Project support to civil society organisations

The Ministry for Foreign Affairs grants discretionary government transfers to Finnish civil society organisations (CSOs) and municipalities for their development cooperation projects. Calls for proposals are opened every two years. The call for proposals is open between 31 January - 31 March 2020.

Principles of support

Project support for Finnish NGOs is an important form of civil society development cooperation and part of Finland's development policy implementation. The development cooperation projects of NGOs increase the diversity and impact of Finnish development cooperation in their own fields of expertise and with their own operating practices in developing countries around the world. According to the Guidelines for Civil Society in Development Policy (2017), strengthening civil society is both a development policy objective and a means to promote Finland's other development policy objectives and the goals of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Project support also promotes Finland's foreign policy objectives, such as the implementation of human rights policy objectives.

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Call for proposals 2021-2024

Call for proposals and application criteria (Opens New Window)

Questions and answers (Opens New Window) (note: the answers are in the language the questions were received in)

List of projects to which support was granted in the call for proposals in 2020 (Opens New Window)

Conditions and guidelines of project support

General conditions for the use of discretionary government transfers granted by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and complementary conditions for project support:

Forms for e-Service

Ministry for Foreign Affairs uses an e-Service and its electronic forms for the administration of project support. Find out about the e-Service.

To download the forms you will need to have the latest version of the free Adobe Reader software(Link to another website.) (Opens New Window).

Save the forms on your own work station before opening them (Save target as). You can edit, save or forward forms to others before you submit the application.

Basic information form

Grant recipients will need to submit the basic information form annually together with the following appendices: action plan, budget proposal, annual report, financial statement, audit report and other possible documents, such as revised rules and extract from the register of associations.

The basic information form will be submitted only once also in cases where the actor is applying for several discretionary government transfers in the same year.

Applicants for grants must use the code given in the acknowledgement of receipt to be able to submit new applications for project support in application cycles. It is requested that applicants will submit their basic information forms by the end of April.

After submitting the basic information form, you will receive a notification on your electronic user account, which includes the case ID code (which is in the form of UHA20XX-000XXX). Write this ID code under section 2.1 of the project support application or continuation project application.

Application forms for project support

Mandatory appendices:

Please note that when you name the appendices, special characters (such as , . - / ä ö) must not be used. When you save appendices, make sure that the file format is also saved (for example action_plan_2013.pdf). The total size of the appendices may not exceed 10 MB.

Additional instructions:

Disbursement commitment and request

Commitment form, to be submitted before the receipt of government support:

Disbursement request form. 

Account of the project status form, to be used when the first instalment is requested to be paid before the annual report is submitted (by 30 April):

Commitments and disbursement requests are attached to the data concerning the grant recipient and the project using the case ID in the e-Service. The ID is in the form of year-month-day-0000XXXX.

Change of use application and complementary information

Prepare the applications concerning change of use of appropriated funds and carry-over to the next year using the form below.

Additional information to the basic information form, project application and annual report is given using the form below.

Reporting

Organisations report on their use of the granted discretionary government transfers via the Foreign Ministry's e-Service. The reports must be submitted by 30 April.

The appendices to the annual reports are also sent electronically only. Appendices that must be signed are scanned and appended to the electronic reporting form.

Due to challenges caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the Ministry has decided that no self-financing will be required from the organisations receiving project support in 2020. Mandatory self-financing has been removed from the reporting form for the year 2020. It is not possible to report more voluntary work and service/item donations than self-financing in cash. Should an organisation want to include more voluntary work or service/item donations in its reporting, it is possible to inform about this in the Additional information field (16.1) or in a separate attachment.

The ID data required for filling in the reporting form can be retrieved from the organisation's electronic user account, project support applications and the decision on discretionary government support as well as from the changes of use if any.

 

 

Also in this site

 

e-Service for civil society organisations

Development partners: The civil society

Guidelines for Civil Society in Development Policy

 

Content administrator

Unit for Civil Society