The Ability of Non-Governmental Organizations to Overcome Crises: The Case of NGOs in Slovakia during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic also significantly affected civic activities and third sector actors. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) had to quickly adapt to the consequences of the pandemic and strengthen their resilience in times of increased uncertainty. Despite the significant limitation of the possibilities to carry out their own activities and implement ongoing projects, the actors of the third sector were able to re-focus their innovative action and utilize emerging opportunities to open new activities and programs to support both institutions’ resilience toward crisis and support their own communities through tailor-made social innovation. The aim of the chapter is to conceptualize strategies of NGOs in Slovakia aimed at strengthening the resilience toward negative impacts of the pandemic on both managements of NGOs and well-being and health of the own communities. Using data on the activities of 106 community-led NGOs in Slovakia, we will demonstrate the ability of third sector actors to adapt to rapidly changing conditions.

1. Introduction

The coronavirus pandemic has significantly affected both the economic and social development of countries around the world [1]. Due to the need to slow down the spread of the virus, the European Union (EU) countries introduced significant measures disrupting the well-established policies, social structures and models of behavior, which were long considered to be a part of established status quo [2]. Some significant restrictions on mobility were established in most countries of the EU. As a result of these restrictions, it was necessary to deal with emerging challenges—especially not only in the area of unemployment growth but also in the area social life, or the well-being and mental health of the population [3].

The NGOs played a vital role in supporting not only civil communities but also other spatial actors in overcoming the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the most general definition, a non-governmental organization is defined as almost any organization that is not systematically funded by the public resources [4]. Newer conceptual definitions understand NGOs in the context of their tremendous diversity as institutions or organizations that do not necessarily have to be formally or legally constituted, that are private, self-governing, non-profit-distributing and engaging people without compulsion. NGOs produce benefits for target communities rather than for those who perform their activities. The activities of NGOs are not casual or episodic, unpaid and uncompulsory [5]. NGOs are usually characterized through four basic traits: they are (1) voluntary, (2) non-partisan, (3) non-profit and (4) non-criminal [6]. Throughout history, NGOs primarily supported social welfare [7]. In the twenty-first century, in the conditions of the Western countries, the activities of NGOs shape both social relations and power relations by creating pressure to change national or local policies [8], along with addressing broader social challenges and needs of specific population groups and individuals. The services and activities of third sector actors impact the processes of formation, emancipation and capacity-building of various local communities, communities of interest or marginalized communities [9]. Willets [10] differentiates between the operational and campaigning NGOs. While the operational ones mainly focus on social issues and issues of marginalized groups, campaigning NGOs rather focus on broader societal and political change through challenging the policy-making processes. Some NGOs can rather be understood as grassroots communities [11], which try to address existing global or local challenges. Seyfang and Smith [11] recommend to differentiate civic actors based on the “value niche,” which unites and permeates the entire community of the non-governmental organization. Third sector actors usually disseminate information about economic, sociocultural or environmental challenges and identified solutions through the formation of rich networks of cooperation with government and corporate organizations [12], or through active participation in spatial planning [13].

The NGOs provide diverse services for their own community or target groups whose living conditions change in the time of crisis. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic worsened the living conditions in slum communities and limited the access of these communities to basic services, food, protective equipment and medicines [14]. In the environment of developed urbanized centers, on the other hand, the pandemic deepened food insecurity worsened the possibilities of transport in the city, options of spending free time and utilizations of public spaces. Many localities in Europe reported in 2020 and 2021 that local health care system collapsed. Symptoms of depression and other mental health problems developed in case of many individuals [15]. Last but not the least, the pandemic had an impact on the employment. In the conditions of Slovakia, up to 38% of employers reduced the number of employees [16], which led to worsening of the social situation of households.

The NGOs assist communities in times of crisis and uncertainty [9]. However, they had to deal themselves with diverse emerging barriers to maintaining their projects and ongoing activities. The restrictions associated with the pandemic limited the ability of NGOs to act. 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. Some of the less-discussed topics include that sector actors also had difficulties with maintaining the pre-pandemic employment levels [20]. At the same time, the support of national governments toward the third sector actors was often insufficient or unaddressed [15].

