OSIFE inviting Civil Society working to Improve Governance and Anticorruption, in response to the Coronavirus Crisis

Deadline: 30 June 2020

The Open Society Initiative for Europe has issued a call for proposals to support civil society working to combat corruption and promote good governance, in response to the coronavirus crisis.

Across the Central and Eastern European region, citizens often face public institutions which are unaccountable, corrupt, and undermine democratic processes and the quality of public services. To address this, interventions only focused on monitoring, advocacy, and legal reform have largely proven insufficient to generate positive change.

At the same time, they witness promising experiences of public sector–civil society collaborations on these challenges in the region. However, the fast-evolving coronavirus crisis brings new corruption risks. These risks relate to the public health crisis and to overall government responses to plan for the aftermath of the coronavirus crisis.

The Foundation is issuing a call for applications for civil society–driven initiatives aiming to:

• increase transparency, accountability, and public participation processes to strengthen public institutions with a collaborative approach;
• address and mitigate the corruption risks related to the COVID-19 crisis.

Funding Information

• Applicants may submit up to two proposals per organization with a budget of up to a maximum of $40,000 per proposal, using the proposal and budget templates available on this page.
• The duration of a grant can range between 8 and 15 months.
• The project start date needs to be between 20 September and 1 February 2021.

Eligibility Criteria

The Foundation invites applications from registered civil society and/or nonprofit organizations (or consortia of organizations) with a background in anticorruption and/or good governance fields as well as working at local and/or national levels in one of the following countries: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia.

Ineligibility Criteria

• The Open Society Initiative for Europe will not fund partisan political activities (i.e., activities that express support for a certain political party or support for political parties or elected officials are not eligible). Political party–affiliated associations are likewise not eligible to apply.
• In the context of this call, they will not fund projects which are only focused on monitoring and exposing corruption or other governance problems. They will also not fund general civic activism, unless there is a specific link to solution-oriented approaches using transparency, accountability, or participation processes. Neither will they fund academic research on corruption or governance or mapping studies. In the framework of this call, they will not fund general organizational/core funding requests to provide financial sustainability to current work.

For more information, visit https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/grants/working-together-to-improve-governance-and-anticorruption