Eligibility
Can the application be submitted in another language than English?
The application form must be completed in English. Our multinational jury will work in English as a common language. We will also organise networking activities with grantees in English during the length of the grant.
For the second phase of the application, the following annexes can be sent in your national language: Proof of legal registration/Articles of association, most recent Annual report (if available), Financial Statements for the past 2 years (2019&2020) and Bank ID form.
Are there geographical priorities for this call for proposals?
The organisations applying to this call for proposals must be based AND operating in the following countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. This means that an organisation based in one of those country but operating outside of those countries cannot apply. And that an organisation based outside of those countries but operating in one of those countries cannot apply either. Indeed, through this call, the Alliance wishes to partner with frontline organisations, grounded in the communities they support.
What type of activities are eligible?
All types of activities are eligible i.e capacity-building (training, mentoring, coaching, empowerment and leisure activities for both individual and organisations), service provision and influencing (network building, research, awareness-raising, advocacy and policy work). Proposal can contain one or several types of activities. However, as we aim to support direct economic opportunities, we expect most of the applications to embed capacity building and service provision activities.
Can a new organisation apply for the grant?
A newly created organisation can apply for the grant. The Alliance doesn’t have any requirements regarding the life duration of an organisation. The fact that an organisation is new will also be taken into consideration in the due dilligence and we wont ask the same financial documents as other organisations.
Budget
How much can I request?
Each proposal can request a minimum of 60 000€ and a maximum of 150 000€. You cannot request less than 60 000€ or more than 150 000€.
Is there a budget limitation for applying?
The main targets of this call are small to medium size organisations. Thus, as written in the text of the call for proposals, you can apply if you are an organisation based in:
– Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom with a budget below 600 000€.
– Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Spain with a budget below 450 000€.
Organisations that plan to regrant don’t have to respect those budget limitations as long as they allocate the majority of the budget requested to regranting.
The budgetary considerations are based on your overall organisational budget for 2022 even if it is not finalised.
What is core funding?
We understand core support as funding for any costs incurred by the organisation not targeted at specific activities/projects. It is usually used to fund costs that are considered as overhead such as salaries and trainings of admin/core staff, rents, admin and office costs, equipment…
What type of costs are eligible?
For core support, all types of costs are accepted.
For project support, all types of costs are accepted but overheads are capped at 20% of the total budget requested.
Can the grant be used for co-financing a larger project?
Yes the grant can be used for co-financing a larger project if the project fits all of our eligibility and selection criteria.
Are the same grant amounts valid for project funding as for core funding applications?
Yes the same grant amounts are valid for both core funding and project funding. Thus, you can apply from 60 000€ to 150 000€ in both cases.
Do you need the proposal to be co-financed?
For project funding, we can fund 100% of a project. For core funding, we wouldn’t expect to fund an organisation alone but we don’t have set requirements of our maximum contribution compared to your overall budget. We understand that for small organisation, our contribution might be a high percentage of their budget.
What is the budget flexibility if we apply for core funding?
In the second stage of the proposal, you will have to submit a detailed budget with the budget lines you intend the Alliance to fund. During the partnership you can redistribute money within budget lines without asking us if it stays below 10% of the total budget for grants more than 100 000€ or 20% of the total budget for grants less than 100 000€. If you need to do changes that are above those percentage, you will need to discuss with us.
Do you have a limit on the increase of a budget an organisation can present between 2022 and 2023?
The budget increase between 2022 and 2023 is not a selection criteria but we would look at it in the due diligence. If your budget is increasing substantially between 2022 and 2023, we would ask questions to understand how you intend to finance that.
What is the eligible duration for expenses?
Expenses would need to be incurred during the contract period with the Alliance, i.e from July 2023 to June 2025.
Can travel costs for meetings be paid and have the participants to come only from the listed countries or can they come also from other countries?
Travel costs are eligible costs. Travel costs can be reimbursed for participants outside of the target countries.
In how many instalments and at what time will the amounts be disbursed?
There will be 2 instalments: 70% at the beginning of the grant period and the remaining 30% at mid-term (one year after the beginning of the grant period) upon satisfaction of the reporting requirements.
Target groups
What are the target groups of this call for proposals?
