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05/12/2025
SPILF 2025 to consider promising areas for the development of the nonprofit sector and its role in protecting Russia’s national interests
On 19 May 2025, a session entitled ‘Trust but Verify: Transparency in Charitable Donations’ will be held at the 13th St. Petersburg International Legal Forum.
The nonprofit sector has traditionally been actively involved in solving social problems and providing targeted support to citizens. Today, a significant part of Russian NPOs are engaged in charitable and volunteer activities, which are supported, among other things, by state and local authorities.
The session participants will discuss a wide range of topics related to the development of legal regulation of charitable and volunteer activities. Experts will answer the question of how personal data of donors and beneficiaries can be protected in the context of digitalization of fundraising, and will also consider mechanisms that can guarantee the publicity of reports on NPOs’ expenditures and the results of their charitable programmes.
The panel will discuss the need to clarify the criteria for the use of the term ‘charity’ in the names of organizations, as well as the need to introduce mandatory marking of charity-related accounts and posts of NPOs.
In addition, a session ‘Protecting National Interests in the Field of Physical Culture and Sports’ will be held on 19 May 2025.
“Sport is a means of promoting universal peace, cohesion among nations and non-antagonistic friendly competition, serving as an incentive for harmonious development. In modern conditions, Russia’s national interests, including in the field of sports, are subjected to unprecedented pressure from unfriendly representatives of the international sports community,” noted Oleg Sviridenko, Deputy Minister of Justice of the Russian Federation.
Session participants will consider options for improving the efficiency of interaction between sports-oriented nonprofit organizations and government authorities, and will also talk about the place and role of such NPOs in benefitting the national interests of the Russian Federation. One of the key issues to be discussed will be the best methods of organization and activities of NPOs to implement national priorities in the field of sport.
Prospects for further development of the nonprofit sector will continue to be discussed on 20 May 2025 at the session ‘Accessibility and Openness: New Horizons for Nonprofit Organizations’. The discussion will focus on issues related to the specifics of digitalization of government services for nonprofit organizations, increasing the openness of NPOs and developing specific measures needed to strengthen the dialogue between NPOs, the state, and society.
“Modern realities dictate certain vectors of development of normative-legal regulation in the sphere of NPO activities. The formation of the ‘third sector’ in Russia has its own features and characteristics - public benefit, charity, openness. The role of the state in it is to support and organize effective interaction and transparency of NPO activities,” said Svetlana Kuznetsova,
Director of the Department of Legislation and Law Enforcement in the Sphere of Nonprofit Organizations of the Russian Ministry of Justice.
Ms. Kuznetsova added that the main trends in the legislative regulation of NPO activities are the digitalization of reporting and the possibility of obtaining information on NPOs in a ‘one-stop-shop’ mode on the portal of the Russian Ministry of Justice, the aim of which is to uniformly apply the provisions of the legislation and increase the confidence of citizens of the country in charitable programmes.
The Forum is organized by the Roscongress Foundation with the support of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation.
The 13th St. Petersburg International Legal Forum will be held in St. Petersburg from 19 to 21 May.
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