Europe Foundation: Inviting CSOs for Social Enterprise Development Program

Deadline: 28 September 2018

Europe Foundation (EPF) has announced a call for proposals for civil society organizations (CSOs) for its social enterprise development program that aims to support the development of new and existing social enterprises, to promote social enterprise as a viable instrument for attaining long-term CSO sustainability.

Social Entrepreneurship envisions the achievement of social objectives of a CSO, through entrepreneurial solutions. Social Enterprise is a business model that operates primarily with social objectives as the ‘bottom line’ and which reinvests profits into the social mission of the organization, aimed at addressing the needs of vulnerable constituencies.

Grant Information

Maximum grant award for each proposal presented by CSOs, interesting in starting up or developing a social enterprise is GEL 20,000.

Business Models

Social enterprise projects submitted within this grant competition are encouraged to follow one of the following business models. Please, note that the models are not mutually exclusive:

Employment model – operating as an enterprise employing its beneficiaries while selling its products or services in the open market; this model provides employment opportunities and job training to people with high barriers to employment such as people with disabilities, internally displaced persons, socially vulnerable women, etc.
Low-Income Client as Market Model – recognizes the target population or beneficiaries as a market to sell goods or services, to provide affordable access to products and services.
Fee-for-Service Model – sells social and/or other types of services directly to the target populations of individuals, firms, communities, or to a third party payer.
Market Linkage Model – facilitates trade relationships between the target population or benficiaries, small producers, local firms and cooperatives, and the external market.

Criteria

Organizations that meet the following criteria are eligible to participate in this grant competition:
- CSOs, registered and operating in Georgia, interested in creation of a social enterprise.
- CSOs, registered and operating in Georgia, interesting in development of their already existing social enterprise.
Note that only those CSOs that have a proven record of operations of at least two years are eligible to apply for this opportunity.
Proposals submitted within this grant competition should demonstrate that profits of the established social enterprise are reinvested to achieve social mission of the applicant organization.
In addition, the submitted proposals should satisfy at least one of the following criteria:
- Social enterprise provides training and employment opportunities to the representatives of vulnerable groups (e.g. people with disabilities, internally displaced persons, etc.);
- Social enterprise produces goods or services, aimed at solving a pressing social problem;
- Social enterprise demonstrates commitment or cooperation from national or local authorities;
- Social enterprise collaborates with an institution of higher education to achieve its mission.