If you are a NGO based in an EU Member State that fits into the eligibility criteria and requires funding for humanitarian aid actions, you may start applying for a partnership agreement with ECHO. There are more than 200 partner organizations with ECHO. Some organizations may be large with increased capacity and concentrate on wider regions and various fields in humanitarian actions. Yet some can be smaller in operational and financial capacities, implementing a specific action with specialized expertise.
In 2014, the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief (OXFAM) UK, one of the world’s largest NGOs, received about €40 million of ECHO’s humanitarian assistance funding for emergency relief and preparedness, food and nutrition, water and sanitation, protection and reinforcement around countries in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Middle East and Central America. On the contrary, Development Workshop France (DWF), a comparably smaller capacity NGO registered in France during 2008, was also granted €300,000 for natural disaster relief reconstruction in central Vietnam.
OXFAM: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what-we-do/about-us/how-we-work/who-we-work-with
DWF: http://www.dwf.org/en/content/partners-and-supporters
If you are a bigger operational capacity holding international NGO which is based outside of an EU Member State, one way to increase your chances of obtaining ECHO funding is to open a regional office in one of the EU Member States. However, there is also an exception.
According to the ECHO’s Agreement for Humanitarian Award in 2014, DAC Aviation International, a Canadian aviation company based in Canada with a regional office in Kenya, received €1.1million of ECHO funding as a supplier for humanitarian air services in Congo, Kenya, Mali, and Chad. This indicates that ECHO allows FPA with commercial companies.
However, this rarely occurs and this type of FPA is permitted only in cases of highly specific expertise.
DAC Aviation International: http://dacaviation.com/echo-flight/
If you are a smaller capacity NGO that is not based in a Member State of EU, it is highly difficult to be financed by ECHO funding. One suggestion is to reach out to organizations that are already listed in ECHO’s partnership network and work with them as a subcontractor.