The target groups for this call for proposals are low-income women, transgender, non-binary or gender non-conforming people of working age with one or more of the following characteristics:
- from a migration background and/or ethnic minorities
- victims of violence
- from rural or disadvantaged areas
- in situation of disability
- perceived as young, i.e at an early stage in the job market
- perceived as old, i.e at a late stage in the job market
Is it possible to target the intervention on several categories of beneficiaries?
You can target as many target groups as you’d like, as long as they are listed in the call for proposals.
Are unemployed women an eligible target group?
Unemployed women are not a specific target group of this call. But given the focus of the call they can be a target group, if they have the characteristics mentioned in the questions above.
Are women who experienced burnout due to inequality and work’s violence an eligible target group?
Women victims of violence are an identified target group of this proposal. We haven’t defined violence in the call for proposals but we have a large understanding of it, thus violence occurring in the workplace, physical or mental would be considered as violence.
Are undocumented LGBTQ refugees an eligible target group?
Yes, they can be one of the target groups. We don’t have a rule on the administrative status of what we understand as refugees or people with a migration background.
Do you have any expectations around target numbers for people directly reached through the proposals?
We don’t have expectations around target numbers. The most important is the quality of the proposal and our Monitoring & Evaluation is more focused on qualitative data than quantitative..
Group applications
Do you encourage partnerships or that is something that should be avoided?
Whether you are doing a group project or not is not a selection criterion. The application is in two stages. The first stage is a concept note. Here you should mention in the concept note that you are doing a group proposal. More questions will be developed in the second stage of the proposal.
Can a partnership be formed by a small/medium organisation respecting the budget theresholds and a larger organisation not respecting the budget thresholds?
All the project partners should respect the budget eligibility criteria if they will receive funds (directly or indirectly via the main applicant) from the Alliance. You can only partner with a larger organisation if they are participating in the project but not receiving funds from the Alliance.
If we submit a proposal in partnership with other organisations, do they all have to fall under the eligibility criteria or only the lead organisation?
If partner organisations are receiving funding from the Alliance, they should comply with all the eligibility criteria. If they don’t receive money, they should comply with the geographical eligibility criteria, i.e being based and operating in the countries targeted by the call.
Do you recommend partnerships for very small organisations?
This is for you to decide. We are trying to streamline our processes to be as accessible as possible for small organisations’ capacity. But we have some administrative, reporting and capacity building requirements that would need the organisation to have a bit of capacity to engage with us.
Regranting
What do you mean by a regranting organisation?
While the Alliance expects most of its grants to be going directly to organisations, we are open to select a few regranting organisations in countries where we have less knowledge. In our understanding a regranting organisation will receive a grant from the Alliance and redistribute most of it to other organisations for the implementation of activities.
How will it work in practice?
For the selection phase, the same eligibility and selection criteria apply for regranting organisations and non regranting organisations except when indicated. For the partnership phase, we will discuss the specificities of the partnership on a case-by-case basis with selected applicants.
Do you have a set percentage of the budget to be regranted?
We have mentioned in the call for proposals that we expect regranting organisations to regrant most of the budget requested. We haven’t set a precise percentage and it would need to be discussed on a case-by-case basis with the pre-selected applicants.
Is there a maximum/minimum number of organisations that can receive the regrants and is there a maximum amount of financial support per each re-granted association?
There is no minimum or maximum number of organisations that you can regrant to. There is also no maximum of financial support to be regranted per organisation. However we will discuss on a case-by-case basis with the pre-selected applicants the requirements attached to regranting.
Does the selection of the organisations receiving the financial support need to be done through a call for proposals or can the organisations be identified directly by the regranting organisation?
You can regrant with the method you’d like but we would expect you to explain the process and criteria in the proposal.
Miscelleanous
How many organisations will be funded through this call for proposals?
We expect to fund between 23 to 30 organisations.
In the application form, what thematic area should an organisation select if it is working on more than one?
If an organization works on several of the areas listed, it needs to choose the main one or the one the project refers to. If this is not possible, the organisation should choose “Other” and provide additional information in the narrative part of the application.
What would be expected in the final report?
There will be a narrative report explaining what you have implemented, the impact you have achieved, your learnings and challenges… There will also be a financial report where you will report expenses.
Do proposal have to be 2 years? Can they be longer or shorter?
Our contract and funding will be over 2 years from July 2023 to June 2025 so eligible costs to be funded by the Alliance should be within this period. However, your activities can start earlier and finish later than the dates of our contract.