The literature discussing resilience-building and adaptation strategies of NGOs during the pandemic brings diverse and often contradictory conclusions. It appears that the challenges faced by NGOs are to some extent institution-specific, have a local-specific context and depend on the scope of NGO action, its ability to maintain income from own activities and identify opportunities that arise in times of crisis [2, 21]. Studies of NGO resilience in times of previous global crises (see [22]) have already shown that some NGOs are more sensitive to crises than others. Some studies came up with the hypothesis that NGOs can be divided into those benefiting from the crisis and those harmed by the crisis. Results of Waniak-Michalak et al. [21] suggest that NGOs operating in health and social care gained from the pandemic, while others lost. However, other authors of empirical studies did not identify significant transformation of NGOs during the COVID-19 pandemic [2]. 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]. Results of Ahmed et al. [24] suggest that NGOs have kind of natural ability to maintain resilience in times of emergencies, expressed in 4C framework including four components: (1) capability of problem assessment, (2) collaboration with stakeholders to pool resources, (3) compassionate leadership and (4) communication for quick and effective decision-making. Otherwise, however, the internal strategies of NGOs to strengthen resilience in times of a pandemic have not been sufficiently conceptualized.

However, little attention was paid in the literature to specific internal decisions, activities or social innovations that NGOs introduced in order to strengthen their resistance to the impacts of pandemic. It is also not sufficiently clarified in the literature which NGOs were “untouched” by the crisis and whether their successful development during the pandemic is caused by a certain form of “natural resistance” or by appropriately chosen adaptation strategies. We are therefore addressing a gap in knowledge that is reflected in the following research questions:

Q1: What barriers did NGOs face during the COVID-19 pandemic in the conditions of Slovakia?

Q2: In what way were NGOs able to support overcoming the consequences of the pandemic and movement restrictions in society and thus support well-being in communities? Did they introduce new services in the time of crisis, which can be considered as social innovation?

Q3: What resilience-enhancing adaptation strategies have NGOs adopted in the conditions of the investigated country?

2. Objectives and method

The main aim of the chapter is to conceptualize strategies of NGOs in Slovakia aimed at strengthening the resilience toward negative impacts of the pandemic on both managements of NGOs and well-being and health of the own communities. The secondary objective is to identify specific measures and innovative solutions of non-governmental organizations that should contribute to the survival and ability to continue in implementation of ongoing projects and providing services.

The research design is based on grounded theory, evidence-based research, in which we formulate research questions without expecting “what we will find” [25]. Specifically, the study has the design of a descriptive and comparative analysis, based on comparing the cases of individual NGOs in the sample. We arbitrarily decided to examine the patterns of resilience toward crisis only in case of the so-called grassroots communities—NGOs, which can be considered community-led initiatives with potential to lead the innovative activities in spatial development. A total of 83,932 NGOs were active in Slovakia by 2022 according to data of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic [26]. We manually filtered from among 20,734 records of NGOs available in the Register of Institutional Units in Slovak Republic database [27], while 462 grassroots communities, registered as a form of NGO, which met the following criteria:

• Their declared activity is related to social, environmental, cultural or economic problems within locality, or in wider space

• They are defined as community-led initiatives or they clearly refer to the existence of their own community of supporters

• They have the potential to be a source of social innovation

From the mentioned population, we managed to obtain a sample of 101 NGOs (grassroots established as NGOs), which were responded through an extensive questionnaire in combination with mass interviews with several managers or volunteers. The obtained data are both quantitative and qualitative in nature. For the purpose of data processing, common descriptive methods are utilized, together with selective coding [28] of open answers that helped us to quantify the data. We use stage-based modeling [29] procedures to create a schematic model of strategic decision-making in non-governmental organizations.

3. Perceived impacts of pandemic on NGOs

In this chapter, we will evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on NGOs in the conditions of Slovakia on a sample of 101 non-governmental organizations that can also be understood as community-led grassroots. The sample is appropriately distributed according to selected, observed characteristics. From the point of view of the geographical distribution, it can be concluded that the sample includes NGOs from all eight NUTS III regions of Slovakia, while the significant share of NGOs in the sample is located in cities (same as in the case of population). Up to 28.7% of responded NGOs are located in rural settlements (in conditions of Slovakia, in settlements with less than 5000 inhabitants), while this ratio follows the distribution in the population. The sample has a normal distribution in terms of the age of NGOs, as the sample includes not only NGOs that were established just before the onset of the pandemic but also NGOs that have existed since the foundation of the Republic. However, NGOs that were established between 2005 and 2015 prevail in the sample.

