U.S. Embassy Kyiv announces an Open Competition for Ukrainian Nonprofit Organizations

Deadline: 6 August 2019

The U.S. Embassy Kyiv of the U.S. Department of State has announced an open competition for Ukrainian nonprofit organizations to submit applications to coordinate and execute 16 Ukraine Press Tours over 24 months.

The proposed Press Tours will be for influential European journalists outside Ukraine and introduce them to Ukraine’s government, civil society, business, media, and cultural structures. The grantee will work in close coordination with U.S. Embassy Kyiv to organize these tours. Ideally, there will be four tours in fall 2019, four tours in spring 2020, four tours in fall 2020 and four tours in spring 2021.

Each Press Tour group will consist of an average of 4 European journalists, as well as accompanying staff members from the grantee in charge of preparing the Press Tour. Journalists may come from print, television, or social media backgrounds; the grantee will not be responsible for selecting individual journalist participants. Each Press Tour will last 3-5 days and will consist of meetings with important newsmakers in Kyiv, as well as travel to the East and/or other regions of Ukraine. The grantee will organize transportation, transfers (including airport transfers), accommodations and M&IE in Ukraine, and arrange translation services. The grantee is also responsible for organizing the full set of meetings for each tour.

Program Objectives

The objective of the Ukraine Press Tours is to improve the accuracy of European reporting on Ukraine, away from false narratives and towards fact-based reporting that reflects the current political, economic and social realities in the country.
In the past several years, Ukraine has been a subject of multiple disinformation campaigns around the globe. This program aims to combat this particular challenge through a series of 16 Press Tours for European journalists outside of Ukraine. The selected journalists will benefit from visiting Ukraine and meeting stakeholders directly. These visits will allow insight into accurate information about actual events happening in Ukraine as well as to establish long-lasting contacts with other journalists to continue the activities beyond the scope of this project.

Funding Information

Length of performance period: 24 months
Award amount: $200,000
Total available funding: $200,000
Anticipated program start date: September 1, 2019

Participants and Audiences:

European journalists and the Ukrainian government and civil society representatives they are meeting.

Eligibility Criteria

Eligible Applicants
- Ukrainian not-for-profit organizations, including think tanks and civil society/nongovernmental organizations
Cost Sharing or Matching
- Cost sharing is not required.
Other Eligibility Requirements
- Eligible organizations and their members may not represent any political party, or serve as appointed or elected public officials at the time of application or for the duration of the grant. Non-governmental organizations, which belong to and/or are financially supported by any political party, are not eligible to apply.
- Eligible organizations may not make any expenditure with their own funds on behalf of candidates, political parties, party coalitions, or their representatives.
- Grant money cannot contribute to any political campaigns or offset the expense of contributing to any political campaign.
- Eligible organizations may not publish or communicate anything that explicitly favors or opposes any political candidate, political party, or party coalition.
- Application to, or receipt of funds from this thematic competition, does not disqualify any organization from competing for other U.S. government funds.