The Small Grant Facility

The Small Grant Facility (SGF) programme will be open only to Network member organisations, especially those who show initiative in active approach in implementing quality standards in their work. Priority will also be given to joint initiatives between two or more Network member organisations. The grants will be focused primarily in involving the public and citizens in a greater level in the discussion on creation of local policies on provision of social services and on state- civil society dialogue in these fields.

Members fulfilling the following criteria will be welcome to apply:

• Be a publicly recognised, legal non-profit making entity under the relevant laws, where such laws exist;
• Located and operating within the target countries;
• Have a clearly defined focus for improvement of delivery of the services they are providing;
• Have clear decision-making mechanism independent from government;

According to the lessons learned from the previous Small Grant Facility (SGF) programme, we have improved and changed methodology of SGF:

• The grants focused in involving the public in the discussion on local policies on social services
• Only local and grass root advocacy initiatives will be supported;
• Partnerships will be obligatory condition for the SGF, and non-traditional partnerships which are promoting innovative services will be given priority (Business-CSOs partnership, Public-Private partnerships, inter-municipal cooperation);
• Analysis, advocacy and monitoring of social sector reforms at regional and local levels will be a precondition for participation at the SGF;
• The call will be launched during the first year in order to have enough time for effective advocacy actions by rising the time of implementation to six months. Also, in this way longer monitoring of the actions implemented will be possible;
• The size of the grants will be raised (up to € 5,000.00 per grant – 12 grants).
• The SGF will be open only to Network member organisations

The assessment criteria will include: organisational performance; comprehensiveness of information including relevance of the proposal to objectives of the fund, objectives of the project and addressing identified need; capacity of identified activities to achieve defined objectives; the relationship between the proposed actions and the financial plan; the intended impact of the project and future sustainability. Full assessment criteria will be developed prior to commencement of the SGF.