In the survey, NGOs were asked to declare the key development areas of their interest. In the sample, we have 28 NGOs that primarily focused on green topics, climate change and environmental issues, 23 NGOs that were primarily devoted to the development of culture, art and sports, 18 NGOs that were mainly devoted to community development activities and participatory activities, 14 NGOs that provided especially social services and care for marginalized communities and 7 NGOs that were predominantly dedicated to the development of sustainable mobility in municipalities. To summarize the basic descriptive characteristics of this sample, the given 101 NGOs in the investigated year 2022 employed 393 full-time employees and 248 part-time employees, utilized voluntary work of 12,247 volunteers, created strong local communities, the total size of which was estimated at 12,247 persons, while as many as 47 of the 101 responded NGOs declared that they had been a source of social innovation in the form of new products and services in the past 3 years (2019–2022). The total direct economic effects (total expenses in the economy) of these 101 NGOs reached the sum of more than 11.3 million euro.

Empirical studies carried out so far did not find consensus on the question of whether NGOs have a certain form of natural resistance to crises or rather to flexibly overcome challenges emerging due to rapidly changing conditions in a period of uncertainty. Some NGOs were not significantly affected by the pandemic, even in the conditions of our study. However, these NGOs represented a minor part of the sample. On the basis of selective coding, it was identified that 66.34% of respondents in the sample felt significant or very significant impacts of the pandemic on the organization’s activities. On the contrary, 33.66% declared that the pandemic did not limit their activity at all, or limited it slightly.

First, we will discuss the group of negative impacts of pandemic in the area of management of NGO and organization of work (Figure 1). The results indicate that the restrictions did not affect the survival and employment of NGOs very significantly. Only 4% of organizations reported termination or long-term suspension of activities due to the pandemic. In particular, two organizations that were founded just before the onset of the pandemic and were unable to secure the necessary financial resources to adapt to new conditions (a newly established cultural center and a music incubator) had to cancel their projects and activities. Another example is an NGO that could not run its children’s camps, or an NGO that dealt with the issue of mobility and organized public mass bicycle rides through the city.

Figure 1.

Share of respondents perceiving negative impacts of pandemic in the field of NGO management and organization of work.

The reduction in the number of coordinators, or volunteers who carried out activities during the pandemic, represented a critical problem; however, only in case small part of the sample was perceived. NGOs, which were dedicated to the production of cultural events, lost volunteers in particular. Up to 17.6% of the respondents in the sample declared a decrease in the number of volunteers, which, however, can be considered a relatively positive finding. The majority of NGOs maintained their volunteer communities during the pandemic. Those initiatives, whose communities were formed on the principle of membership, often declared a reduction in the number of members. The problem to finish the implementation of ongoing projects, or the inability to secure new sources of funding, affected employment in NGOs. As many as 13.9% of initiatives in the sample reduced the number of full-time or part-time employees. This share is significantly high, considering the fact that more than 50% of NGOs in the sample do not employ at all. This indicates that NGOs have rather tried to move from the professional activities back to a mode of civic activism based on volunteerism. A little-discussed problem was also the significant decrease in the number of clients, the deteriorating health condition of clients and target groups. The most frequent barriers in this group were related to the loss of motivation in the team of NGO managers and coordinators, or the considerable workload of the staff, who had to perform work in bursts, especially in case of the provision of social and health services. These services were often running in hours when there was no lock-down (night hours), which led to exhaustion. The employees and volunteers of the organizations also faced health problems themselves. It turns out that the third sector also suffered from a lack of human capital in periods with a high share of infected population.

With the exception of four organizations, the investigated NGOs were able to continue their activities during the pandemic period 2020–2022. However, when trying to finish the implementation of ongoing projects, they encountered a number of problems, especially due to movement restrictions, changes in behavioral models within communities, the worsening health status of the population and the growth of inflation. After quantifying the data obtained from the guided interviews, we note that only 7.92% of the responding NGOs declared that they were unable to complete the implementation of projects whose project cycle ended during the pandemic. However, this result is rather a consequence of extensive organizational changes that NGOs implemented in order to avoid returning the non-invested financial contributions, or bearing the corrections.

