According to their data, our association is among the 7.2% of non-profit organizations that can meet these conditions. We have achieved this through our exceptional efforts to maintain our business and develop as a non-profit organization, despite the challenging environment! Our Team is ready to invest its resources, to “patch” financial constructions while we wait for public tender results, payments that are late despite completed planned activities, despite contracts signed, despite all that, regardless of everything, we do every day. Thanks to those donors/sources of funds, who are reliable, and who disburse funds in accordance with their own contracts, we manage to stay afloat, on the brink, with great risks. However, there are also those who are late with the payments of contracted funds, which is why, like most associations that work a lot, we have to refinance our operations in almost impossible ways, in order to meet the costs that are getting higher and higher. We invent different ways of receiving funds so that there is always some, no matter how insufficient, revenue; we have the support of parents, and we give our savings and reserves back to the association so that it doesn’t fall into a blockade. We write countless applications for various public calls, contests, requests for donations in millions of ways, countless conversations and presentations, proof – and this takes an endless amount of time. And precisely this time and the use of professional resources for fundraising is our most expensive resource because we do not have enough of it. All this is happening because our society has not yet realized that, without continuous support from the local community and the state, persons with disabilities cannot exercise their rights; the right to live in the community and the right to work. Our work is not only civil; we are not a group of people representing our particular interests; we act for the whole community, and for its most vulnerable group; for a group that the state is obliged to take care of. Our mission is to act for the welfare and rights of persons with disabilities, for whom we work.
Our basic program of social services at the Friends Daycare Center, for 5 employed professionals (with minimum wages) and 50 persons with disabilities (beneficiaries – which is too few employees), costs about 200,000 euros per year; we settle only 1/3 of the required amount from various sources. But after the end of each year, when we recapitulate the results, we see that we have more and more beneficiaries, more and more expenses and that we are quite tired no matter how enthusiastic and dedicated we are to our work. The state calculated that 442.39 euros per beneficiary per month is enough for 1 beneficiary for the social service of a half-day stay:
Udomljavanjem naših ukrasno-uporabnih predmeta sudjelujete u provedbi naših programa za mlade s teškoćama u razvoju i psihosocijalnom funkcioniranju. Mi ćemo vam zato pokloniti jedan ili više predmeta koje smo sami napravili.
