United Way International, based in Alexandria, VA, provides training and technical support for about 250 United Way organizations around the world. In 1991 UWI opened a Moscow Liaison Office in order to help the development of private charitable activity in Russia.

In late 1992 the Moscow Liaison Office (MLO) published a useful directory of Russian Charitable Organizations, providing short profiles of 540 such organizations head-quartered in Moscow or St. Petersburg. Similar directories for Ukraine and Belarus are planned for 1993-94. The MLO is also working to establish an on-line databank of Russian charitable organizations that would be accessible by modem either within Russia or from abroad.

In June 1992, UWI together with the Johns Hopkins University Third Sector Project (see below), hosted a nonprofit management training conference featuring workshops on goal definition, legal and tax questions, fund-raising and volunteer management. In May 1993, it organized a Seminar on Volunteer Management that was attended by 100 representatives of 50 Moscow charities. Out of this seminar, UWI has selected ten "Monitored Volunteer Projects" for which it is conducting "an extensive recruiting campaign to generate volunteers from both the foreign and Russian communities to staff these projects." This all forms part of the Moscow Liaison Office's goal of establishing a Volunteer Center in Moscow which will train and match volunteers with Russian charities.

UWI's Moscow Liaison Office has also translated and distributed books such as Bruce Hopkins' Starting and Managing a Nonprofit Organization. A particularly timely publication initiated by the MLO is a monthly newsletter in Russian for the "noncommercial" community, as the Russians call it. This newsletter is published by Raduga Education and Information Center and distributed free of charge to hundreds of nekommercheski organizatsii. It is also available in an English edition.

Lyubov Alenicheva is an English-speaking contact at Raduga:

Russia 119270, Moscow
E-ya Frunzenskaya ulitsa, dom 1, kv. 73
Tel. (7-095) 207-5498 or 377-5116

Further information on the activities of UWI's Moscow Liaison Office may be obtained by contacting

Ellen E. West, Director of Programs
CIS and Eastern Europe
Russia, 101000 Moscow
P.O. Box 285
Tel: (7-095) 243-9726
E-mail: [email protected]

U.S. headquarters of United Way International
901 North Pitt Street
Alexandria, VA 22314-1594
Tel. (703) 519-0092
Fax (703) 519-0097

For more information or to order a subscription, see our publications page.

Center for Civil Society International [email protected]