Surviving the Pandemic: NGOs’ Strategies to Cope with COVID-19

The ability of non-governmental organizations to overcome crises: the case of NGOs in Slovakia during the Covid-19 pandemic

“…The impacts of the pandemic on the ability of NGOs to survive, to maintain their activities and to pool resources appear to be similar to the conditions of European and third countries [17][18][19][20]. Our results confirm that the adaptation measures had to be directed mainly to maintain ties with the own community [19], to ensure the completion of the implementation of started projects [17] and to deal with deepening financial shortfalls [18]. We hypothesize that these patterns of similarity of pandemic impacts are due to similar patterns of lockdowns that individual countries have implemented.…”

“…As in the conditions of other Central European countries, the majority of investigated community-led non-governmental organizations in Slovakia were not existentially threatened due to the negative effects of restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic [2,21]. The impacts of the pandemic on the ability of NGOs to survive, to maintain their activities and to pool resources appear to be similar to the conditions of European and third countries [17][18][19][20]. Our results confirm that the adaptation measures had to be directed mainly to maintain ties with the own community [19], to ensure the completion of the implementation of started projects [17] and to deal with deepening financial shortfalls [18].…”

“…However, in order to overcome the mentioned negative effects of the crisis, they had to introduce various organizational and process changes, which we understand as adaptation measures in our study. There were already some efforts to describe how NGOs adapted to impacts of uncertainty and fast-changing conditions caused by lockdowns during COVID-19 pandemic [18,23,24]. However, we tried to conceptualize elements of such adaptation strategies that NGOs combined within their institution-specific conditions.…”

“…NGOs could not gather volunteers and the community together, what naturally affected both the implementation of projects and the provision of services, as well as planning processes [17]. Daolei [18] identified three main challenges that NGOs had to deal with during the crisis: (1): financial shortages, (2) difficulties in project implementation and (3) employee turnover in response to tightening government regulation. Sayarifard et al [19] also identified the barrier of significantly worsened access of NGOs to the target groups to which they provide services.…”

“…Several empirical studies have already evaluated NGOs' strategies in the field of strengthening resilience against the restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the conditions of China, these strategies were focused on maintaining the cooperation with governments and local communities, as well as own self-improvement action [18]. Empirical studies carried out in developing countries also indicate the adoption of strategies focused on the strengthening of ties in local communities and the growth of the volume of collaborative projects between NGOs and other partners during the pandemic [23].…”