About us

The Organisation

The Social Innovation Foundation for the Development of the Eastern European Area was established in 1997. Our deed of foundation has set up five main target areas: to improve and develop the professional level of the Hungarian social care system and to prepare it for the European integration, to adapt innovative methods to domestic conditions in the field of social care, to contribute to the modernization of specialist training for the social care system, to develop the scientific background of social politics, to organize and implement research programs and projects. From 2007 we continue our work as the successor with the Foundation for Nonprofit Human Service Providers in the Social Welfare Sphere. By this fusion our range of work expanded towards the field of employment and services for the unemployed.

Our Mission…

…is to prepare actors of the Nonprofit sector for quality work hence insure their responsibility and transparency towards their supporters and clients.

Our Staff

Our staff consists of professionals with a wide experience in the field of quality issues and social services. We offer scientific knowledge combined with practical experience to our clients through a dynamic and interactive cooperation. Transparent and controllable operation is important element of the operation. It establishes trust between the organisation and its partners such as donors, volunteers, and clients. It ensures transparent and orderly working conditions to the staff, therefore enhances effectiveness within the organisation. It helps to assign the main areas of development therefore it is helpful and strongly connected to strategic planning.

Our Projects

Since 2001 in co-operation with the Open Society Institute Local Governmental Initiative (LGI), the Hungarian National Civilian Fund and the Municipality of Budapest SIF organized 5 International Budapest Workshops with the participation of 19 countries. The purpose of these seminars was to collect, evaluate and distribute European experiences and best practices which can help the planning and provision of social services in the cities of Central and Eastern Europe.

In 2001 the Social Innovation Foundation established the Nonprofit Quality Centre (NQC) as part of the organization. Its aim is to strengthen the social cooperation and interest-representation by developing the nonprofit sector. The NQC owns the fundamental value and principle of solidarity which will manifest in increased social justice to the whole society. Within the framework of NQC we have to mention the European joint program called Health & Social Services for People with Disabilities: Indicators of Quality Standards within the first Transnational Exchange Program with the co-operation of NGOs from Denmark, Portugal, Greece, Austria, Belgium and Hungary.

Our research team worked out a new method called Societal Justice Index to measure the quality of the organization and the non-profit morality of a team at the same time. The intention of the research team is to find a new index that would be able to measure the quality of the work and the effort the team puts into the work at the same time. The zero hypotheses behind this research concept are simply that there are NGOs that are able to realize quality assurance policy, and high quality organizational achievements, because there is a high level of morality and enough human and organizational resources. And, there are NGOs where the morality is very high but, due to lack of resources, the organization cannot develop according to its potentials. Those latter organizations could be targets of those donors who are looking for relatively poor organizations where their contributions would be very welcomed and appreciated at the same time, and used with high moral standards. We have introduced the initiative for the profession in April, 2005 on the first European Conference of ISTR and EMES (Concepts of the third-sector) in Paris.

Another one of our quality initiatives since 2005 is the SIF Quality Model (SQM) which provides organizational development, transparency and professional management training and certification for NGOs. The novelty of the SQM is that although it is developed to meet the special needs and possibilities of NGOs, it provides its services according to acknowledged quality standards; since it is developed based on the ISO service quality model. We offer modular quality training for groups of similar fields of activities, as well as personal development and planning consultations to the participating NGOs.

SIF during its span of life has already organized or participated in the organization of more than thirty seminars, training courses, conferences and similar events, mostly related to equal opportunities and social service provision in the broadest sense of the term.

Among our partner organizations there are several which are providing health care and social services for the disabled. One of the aims of our Nonprofit Quality Center is raising the quality of these services, of the skill of service providers and our intention is promoting community consciousness. SIF and its members have met and worked directly and indirectly with several thousand caregivers and managers in Hungary and in about twenty East and Central European countries.

Since 2004 the Foundation edits a civil site on the Internet within the website of one of the biggest Hungarian broadcasting companies. The aim of the site is to advertise the sector for the wide population of Hungary. We choose the MTM – SBS Company as our partner, because we believe that as a popular contents provider it can take a positive effect on the average Internet user towards the civil society. Based on our experiences gained through the feedbacks of the website, we have launched an initiative called Media-Training for the stakeholders of the civil society in Hungary in order to improve their media appearance, and advocacy abilities.

In 2006 we have started another IT project called ÉrtünkVannak or TheyAreForUs targeting the enhancement of public political awareness. It is a website that offers first-hand information on Hungarian politicians in the national and EU Parliament to the wide public, by publishing their Parliament speeches and collecting the news on them in Hungarian media. It also provides an opportunity for users to search for issues, politicians and political groups, comment on their speeches and have debates with other users related to certain speeches.

We have turned our interest to the importance of publicity in the field of social policy as well. Since social problems are usually displayed individually, often they are not newsworthy, or concealed due to several personal aspects. Another problem is the legal representation of these cases. As a solution for these problems Hungarian MEP Dr. Katalin Lévai initiated the introduction of the European practice of public hearings in Hungary in December, 2005. This system provides publicity for issues of equal opportunities, sets up straight relationship between the legislators and citizens, and enables citizens to affect the legislative procedure directly. With the organizational work of the Social Innovation Foundation we are planning to organize four public hearings a year in different topics.

Last but not least SIF was a member of the organization committee of the 1st Social EXPO in 2008 among two other organizations: Alliance of Social Professionals and the Social-political and Employment Institute. The Social EXPO is a nationwide programme in Hungary to accompany official programmes of the Hungarian Day of Social Work. It aims to give opportunity to the sector to introduce their activities in the field of social inclusion. It is of high importance to introduce professional values, achievements and concrete services of the sector to the public. We wanted to create an opportunity as well for all stakeholders to exchange views on social service provision covered by the governmental – nonprofit and profit oriented organisations. Due to the great success of the first Social EXPO (115 programme elements during two days, 150 media appearances of the project, 2500 visitors) organizers intend to carry on with the project on an annual basis.