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European Union for CSOs: more information sources on funding and opportunities

14/04/2025

The European Union is stepping up its support to civil society in all sectors and regions of Ukraine, as CSOs are the backbone of Ukraine’s resilience and are essential for Ukraine’s progress towards EU membership. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the EU has provided more than EUR 150 million to CSOs to support their critical work in humanitarian response, justice, democratic development and governance. And recently, the EU and its member states Sweden and Germany, through a Team Europe approach, announced EUR 44 million funding in support of Ukrainian CSOs.

To raise awareness among civil society organisations of the opportunities available to them and to facilitate their access to funding, we have compiled a list of key information sources, including direct EU funding portals, localised grant schemes and subgranting programmes run by strategic partners.

Where to find your information?

The most important entry point is always the central information portal of the EU, where you can browse through funding & tenders opportunities (EU Funding & Tenders Portal (europa.eu). Here all funding opportunities from different EU programmes are available in one portal: bilateral EU funding for Ukraine (as of 2024 from the so-called Ukraine Facility), but also from the regional Eastern Partnership civil society programmes, from the global human rights and civil society instruments and many more.

More localised funding opportunities for CSOs are available through EU funded organisations that manage small grants schemes in different sectors. For sharing such opportunities, you can also use EU4Ukraine website, EU Delegation Facebook page, as well as the CSO hub, EU Prostir. You can also find funding opportunities at GURT Resource Center. Usually, the partners running such schemes also publicise them through their channels and on their social media.

In terms of training and support, it is worth checking, in addition to above resources, the EU funded regional Civil Society Facility, offering training and other opportunities for CSOs (eapcivilsociety.eu), and microgrants for their ‘fellows’. The East Europe Foundation, with funding of the European Union, has developed the course: The Successful Grantee, that is available for free on Zrozumilo platform.

Which organisations provide calls for proposals with EU funding?

Specifically for capacity building for Ukrainian NGOs, the EU Delegation is working with EU Strategic Partners for Capacity Building for CSOs in Ukraine, who manage subgranting schemes to build capacities of smaller organisations:

Other EU programmes implement subgranting facilities on sector level, for example for anti-corruption, culture, business or media:

Ukraine2EU is a three-year project (2025 to 2027) implemented by a consortium led by the Lithuanian Central Project Management Agency (CPVA). It is one of the flagship initiatives of the European Union to assist Ukraine in successfully completing its EU accession process and preparing for EU membership. Calls for proposals for civil society under this initiative will be published on the CPVA website (https://cpva.lt/en/calls-for-proposals).

ZMINA project, Protecting Civil Society and Cultivating Agents of Change to Sustain Ukraine’s European Path, will publish calls for proposals on zmina.ua and on the social media platforms facebook.com/zmina.ua. Support is directed towards organisations engaged in the protection of civil society, the organisations’ activities in the fields of human rights protection during martial law and the post-war period, democracy, and European integration.

House of Europe II is the EU-funded programme providing subgrants for civil society actors, cultural institutions, media and individuals. The programme regularly issues call for proposals for infrastructure rehabilitation, international exchanges, translations, media content creation, national projects, scholarships and residencies: houseofeurope.org.ua

Creative Europe is a pan-European programme offering numerous funding opportunities for Ukrainian organisations and individuals. It provides dozens of various funding opportunities under Media, Culture and Cross-sectoral strands. To get the funding, an organisation needs to find partners in other European countries: culture.ec.europa.eu/funding/calls

The Council of Europe (CoE), in partnership with the EU, implements the project titled ‘Support for implementing European standards relating to anti-discrimination and rights of national minorities in Ukraine’. For available funding please visit: coe.int/en/web/kyiv/news-event/news.

UNESCO project, Preserving the Jewish Documentary Heritage of Ukraine, Honouring Collective Memory, Expanding Knowledge and Access to Archives, and Promoting Intercultural Dialogue. Links to calls: unesco.org, and further amplified through the social media channels of UNESCO Ukraine, namely: facebook.com/UNESCOinUkraine. Throughout 2025, various competitions will be held for NGOs to train journalists and artists, manage art projects and hold multimedia events. People in Need – Resilient Civil Society in the Eastern Partnership Region will have upcoming calls in 2025 to strengthen community-based initiatives supporting resilience and social cohesion, and to promote clean energy transition in target municipalities with a partner (Ecoaction) in target areas (Hromadas in Dnipropetrovsk and Sumy oblasts). More information here: ukraine.peopleinneed.net УО з навчання журналістів і митців, управління мистецькими проектами та проведення мультимедійних заходів. «Людина в біді – Стійке громадянське суспільство в регіоні Східного партнерства» проводитиме конкурси у 2025 році для посилення ініціатив на рівні громад, які підтримують стійкість і соціальну згуртованість, і для сприяння переходу до чистої енергії в цільових муніципалітетах із партнером («Екодія») у цільових областях (громади в Дніпропетровській та Сумській областях). Більше інформації тут: ukraine.peopleinneed.net

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