Deadline: 14-Jun-22
The European Commission (EC) is pleased to announce a call for proposals to support the development of the social investment market and facilitate access to finance for social enterprises through grants to intermediaries in the social enterprise finance field to partially cover the transaction costs.
The envisaged activities are based on the fact that the most important funding gap for social enterprises. However, the transaction costs for such small tickets can be high which gives an incentive to social impact fund managers to focus on higher amounts in order to preserve the fund’s sustainability. This can lead to a mismatch between needed and sustainable ticket sizes.
The grant is aimed at financial intermediaries that undertake long-term risk capital investments in ticket sizes of less than EUR 500,000 in the form of equity quasiequity, or hybrid financing to social enterprises in the ESF+ Associated Countries. It will serve to lower the transaction costs for these small investment tickets and thus help overcome a market failure in the social enterprise finance market.
Funding Information
The available call budget is EUR 4,000,000.
Activities
Activities related to the preparation, conclusion and follow-up of long term risk capital investments into social enterprises may be funded under this call for proposals. This may include a mix of activities such as:
- Traveling to meet (potential) investments;
- Screening and processing investment applications;
- Preparing legal documents, potentially with a lawyers’ advice;
- Carrying out the due diligence, including assessing (potential) impact of the investment;
- Providing investment readiness, scaling readiness or business restructuring support;
- Bringing in co-investors;
- Managing the investments and monitoring social impact.
Eligibility Criteria
In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:
- Be legal entities (public or private bodies)
- Be established in one of the eligible countries, ie:
- EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs))
- Non-EU countries:
- Listed EEA countries and countries associated to the ESF+ or countries which are in ongoing negotiations for an association agreement and where the agreement enters into force before grant signature(on the official page list)
- Be an investment fund, a Fund-of-Funds, a special purpose vehicle, or a (co-) investment scheme in any form. There are two options available:
- Either the legal entity of the investment fund, the Fund-of-Funds, the special purpose vehicle or the (co-) investment scheme can be an applicant;
- Or the organization managing the investment fund, the Fund-of-Funds, the special purpose vehicle, or the (co-) investment scheme can be an applicant. For the avoidance of doubt, the managing organization must already be an established and registered legal entity at the time of the submission of the application.
For more information, visit https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/esf-2022-soc-fin;callCode=null;freeTextSearchKeyword=;matchWholeText=true;typeCodes=1,2;statusCodes=31094502;programmePeriod=null;programCcm2Id=null;programDivisionCode=null;focusAreaCode=null;destination=null;mission=null;geographicalZonesCode=null;programmeDivisionProspect=null;startDateLte=null;startDateGte=null;crossCuttingPriorityCode=null;cpvCode=null;performanceOfDelivery=null;sortQuery=startDate;orderBy=desc;onlyTenders=false;topicListKey=topicSearchTablePageState