Almost 60% of the responded NGOs declared problems with finishing the project activities and funding of activities in line with the scheduled budget (Figure 2). Some NGOs had to suspend projects of a collaborative nature and that were funded from public or private resources. On the contrary, the implementation of projects in cooperation with academic actors (especially the Horizon 2020 scheme) continued practically without problems, as the coordinating academic partner bore the consequences of uncertainty and changing conditions. However, up to 34.65% of the responded actors declared the loss of project partners on the ongoing projects. Problems of a specific nature were experienced by NGOs that provided social and health in-field services. In conditions of Slovakia, drug-addicted communities, communities of refugees and the homeless depend to the highest extent on services provided by the NGOs and other third sector actors. During the guided interviews, NGOs reported a significant deterioration in living and health conditions of these communities during the pandemic. NGOs had to face dramatically worsened conditions for providing their services, due to the frequent occurrence of COVID-19 in these communities. Therefore, in certain cases, the provision of selected services was limited (especially counseling and legal support for refugees in selected detention facilities, or the opening hours of homeless shelters were limited). As many as 11.88% of responded organizations declared at least a temporary inability to provide in-field services during the pandemic, but if we take into account exclusively NGOs focused on the provision of social and health services, this share exceeds the threshold of 33%. The provision of nature-based solutions and services, on the other hand, was not affected by the pandemic.

Figure 2.

Share of respondents perceiving negative impacts of pandemic in the field of ability to implement projects and carry out activities.

In terms of practice, the implementation of projects was primarily affected by lockdowns. Restrictions on movement delivered a dramatic decrease in the number of events that could be organized. This dramatic decrease was declared by up to 57.43% of the responding actors. It should also be taken into account that those actors who did not experience this barrier already implemented their educational programs in an online environment or implemented educational activities with small groups in an outdoor environment. As many as 7.92% of actors declare the complete cancelation of large-scale events, what occurred repeatedly. This mainly concerns festivals that have been repeatedly canceled for 3 years in a row or held with a dramatically reduced number of visitors. The occurrence of community meetings, brigades and community activities was also reduced. Therefore, the disruption of the established frameworks of community life can be included among the less visible damages of the pandemic within the third sector. At this point, it should be noted that especially the grassroots communities often create solutions that can represent a kind of total institution for the “own community” of the initiative. Therefore, for example, temporarily closing the physical spaces of community centers could lead to a deterioration of the psychological and physical health of individuals that consider the community-based life as critically important for their well-being. Only 11.88% of responded NGOs declared the long-term closure of the physical premises. Usually, NGOs looked for ways of alternative organization of spending time in the space and limited the possibilities of its use, which often led to the exhaustion of the coordinators and volunteers of the initiative. Up to 31.68% of actors reported the presence of depressive symptoms in communities of NGOs. We will talk more about the solutions that NGOs introduced in order to support the health and well-being of their target communities in the next chapter. The fact that the main adaptation tool in the lock-down period is the transfer of activities to the online space is doubly true in the case of non-governmental organizations. Exactly 67.33% of respondents “artificially” transferred their activities to the online space. However, we also identified initiatives that did not need to use online communication. These were either the activities of environmental activists, educational activities that were not subject to certain restrictions or arts-oriented activities that did not require larger events. The last relevant topic in the evaluation of this group of barriers is the decision of many NGOs to open completely new activities that they had not executed before (20.79%). Here, we come to adaptation-building measures, which often included not only the provision of products and services related to health protection during the pandemic but also new types of services for spending free time in the community, new moving activities, activities in the creation of public spaces or hybrid activities in online space.

For a better understanding of the importance of problems in the field of project implementation in the conditions of third sector actors, it should be noted that, in Slovak conditions, support for NGO activities from public sources is often unsystematic, fast changing and fragmented in terms of sources of funding. Therefore, NGOs most often use small grant schemes of private companies (with the exception of NGOs that have the capacity to implement projects from state subsidy schemes or European structural and investment funds). The average share of annual expenses of NGOs in the sample, which is covered by external sources of funding, exceeds 80%.

The financial health of NGOs also worsened due to a decrease of their own income, which is declared by almost 40% of the responded NGOs (Figure 3). Again, we note that approximately one third of NGOs in the sample do not generate their own income at all. The pandemic particularly affected the own income of those NGOs that existed in a kind of “semi-commercial” mode and provided professional services for a fee at real market prices (e.g., children’s camps, professional planning services, planting services, etc.). These initiatives most often had to re-focus on new activities. It is interesting that while the own incomes of most NGOs decreased, there are also examples, such as the case of artistic graphics sale, when the income of a given NGO did not decrease or even raised during the pandemic. Even bigger problem was the inability to effectively reinvest this income back into own activities of NGOs. Lockdowns caused a massive increase in sunk costs, which was declared by up to 45.5% of respondents. The highest sunk costs were generated by planned events, in which the resources were invested (costs of human capital, advances for renting equipment and premises, marketing costs, etc.), and which finally could not take place. Inflation has created another group of barriers associated with growth of prices. Inflation significantly affected activities of up to 18.8% of responded NGOs. Along with the increase in the prices of food and consumables, there was also a significant increase in real estate prices in Slovakia between 2020 and 2022. This trend was also reflected in the perceived increase in the prices of space rentals, while many NGOs operate on rent and do not have the resources to secure their own premises. Last but not the least, the state prepared several cycles of compensation programs during the pandemic to support the sustainability of employment during the pandemic. However, all these programs were limited to maintaining employment in the private sector.

