We ask for a simple application documentaion, allowing nonprofits to use the documentation money for their real nonprofit activities. Without the mechanism, few people bequeath their assets to the community. The central government takes a large amount of money left behind by death of people without heirs. Not many people writes a will in Japan. The Hokkaido Conference-Center tries to show an alternative.
Some lawyers start investigating possibilities of some sort of community fund creation.
Thanks to the NPO Conference-Center, Hokkaido spawned 51 nonprofit corporations in one year since the NPO law's implementation in December 1998. The number trails only after Tokyo, Osaka, and Kanagawa Prefectures. It is the top per-capita ratio of NPO formation among the 49 prefectures in the nation. Hardest hit by current Japan's depression, Hokkaido experienced the bankruptcy of its largest bank, Hokkaido Takushoku Bank, in 1998. We need to shift some government's work to the nonprofit sector and to strengthen the basis of the civic sector.