Management guide for NGOs, associations and foundations in Romania

How to run a nonprofit organisation, step by step

The order below is what keeps an organisation compliant and eligible for the two fiscal mechanisms that fund Romanian NGOs.

1. Register the organisation in the ANAF Register of entities/religious units using form 163 — without it you receive neither 3.5% redirections nor tax-credited sponsorships.
2. Open a record for each supporter, with their full giving history, so the information does not depend on one person.
3. Issue the right document for each type of income: a receipt for a donation, a contract for a sponsorship, a dues record for members.
4. Sign a written volunteer agreement before the first activity and record it in your own volunteer register.
5. Log volunteering hours per activity, so certificates can be issued without reconstructing them from memory.
6. Track each funded project by budget line, so the funder report comes out of the same data, not a parallel spreadsheet.
7. Meet the recurring tax deadlines — an arrear older than 90 days removes you from the Register of entities.

Where an NGO’s money comes from, and the document each source requires

Article 15(2) of the Fiscal Code lists the non-taxable income of a non-patrimonial organisation. Each type has its own supporting document.

• The cap on economic activity is the lower of the lei equivalent of EUR 15,000 per year and 10% of total non-taxable income (art. 15(3) of the Fiscal Code).
• A donation and a sponsorship are not the same thing fiscally: only sponsorship and patronage give the granting company a tax credit.

Income sources and the document that supports them

The two fiscal mechanisms your funding depends on

• Individuals with salary income can redirect up to 3.5% of their annual tax through form 230, by 25 May 2026 for 2025 income.
• Companies paying profit tax deduct sponsorship from their tax, capped at the lower of 0.75% of turnover and 20% of the profit tax due.
• Micro-enterprises have had no sponsorship tax credit since 2024 — they can sponsor, but with no fiscal benefit.
• Unused amounts are no longer carried forward for 7 years: recovery goes through a form 177 redirection, by 25 June 2026 for tax year 2025.
• Both mechanisms require the organisation to be in the Register of entities — for sponsorship, as of the contract signing date.

Volunteers: which documents are mandatory, and what gets fined

• A volunteer agreement must be concluded in writing, in Romanian, before the first activity (Law 78/2014, art. 11).
• The agreement is not filed with the labour inspectorate and not entered in Revisal: it goes into the volunteer register the organisation keeps itself.
• The agreement must be accompanied by the volunteering sheet and the volunteer protection sheet.
• The organisation must keep records of volunteers, of the duration and type of activities, and of evaluations.
• Failing these obligations carries a fine of 10,000 to 20,000 lei, issued by labour inspectors (art. 23^1, introduced by Law 100/2024).
• Volunteering counts as professional experience if it matches the field of study completed, but it is not length of service.

Cash, receipts and archiving

• Law 70/2015 caps cash transactions at 10,000 lei per day with an individual and 5,000 lei per day with a company or a self-employed person.
• A donation is absent from the exhaustive list of capped transactions, but treat 10,000 lei as a safety threshold for an individual donor.
• The end-of-day cash balance cannot exceed 50,000 lei, and the excess must be banked within two working days.
• The penalty for exceeding the cap is 25% of the amount over the limit, but not less than 500 lei, and it cannot be paid at half within 15 days.
• A fiscal cash register is not required for donations, dues or sponsorships, but for economic activity selling directly to the public.
• Supporting documents are kept for 5 years, counted from 1 July of the year following the financial year end — not 10 years, as is often claimed.
• The archiving obligation coexists with the GDPR right to erasure: a deletion request does not override keeping the receipt.

Common mistakes in running an NGO

• Donor records live in one person’s spreadsheet: when they leave, the organisation loses its memory.
• The form 230 campaign starts in April, weeks before the deadline.
• The sponsorship contract is signed before the organisation is in the Register, and the company loses its tax credit.
• Volunteering hours are reconstructed from memory at year end, when a volunteer asks for a certificate.
• The funder report is written in a file separate from the accounts, and the figures stop matching.

How 4ong helps

• A single donor record, with the full history of gifts, communications and receipts issued.
• Recurring gifts tracked automatically, with an alert when a monthly gift stops.
• Fundraising campaigns with a target and live progress, broken down by income source.
• A volunteer register, hour logging per activity, and certificates issued from the platform.
• Funded projects tracked by budget line, with reports ready to send to the funder.
• Your organisation’s data hosted in the European Union, GDPR-compliant.