Figure 3.

Share of respondents perceiving negative impacts of pandemic in the field of financial health of the organization.

From the conducted guided interviews, we can hypothesize that the degree of ability to maintain the provision of services and the implementation of ongoing projects in the time of crisis depend on a number of diverse factors. In the conditions of our sample, these factors mostly included:

• the nature of the activities and projects

• the degree of dependence of selected population groups on these activities and services

• the natural place for their implementation

• collaborative nature of the projects and existing networks

• own premises

• the degree of use of digital technologies

• previous experiences of communication with target groups online

• the ability of the community to support the NGO and provide it with additional resources

• level of dependence on external sources of funding

• level of income diversification

4. Resilience toward crises and adaptation strategies

The NGOs in Slovakia have demonstrated the ability to respond quickly and flexibly to widespread restrictions introduced due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This fact can be well supported by empirical evidence. However, this is no longer true in the case of assumptions about their natural resistance toward impacts of crises.

Using a quote from conducted interviews, the resilience of NGOs in the time of crisis results mainly from the fact that “they are not market-based actors.” Under Slovak conditions, during the pandemic, businesses were mainly affected by factors such as the impossibility of carrying out production activities in a physical environment, the reduction of demand on the sales markets, the inability to realize direct sales or provide services face-to-face, inflation connected with growing costs of inputs, the loss of suppliers within long value chains, impaired transport options and the impossibility of physical work within manufacturing and many others [16]. Certain impacts of uncertainty and inflation were also significantly perceived in the conditions of actors of the third sector, the importance of NGOs in times of crisis in many cases grows together with the growth of demand for the services provided by NGOs. Non-governmental organizations can also often choose more flexibly the mode of their provision.

At the same time, the third sector in Slovakia is largely dependent on external sources of funding. If the central government and self-governments are able to realize what social roles non-governmental organizations can play in times of crisis, support from external funding sources may even increase under certain circumstances (additional calls, modifications of calls and creation of new financing mechanisms for public benefit activities). In this context, it is necessary to realize that NGOs are a very heterogeneous group of actors, in which opportunities are not distributed evenly. Therefore, at the same time, in the conditions of various crises, certain NGOs may identify new opportunities, experience an increasing demand for their services or even a growth in the volume of available funding sources, while other NGOs do not. At least at the level of the central government in Slovakia, each department provides special support mechanisms for non-governmental organizations, which have different requirements and rules.

Another identified aspect of NGOs’ resilience in times of crisis stems from the nature of activism. Social goals of NGOs change dynamically over time, but crises do not necessarily disrupt these goals. According to a respondent from an NGO that deals with the issue of climate change, non-governmental organizations cannot afford to “waste time” when building pressure to change policies. According to the statements of several respondents, NGOs in Slovakia drew attention to the neglect of important development topics as a result of the pandemic. The natural ability of NGOs to resist the impact of a crisis is therefore also formed by its value structure, the integrity of the community around the NGO, the attitudes and determination of volunteers and the ability of the community to support the institution in times of uncertainty with material or financial resources (besides voluntary work).

However, much more can be said about the adaptation strategies that NGOs tried to implement during the COVID-19 pandemic, given the rapidly changing operating conditions. In the previous chapter, we described extensive barriers to the development of NGO activities between 2020 and 2022. We have identified a very low number of NGOs that have terminated or fundamentally limited their activities, which is predominantly the result of the adaptation strategies that we tried to conceptualize based on the results of mass guided interviews. The result is our theoretical model of adaptation strategies, which is shown in Figure 4. In general, it was possible to identify three areas of adaptation tools utilized by non-governmental organizations in Slovakia, namely:

1. improvement of internal policies, strategic processes and capacity-building

2. creation of new programs and activities based on emerging opportunities

3. income diversification and community-based resource pooling

Figure 4.

Attributes of adaptation strategies implemented by NGOs in Slovakia during the period of COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2022).

