On the 16th April, during its 1st session of 2014, the BCSDN Board adopted a set of internal governance acts including Board Rules of procedure, Rulebook on organization and systematization of the Executive Office, Rulebook on working relations between employees and BCSDN, and Financial Policy. The aim of the acts is to strengthen and build on best practices in internal governance and management standards needed for a growing and professional network. All internal governance acts are available in the BCSDN Intranet.

Hosted by its member KCSF, BCSDN 6th Annual Council Meeting took place on 17th April in Prishtina, Kosovo. The annual gathering of all members discussed the achievements of the past year in which the network has launched its finalized work on its own monitoring mechanism (the Monitoring Matrix) and conducted an 8 country monitoring exercise on the conditions in which civil society develops and operates.  BCSDN grew internally (new offices, more staff and triple annual budget) and developed new partnerships externally by becoming members of CIVICUS Citizens’ Alliance, European Year of the Citizen and European Civil Society House. The traditional gathering also adopted the Annual Plan of activities for 2014 and 2015 and discussed mid-term perspective for the new strategy 2015-2017. The key substantive debate evolved around presentation of the first findings of donor strategy research evolving analysis of 70 interviews with donors.  For more information, read our Annual Report 2013 and Independent Audit Report 2013.  

On the 2nd of April, the first Serbian Country Monitoring Report of the enabling environment for civil society development was presented by BCSDN member and partner Civic Initiatives in the Belgrade Media Center to a group of around 50 representatives from CSOs, government, donors, and other stakeholders. The event featured the presentation of the methodology and goals of the report by Dejana Stevkovski, project coordinator, as well as the presentation of the 6 key findings and recommendations by Maja Stojanovic, Executive Director of Civic Initiative. 

On the 26th of March, the Croatian Country Monitoring Matrix Report outlining key findings and recommendation on the enabling environment for CSDev was presented in Zagreb in front of 28 participants. The presentation, led by BCSDN member CenzuraPlus and their Croatian in-country partner, pointed to the main problems such as the discrepancy between the number of registered organizations and those registered at the Ministry of Finance coupled with a stereotype presentation of public funds disbursed to CSOs. These issues has led to misconceptions by the public about the real status and size of civil society and the problems related to the lack of capacity of public administration to cooperate with civil society. This is especially true in the domain of efficient management of EU funds.