Nearly Forty Thousand Branches of Non-Profit Organizations in Brazil Shut Down due to Crisis

By Richard Mann – Contributing Reporter

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The economic crisis in Brazil contributed to the closure of 38,700 offices of third sector NGOs in the country.

The IBGE study Private Foundations and Non-Profit Associations (FASFIL) shows that, between 2013 and 2016, the reduction was 14 percent, reaching mainly the Northeast, with 14,400 fewer offices, and the Southeast, with 11.600. Many of the deactivated units provided free or budget-price services to the low-income population.

“The great majority of those foundations and NGOs depend on some form of funding, either state or private. Since they have funding, we believe that the reduction is related to this time of economic crisis,” explains survey manager Denise Guichard.

Within the third sector, the segment that suffered most from the crisis was the development and defense of human rights, which concentrates organizations that work for social minorities (blacks, women, Indians, LGBT) and community rights. Of the 38,700 closures, 10,500 were in this group. This represented a reduction of 26 percent. As a result, participation of this type of organization in total FASFIL fell from 14.8 to 12.8 percent between 2013 and 2016.

More than half of these units worked in the Northeast, which totaled 5,700 closed service centers. The number of units that stopped working in the Southeastern and Southern regions, minus 1.800, was also high. By 2016, there were 30,300 organizations providing this type of service in Brazil.