One of the basic structural functions of the non-profit sector is to supply social needs that are not adequately met by the public sector for some reason, and to provide services for this purpose Ethnic and national minorities, if they are dissatisfied with public goods, can also take advantage of this correction function of the non-profit sector. Based on the above, it is also reasonable to assume that the less a social group has access to public goods provided by the state, or the more dissatisfied with them, the greater its efforts to produce these public goods independently - this is the basis of Weisbrod's (1988) heterogeneity thesis. According to this, the more heterogeneous a population is, the more differentiated public services it desires, so the more segments receive less of the public goods produced by the state than required. As a result, the more heterogeneous a population is, the larger the size of the nonprofit sector it creates and operates. Ethnic and national differences, among other (social, linguistic etc.) factors, are one source of this heterogeneity. Thus, for example, members of an ethnic minority often have a need for education in their own language, which is rarely provided by the majority state, which is why non-profit organizations with an educational profile are more common in the non-profit sector of these minorities (Bielefeld 2000: 2). Although the heterogeneity-thesis has not been unanimously supported by empirical analyzes, some analyzes have shown, for example, that ethnic and linguistic heterogeneity can also lead to a dedine in general trust, which tends to lead to underdevelopment in the nonprofit sector (Anderson-Paskeviciute 2006), however, several authors have shown that nonprofits can be of exceptional importance to ethnic minorities in a number of areas. Thus, they can serve as an effective tool in the political representation of ethnic and national minorities, both at the local political level (Hula et al. 2001) and in macro-politics, in which NGOs very often provide formal political representation for minorities as an integral part of the political system (Carstocea 2013). My study is based on the assumption that the characteristics of the non-profit sectors created by ethnic minorities differ from those of the non-profit sector of majority societies. Thus, the specific functions of minority non-profit sectors discussed so far result in minority organizations being active in other areas compared to majority organizations, or at least these organizations are distributed in different proportions between each area of activity. However, many other parameters of minorities also determine the characteristics of these non-profit sectors. In one of my previous analyzes, I argued that different types of minority nonprofit sectors may develop depending on the size of the minority population, the degree of territorial concentration, its rural or urban nature, the level of knowledge of the minority language, and the existence of a supporting kinstate (Kiss 2010). The importance of the existence of a supporting motherland is given by the fact that it can make the resource structure of the minority non-profit sector different from that of the majority non-profit sectors. As in the case of majority NGOs, the sources of income for minorities are membership fees, donations and state subsidies. However, in the presence of a supporting motherland, the resources of two states may become available to the minority. And in countries where own revenues and donations male up a small portion of the resource structure and the state is the primary maintainer of the nonprofit sector, the doubling of public resources can fundamentally determine the structure of the minority nonprofit sector. In my study, I present the case of the Hungarian minority in Romania, how the members of this minority used the opportunities provided by the non-profit sector to satisfy their specific needs different from those of the majority society after the collapse of the socialist regime and the establishment of a democratic political system I try to show that with the help of the minority non-profit sector thus formed, the members of the minority established alternative, minority institutions to independently perform the functions of the majority state institutions, thus creating a minority institutional system analogous to the majority society. However, in addition to this similarity, the structure of this minority non-profit sector differs significantly from that of the majority, Romanian and Hungarian non-profit sectors most in contact with it. In contrast to the majority nonprofit sectors, one of the striking features of the case analyzed is that churches have gained a prominent role. For the Hungarian minority institutional system, which was built between the two state institutional systems, the minority churches implement and ensure the functioning of Romanian state institutions as their own ethnic institutions (in the case of educational institutions), and establish and maintain their own Hungarian institutions to provide certain public services (in the social sphere). At the same time, they play a QUANGO role in mediating public funding for the maintenance of many institutions (higher education, sports academies), as well as fundraising and direct funding. As a result, church-affiliated and partly religious organizations have a prominent presence in the resulting minority non-profit sector. In my analysis, I use the results of a questionnaire survey conducted among Hungarian NGOs in Romania, and I rely on the analysis of the websites of some minority organizations.