In Figure 4, we see within the individual “groups” individually identified measures and activities that were supposed to either help the initiative to “survive” or maintain dynamics in their own community. The first group is measures from the category “improvement of internal policies, strategic processes and capacity building.” The majority of these activities or measures were implemented mainly as a result of the interruption of the implementation of ongoing projects, the suspension of the events or the inability to provide part of the services. Although the third sector experienced a difficult period, many NGOs gained the opportunity to rethink the future development of NGOs, to reassess their goals, to formulate new projects, to modify methods of planning and to rethink the models of resource utilization, or organization of voluntary work.

As many as 42 of the 101 responding NGOs declared that they invested a significantly increased amount of time in planning, especially during the years 2020 and 2021. At the same time, the majority of these 42 non-governmental organizations tried to use new planning models, to involve the community more significantly in planning processes or to use a more advanced methodology of common decision-making. The representatives of the four responded NGOs announced that, during the pandemic, their NGOs got the opportunity to create not only a short-term plan but also a fully professional, long-term and formal strategic document. Up to 35.6% of respondents invested the free time capacity of skilled human capital into the preparation of new project applications for non-refundable financial contributions. Community centers with physical space, on the other hand, organized small groups of volunteers who worked on the revitalization of premises, on the creation of new public spaces or on the development of community gardens, sports fields, and the like. Almost 28% of respondents declared work on the reconstruction of their own real estates (either significant or do-it-yourself (DIY) upgrades), or the revitalization of outdoor green spaces.

At the same time, it was possible to use this period for strengthening one’s own capacities. Capacity-building took place not only in the area of creating strategic plans but also through the creation of marketing campaigns or training the coordinators of activities and volunteers. Some NGOs (especially those operating in the sector of culture) declared that these activities could take place, thanks to the updates of eligible activities in ongoing calls from selected grant schemes. In this case, a good example is the prompt response of the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic and the Slovak Arts Council, which, thanks to modifications in their calls, enabled non-governmental organizations in culture to devote themselves fully to capacity-building during lock-downs. During the pandemic, up to 30% of the responding NGOs created a new complex marketing campaign, and 32% of the responding institutions declared strengthening the training of the internal team or volunteers. We were not fully able to properly map the ways in which the strengthening of education took place. However, it is possible to state that some NGOs also implemented internal training for volunteers, others involved volunteers in educational programs implemented by volunteering centers, or other NGOs through their educational programs. Managers received training mostly from external professionals online, while some NGOs were able to secure such a training for their managers from own funds.

The second group of measures involves “creation of new programs and activities based on emerging opportunities,” as every crisis in case of any sector also stimulates certain opportunities that can be utilized. While in the case of private sector actors, we are talking about new opportunities to generate profit, in the case of non-governmental organizations, we are rather considering emerging opportunities to achieve their goals, to better address selected social challenges or to obtain additional own income to be reinvested in upcoming activities. The lockdown indeed also brought opportunities to actors of the third sector. Environmental protection activities experienced a renaissance during the pandemic. This is declared by several associations focused on nature protection, outdoor activities and especially community gardens. Some of the NGOs that are dedicated to this type of activity even declared a significant increase in the number of volunteers, users of new solutions or a rapid increase in followers on social networks. Those NGOs, which were dedicated to the development of waste collection and recycling, declared an increase in the number of public brigades, even if only in small work groups in accordance with valid government regulations. Increased demand was also experienced by community schools, online educational activities, awareness activities and online counseling provided by NGOs. Thus, a large volume of small-scale activities in nature or in the online space began to develop. Almost 50% of the responding NGOs delivered new educational programs during the pandemic. Almost 25% of the responding NGOs strengthened their activities in the field of improving the quality of the environment and nature conservation. In the field of community development and culture, online community living rooms began to emerge, where residents spent their free time and strengthened their relational health. A number of cultural events have moved to the online space, while artists have traditionally tried to support the population during the lockdown through live online performances. Due to the diverse nature of these online events and the different forms of their interactivity or integration within education, we cannot simply quantify the frequency of occurrence of such events in the sample. However, this is one of the most frequent reactions of NGOs to the impossibility of meeting with their community or target groups during the pandemic.

