The basic principle of membership is the openness of the Civic Platform of Macedonia (CPM) to all local civil society organizations that have expressed their will to join the Platform, share its vision and goals and accept the determined principles.
1. Criteria for membership
Starting criteria for membership are the following:
- Organizations founded in order to fulfill and protect the rights and beliefs of in accordance with the Constitution and laws of the Republic of Macedonia;
- Non-profit organizations;
- Non-partisan organizations; organizations that are not involved in political activities and do not use their assets to fulfill the goals of political campaigns, that is, are not direct participants in the election campaign or collect funds for election campaigns and financing of political parties (article 3 of the Law on Citizen Associations and Foundations).
- Results (number of activities and results achieved with the activities undertaken)
- Resources (financial, human)
- Internal organization (active democratic structures, representation, relations with the membership and target group)
- Relations with other actors (within the sector, external)
- Accountability and transparency
- CPM support (financial and personnel)
2. Membership guidelines
The model for assessing the criteria shall be allocation of points.
In order to provide flexibility and room for bigger representation, the criteria shall be relative and they will be assessed integrally with a possibility for exceptions if there are marginalized groups. In this respect, it is necessary to make exceptions in order to promote certain marginalized groups (e.g. Roma, women).
The organizations shall be given a reasonable deadline to fulfill ad achieve certain goals to meet the determined membership criteria.
Although there are starting criteria, the policy for new members shall be based on relative rather than strictly set criteria, which means openness of the organization to share information and cooperate with other organizations.
It would be possible to measure how much the organization is prepared to share information and cooperate based on the current experience that is, membership in networks, joint projects, and significant impact and achieved results in the area in which it is active.
Mechanisms for joining
The completed membership applications, along with the statute of the organization, registration and annual narrative and financial report are submitted to the Committee. Following the recommendation of the Committee, the Council decides on taking new members by consensus
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