Amidst controversy between the political and social role of the Russian nonprofit sector, the governmental support to nonprofit organizations delivering social services is an attempt by the Russian government to tip the scales towards social activities rather than political actions. Russian nonprofits are expected to play a greater role in healthcare, education, social services and other social sectors where the government cannot cope alone. Since 2011 federal authorities are distributing pass-through grants to the regional governments entitled “Government Support to Socially Oriented Not-For-Profit Organizations”. To benefit from federal grants regional authorities are supposed to implement their own programs of governmental support, possibly including, but not limited to financial, informational, property support, tax exemptions to the nonprofits. Also regions can ensure state-run programs to support nonprofits’ staff and volunteers, local authorities’ nonprofit support programs, provide trainings. However, the informational coverage about federal and regional policy is not uniform. Many nonprofits stay unaware of the opportunities and do not benefit from governmental programs. Federal-regional departmentalism also limits program capacity.

This study explores the situation in 66 of 83 Russian regions that said to implement nonprofit support programs. We juxtapose evidence provided by regional authorities and regional nonprofits judging whether the support programs were really implemented in their region and support mechanisms are in place. 66 representatives of regional authorities responsible for policy implementation and 1278 representatives of regional nonprofits were interviewed based on a partially formalized questionnaire. The results of the regression analysis suggest that the problem of diverging perceptions between the authorities and the nonprofits is endemic to certain kinds of regions. Regional authorities tend to provide more financial, property, informational, and consulting support. Meanwhile, the actual supply of support mechanisms depends on a set of regional developmental factors, like: GRP per capita adjusted for regional purchasing power, urbanization level, the size of the regional public and military, healthcare, social services sectors, the quality of regional administration.

We also find out strong positive correlation between governmental support to the nonprofit sector and the index of democracy in particular regions. Regions with higher corruption levels, fewer political freedoms and competition tend to engage in controversial nonprofit support programs, like distributing money to volunteers. Authorities in more democratic regions tend to provide more open leadership and are more cooperative towards regional civil society. We discuss the implications of our analysis for the future of government-nonprofit relations in Russia and suggest scenarios from real cooperation to tacit opposition to populist mimicry of cooperation.