The NGOs were trying to diversify their income also through counseling and sale of new products. The creation of three different e-shops, which were supposed to provide additional income for the NGO, was identified. As a demonstration, one of the responding NGOs that focused on climate change issues opened an e-shop with literature on the topic and at the same time started publishing its own magazine or publications for children. Works of art sales were also stable during the pandemic in Slovakia. It became clear that knowledge is a very valuable and highly tradable asset of third sector actors. As many as 24.7% of NGOs in the sample state that they provided counseling services to other actors during the pandemic, while a considerable number of types and forms of such services were identified. Some NGOs declared that they carried out these activities reluctantly (especially when it came to consulting in the field of finance, accounting or taxes). Most often, NGOs in the sample provided consulting in the field of project management, strategic planning or NGO establishment.

A completely special category of new activities during the crisis is related to overcoming the pandemic. The share of respondent NGOs that carried out individual activities in the area of public health support and activities related to overcoming the crisis is shown in Table 1.

Type of action	n	f
Distribution of protective equipment and disinfection	82	81,19%
Providing information about the development of the pandemic and regulatory measures to targeted communities	71	70,30%
Motivation of marginalized communities for vaccination (e.g., seniors, Roma)	46	45,54%
Collection and distribution of material needed during the pandemic (protective clothing, gloves, masks and respirators)	42	41,58%
Information campaigns for the public, leaflets or brochures	33	32,67%
Testing patients with antigen tests	29	28,71%
Sewing masks	29	28,71%
Increased support of marginalized communities with food and materials	19	18,81%
Low-threshold vaccination	6	5,94%

Table 1.

The share of respondent NGOs that carried out individual activities in the area of public health support and activities related to overcoming the crisis.

The importance of non-governmental organizations for the entire society grows in times of crisis, as these organizations tend to collaborate with central and local governments, or deliver solutions on their own, in order to mitigate negative impacts of the crisis. Almost 90% of respondents in the sample provided services that had to be provided only because of the onset of the pandemic. Some types of services aimed at overcoming the pandemic were significantly frequented in the sample. Among the most common, we can include the distribution of protective equipment and disinfection, or the provision of information about the development of the pandemic and regulatory measures to the target communities. However, as we can also see in Table 1, NGOs did meritorious work in the field of collection and production of protective materials, coordinating volunteers for mobile sampling sites or even directly provided testing services. Up to 28% of the responding NGOs in the sample implemented their own sample-collection points for testing with antigen tests, for which the NGOs gained at least some additional resources. However, up to six accredited, professional NGOs even performed low-threshold vaccination in marginalized communities or provided the necessary support for such vaccination. In this context, NGOs that provided health services to marginalized communities had the most challenging situation. In the case of employees and volunteers of these NGOs, permanent education and replacing exhausted or sick staff were required. Another issue was connected with finding ways to provide services, despite the fact that the restrictions often did not take into account the needs of the given marginalized communities.

In order to conclude interpretation of this group of adaptation strategy measures, it should be noted that NGOs in the sample were able to innovate, even during the pandemic. Our data from guided interviews were primarily aimed at identifying social innovations in community-led third sector institutions. Therefore, we have a relatively good overview of the innovative products and services that the NGOs in the sample delivered between 2020 and 2022. In these years, we identified that up to 35.6% of the actors in the sample identified themselves as innovators, while in most cases, thanks to the adaptation measures described above, the actors were able to complete the implementation of projects from before 2020 and start providing new, innovative services that are not indeed connected to onset of the pandemic (often in a limited form or in the online space). However, some of the introduced new services, or solutions in the sample represent a reaction to the new social situation caused by COVID-19 pandemic. We present selected examples of social innovations introduced as a result of the pandemic in Table 2.

Introduced social innovation	Actor	Period of implementation
Zero waste recipe for waste-free cooking	Free Food	2020
Introduction of eco-social innovations in the community garden, expanding the number of barbecue pits and live performances online	Hidepark	2020–2021
Introduction of new models of utilization of the own premises— use of minimum allowed quotas for physical space use for artist residencies	Záhrada	2020–2021
Introduction of an e-shop with ecological literature and their own magazine	Strom života	2021
Concerts for the neighbors under the window. Neighborhood co-work was founded as a result of the pandemic.	Poď na dvor	2021

Table 2.

Examples of social innovations that emerged due to opportunities evoked by COVID-19 pandemic.

