of Social Economy and Law (SEAL) Journal, which discusses and propagates legal and political climate change for nonprofits all over Europe. He also serves as a board member of Orpheus Network, which represents citizen sector resource centers from 18 countries. Vaidotas already cooperates and communicates with other Ashoka Fellows in the region–Pawel Jordan, Pawel Lukasiak, Krzystof Stanowski, Bohdan Skrypczak, and Agata Stafiej.

Vaidotas graduated from the Vilnius University History Department. He started to work in the Youth Division of the Ministry of Culture, where he facilitated the development of a Lithuanian youth policy that brought the work of Lithuanian youth organizations to an entirely new stage. One of his activities was distributing grants to citizen sector organizations. After some time, Vaidotas recognized that grant-giving was not enough. In order to achieve their goals, these organizations needed advice, training, information, and a better social and political environment to work in.
In 1994 Vaidotas and others launched a civil society information and support center. It was then that Vaidotas began to catalyze a major transformation of the citizen sector. He started to issue an information quarterly bulletin–"Third Sector"–organize relevant forums, fairs, conferences, and training events, and develop a Lithuanian civic society database.
After a few years, Vaidotas discovered that without greater cooperation and more sectorwide initiatives, civil society organizations would remain isolated and fail to gain the public support and attention that they deserved and needed. He turned his attention toward assisting Lithuanian legislators and policymakers in developing better working conditions for these organizations. He accepted the challenge to build a strong and vital partnership between the state and civil society sectors.