Center Offers Nagoya Citizens a Desk, a Phone — and Lots of Assistance

Six years ago, while an industrial-science student at Nagoya University,

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Nobuhiro Ishii helped to establish a network of campus environmental organizations called the Japan Youth Ecology League.

That organization focused on motivating students to be more active in reducing waste, conserving resources, and taking other steps to become better stewards of the earth’s environment.

Since then, Japan’s political and social climate has become much more favorable for small non-profit groups. Though Mr. Ishii has lost none of his environmental fervor, he now has a wider mission: trying to nurture and strengthen grassroots organizations of many types here in Japan’s third-largest city. As director of the Shimin Forum 21 NPO Center, he spends his time as coach, cheerleader, and publicist for several dozen of the estimated 2,000 to 3,000 non-profit groups now active in Aichi Prefecture.

Such is the ferment among them that he rarely has time to sit still. When he is not fielding phone calls or trading e-mail messages, he is greeting visitors, speaking with journalists, or helping citizen activists with issues ranging from fixing a jammed photocopier to registering with the prefectural government.

His center — established two years ago — occupies a nondescript four-story office building located a five-minute walk from the central train station. A score of hand-me-down desks that crowd a narrow room on the second floor are used as a base from which various groups conduct their activities; each desk can be rented for about $50 a month. A small snack bar on the ground floor — operated by a group that helps elderly people with disabilities — shares space with a computer area and informational brochures, while on the third floor is a meeting room that organizations can rent for larger gatherings.

Many observers hail the establishment of support centers like the one in Nagoya as welcome additions in a country where many grassroots groups are forced to operate out of tiny, cluttered apartments under the patronage of a single individual, because the groups lack the legal standing needed to rent an office, open a bank account, or even lease a photocopier in their own name.

Although a law that took effect last December makes it much easier for non-profit groups to register with the government — and therefore be entitled to sign leases and contracts for offices, accounts, and equipment — many smaller groups have forgone the act of registering. They consider it not worth the paperwork involved, particularly since donations even to registered groups receive no tax advantages. Many of those groups lack the funds to rent office space and equipment at commercial rates, and therefore find non-profit support centers a valuable resource.

Mr. Ishii, for his part, enjoys working with a wider range of organizations — no longer just environmental groups but also social-service groups of various kinds. Among the groups using the center are Ecowork Stations (which matches candidates with environmental jobs), Inakagurasi Network (which focuses on rural living), NPO Aichi Net (which promotes computer skills), Tools for Self-Reliance (which provides aid for Sri Lanka), and Volamimi (which supports volunteering).

Networking with other groups, in fact, is one of the center’s principal strategies. Organizations whose individual voices are weak can magnify their influence when they speak in unison, Mr. Ishii observes. And in a country that boasts relatively few “experts” in non-profit management, organizations constantly learn from one another.

The center provides information both to non-profit groups themselves and to the public. It distributes brochures, publishes a newsletter, posts information on its Web page (http://www.sf21npo.gr.jp), and offers a fax-information service to its 250 members.

About 20 per cent of Japan’s population uses the Internet, Mr. Ishii says, but many small non-profit groups lack even a computer. The center, however, has its own Internet server and has available several computers for use by activists who have no other way of getting on line.

“Our organization wants to close the gap” between groups that have access to the Internet and those that do not, Mr. Ishii says.

Training non-profit groups in the areas of management and fund raising is also among the center’s priorities. “In Japan, non-profits is a very new word,” Mr. Ishii says. Neither government officials nor corporate executives know much about non-profit organizations, he says, and many citizens’ groups themselves have few places to turn for training and expertise.

The lackluster economy in the Nagoya area is forcing Aichi Prefecture to narrow the scope of the social services it provides, particularly to the elderly, Mr. Ishii says. “The government wants to reduce its subsidies but it also wants to keep up the level of social welfare,” he says, “so non-profits have to grow in size.” Because non-profit groups are not covered by the minimum-wage law that companies must comply with, he observes, some pay their workers less than half the minimum wage — making them cost-effective service providers and therefore good candidates for government contracts.

The national government, too, looks to non-profit groups as a source of new jobs to help pull the country out of economic recession, he says. “We think that’s a stupid policy,” he adds, because most non-profit groups rely on volunteers and have had no experience employing workers.

Local and prefectural governments have established most of the non-profit support centers themselves as a way to help promote and shape the development of voluntary organizations. The NPO Center in Nagoya is unique, Mr. Ishii says, in having a private owner — one who also happens to serve on the organization’s board. In the current slack economy, he has agreed to rent the office building to Shimin Forum 21 for less than $1,000 a month.

The demand for the center’s facilities is so strong that Shimin Forum 21 has decided to rent another building in nearby Chita City to sublet as office space to other non-profit groups.

While many Japanese non-profit officials look primarily to the United States for inspiration and models, Mr. Ishii believes that the United Kingdom might have more suitable institutions for Japan to emulate.

“We’re very interested in England’s charity-system model, which is very different from the U.S. system,” he explains. “Japan has a strong central government, similar to that in Britain. We want to learn how the British government manages charities.”

Shimin Forum 21 has sent several delegations to Britain to take a firsthand look at the Charity Commission, the National Council on Voluntary Organisations, and the Charities Aid Foundation, among other groups. The Charity Commission, which registers and supervises British charities, also works closely with the National Council on Voluntary Organisations to actively promote charities’ interests, Mr. Ishii says. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service, by contrast, does little to promote charitable giving, he adds, and does not collaborate much with Independent Sector, a national coalition of non-profit groups.

“Japan’s non-profit organizations are very weak now,” Mr. Ishii notes. “So it’s probably necessary for the government to promote NPO’s,” rather than treat them with benign neglect.

The center is also interested in fund-raising ideas promoted by the Charities Aid Foundation in Britain, including its program of credit-card donations. “Lots of people in Japan want to give to NPO’s, but there is no convenient system for them to do so,” Mr. Ishii says.

The support center may also become a kind of community foundation, he observes, which would accept donations from people or companies and in turn would make grants to qualified non-profit groups.

Mr. Ishii, who is single, is excited to be promoting non-profit activities during a crucial period of transition in Japanese history. But he does pay a price — quite literally — for working in that field.

“Our organization is very young, so our pay is very low,” he says. “If we want to make enough money to start a family or to go back to university, it is impossible now.” Eventually, the organization wants its pay scale to rise to at least 80 per cent of what the government or businesses would pay for comparable work.

His job, though, has other compensation: helping to build a citizens’ movement from the ground up.