Visegrad grants support regional partnerships among NGOs and civil society organizations, public institutions and municipalities, private companies and nonprofit organizations as well as education and research centers that contribute to cooperation in the Visegrad region.
Conditions
- Projects must develop meaningful cooperation and active participation of organizations from at least 3 V4 countries
- Cross-border cooperation of at least 2 organizations from 2 neighboring V4 countries also qualify for support with projects taking place within a 40-km radius from the border
- Maximum duration of project implementation is 18 months
- Grants can cover up to 100% of project budget with 15% for overheads
- Projects must address at least one of the objectives of the grant program´s seven focus areas
Any legal entity is eligible for funding if applying on behalf of a justifiable consortium of project partners. Preferences are given to groups of non-governmental, civil society organizations (CSOs) and municipalities and local governments; applications submitted by schools, higher education institutions, research and scientific bodies and public institutions in general will also be considered. Natural persons (individual citizens) or institutions of state administration (ministries, government agencies, embassies, etc.) cannot apply nor can be valid project partners.
CRITERIA
Project relevance/context clarity: The Fund assesses the compliance of the project with its aims. The Fund also evaluates how much aware the applicant is of the context and how clearly the applicant explains the context of the project and how the project responds to the given context or relates to relevant environment.
CRITERIA
Project relevance/context clarity: The Fund assesses the compliance of the project with its aims. The Fund also evaluates how much aware the applicant is of the context and how clearly the applicant explains the context of the project and how the project responds to the given context or relates to relevant environment.
- Visegrad substance: The next assessment criterion is the regional added value of the project in terms of the collaboration of project partners and how much regional cooperation contributes to achieving the project objectives. The Fund also looks at geographical scope of project activities and how much it promotes regional cooperation.
- Quality and Impact: The quality of the project is assessed in terms of the relevance of the proposed outcome as well as its potential to achieve it. The Fund also looks at the project´s impact through looking how the project links relevant actors, project outputs and the target groups. The Fund defines impact as the change of the situation within a specific group of people that your project addresses. There are 4 levels of impact. The lowest possible impact is achieved when providing a direct service. In practice, it means that you organize an event or publish a book according to your project proposal and the listed target groups participate in the event or read the book. The second level is achieved when your target group changes their behavior or acquires a new skill thanks to your project. Following the example above, the participants of an event did not only attend passively, but left with a new way of thinking about the subject and a will act upon it. Changing the framework is the third level of impact. It means that your project managed to bring about a change in the legal or social environment of your target group. The highest possible level of impact is the change of the perception of the issue that you are dealing with. This is when a problem becomes a solution. Achieving such a change requires a long time, persistence and enormous hard work. It is understandable that you will not achieve it with one project supported by the Fund. However, the Fund appreciates if your organization is driven by this level of impact and your project proposal is contributing to getting closer to its achievement.
- Transparency and Accuracy: The Fund evaluates the value for money for each project proposal. The funding requested should therefore be adequate for the scale of the project and be at accurate value for the outcomes to be delivered. The higher the amount requested, the higher impact is to be achieved within each target group and the more the applicant is encouraged to secure other sources of support—financial sources (such as the applicant’s, partners’ or other donors’ financial contributions), or non-financial, in-kind contributions (own work, use of own premises, etc.).
- Experience and Mission: The Fund looks into the applicant´s and the partners´ portfolios of activities to see how the project relates to their overall mission in order to assess the added value of the regional cooperation for the parties involved.