Possibilities to adapt to the changing conditions of carrying out own activities were in certain cases bounded to limited resources. Within the third group of adaptation measures, we can observe how NGOs dealt with the situation of worsened access to external funding sources and with declining own incomes. The first of these measures related to the search of quickly adapted grant calls, which enabled capacity-building of NGOs to survive the unfavorable situation. In some cases, NGOs tried to gain access to purpose-bonded subsidies from local self-governments, but this was not possible in many localities due to strained relations between the mayor and representatives of non-governmental organizations. However, if it was not possible to cover up resource shortfalls from external funding sources, NGOs had to strengthen ties within their own community and ask the community for support. Community-led NGO organizations in Slovakia know how to pool private funding sources. This type of financing, which can be described as community-based resource pooling, includes the integration of resources from the tax assignation to the non-governmental organization, together with public collections and crow-funding calls, auctions, donations or possible membership fees (which, however, they usually did not introduce NGOs in the sample).

The last option for income diversification was related to the provision of new services in the online space. These services did not always have to be just a commercial relationship of service provision. In selected cases, NGOs tried to connect community-based resource pooling, for example, with the organization of online events, when the event was supposed to become a source of donation.

5. Discussion and conclusions

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]. We hypothesize that these patterns of similarity of pandemic impacts are due to similar patterns of lockdowns that individual countries have implemented. Even in Slovakian conditions, NGOs had to reduce the number of employees [20]; however, this did not represent a single and fundamental impact of the pandemic in the field of operation and management of the initiatives. NGOs had to deal with the burnout of employees and managers, a high rate of contagion in target groups, a decreasing number of volunteers and the inability to organize in-person activities and provide in-field services.

Our results indicate that NGOs can be considered as an actor that has irreplaceable, natural social functions in relation to managing and overcoming crises [14, 15]. NGOs fulfilled their core societal missions to an even greater extent during the pandemic [9]. 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. These were classified under three categories: (1) improvement of internal policies, strategic processes and capacity-building, (2) creation of new programs and activities based on emerging opportunities and (3) income diversification and community-based resource pooling. NGOs looked for opportunities to reorient themselves to new types of activities and to obtain additional income.

The crises caused a wide spectrum of emerging social challenges, which NGOs in our sample often addressed more flexibly than central or local governments [9]. In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, NGOs in Slovakia were able to provide a number of services to strengthen public health and safety—from the production of protective materials, through the establishment of mobile sample-collection centers, to low-threshold vaccination for marginalized communities. Concerning the original societal missions of investigated NGOs, it was shown that they were able to transfer the activities to the online space, maintain strong ties within their own communities and deliver new projects and activities aimed at strengthening the well-being and physical or mental health in the community and target groups. When trying to support their original social missions or support the well-being of their target communities, NGOs in Slovakia continued to generate social innovations, even in the form of a pandemic. Almost half of the NGOs in our sample delivered new innovative services between 2020 and 2022. The decline in activity in the area of implementing large-scale projects brought an opportunity to develop more volunteer-based activities that could be carried out within the limits of restrictions. Some NGOs used the opportunity to strengthen capacity-building processes and were able to diversify human, financial and material resources for planned activities. Here, we came to a point, where we can agree with some previous results [2, 22, 24] that some NGOs are more sensitive toward impacts of the crises than others. In case of Slovakia, the pandemic hit hardest NGOs, which are dedicated to social and health services or production of events in culture. The activities in the field of education and awareness building, or climate change and natural conservation, were the least affected in line with literature [21].

The NGOs fulfilled their core societal missions to an even greater extent during the pandemic. However, it can be noted that the compensation of budget shortfalls in case of certain NGOs in the sample interfered with the original missions of NGO [3], which had to deliver new services provided on commercial markets. However, this was a way how the non-governmental organizations demonstrated the ability to overcome the negative effects of restrictions and adapt to changing conditions during the pandemic, despite the fact that the third sector actors had no access to key compensation tools of the government—for example, the compensation for lost profit or compensations aimed to support job retention.

There are still a number of issues that are not sufficiently discussed in the literature on the topic. The scientific literature lacks quantitative studies that would accurately name the effects of specific restrictions during the pandemic on the ability of NGOs to provide their socially beneficial services. At the same time, we still do not know how the NGOs were influenced by the worsened operating conditions of the other spatial actors. Were the collaborative ties of NGOs significantly disrupted in the external environment? Did the worsened economic results of enterprises cause a decrease in revenues from tax assignment in the case of NGOs? Our research shows that a number of NGOs introduced new innovative services during the pandemic or invested in the development of activities related to overcoming the effects of the pandemic. However, it is questionable how sustainable these activities are since 2022, in the period of regeneration of natural socioeconomic processes. Empirical studies are also expected, which would clarify what role NGOs played in the processes of regeneration of social life after the end of the pandemic period.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.