Open Door Grants - Sub-grants provided under the EU for Integrity Programme

With the support of the European Union, OGP is launching Open Door Grants*, an ongoing call for project proposals for Eastern Partnership OGP members with a focus on using the OGP platform for expanding civil society engagement and building cross-sectoral partnerships in the areas of integrity, anti-corruption, public service delivery, justice, COVID-19 response and recovery, and civic space. Selected projects are expected to support OGP action plan implementation on country level and to boost cross-border thematic collaboration.

The Call complements our annual grant competition on Civil Society Engagement and Innovations, and provides an agile response to emerging challenges at the country level. Unlike our regular grant competitions, this call for proposals does not have a specific due date. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis beginning on 11 November, 2021.

The call is announced as part of the EU for Integrity Programme for the Eastern Partnership, funded by the European Union and jointly implemented by the Open Government Partnership and the OECD Anti-Corruption Network.

The proposals are reviewed quarterly with no deadline for applications. Details about the application process are provided below.

*Open Door Grants is an open, responsive, and quarterly grantmaking window led by the OGP Support Unit. It focuses on project ideas that offer a response to emerging  challenges on a country level.

 

The Open Government Partnership Support Unit aims to support government and civil society in member countries, including in the Eastern Partnership region, to strengthen co-creation and implementation of nationally or locally-led commitments with potentially high impact that can lead to increasing government transparency, improving accountability, strengthening citizen engagement and government responsiveness.

In late 2020, the Open Government Partnership (OGP) partnered with the European Commission and the OECD Anti-Corruption Network (ACN) on the EU for Integrity Programme, a multi-year initiative focused on providing assistance to the EaP countries in preventing and combating threats to the rule of law, supporting justice sector reforms, improving integrity in the delivery of public services, public administration reform.

These grants complement the existing support available to these countries through enhanced technical assistance provided in conjunction with relevant partners, consultancies to support process design and facilitation, regular peer exchange and knowledge sharing activities (both on improving co-creation and on specific thematic policy areas), as well as small grants for coalition building, implementation support, and digital innovations in open government.

These grants will be managed by the OGP Support Unit. Contracts will be signed between the OGP Support Unit and the grantees. The grantees will be required to collaborate with the OGP Government Point of Contact (POC), civil society groups engaged in the OGP process, and/or the multi-stakeholder forum (MSF) during the implementation of activities related to these grants.

The main objective of these grants is to expand and strengthen civil society engagement and foster multi-stakeholder partnerships for tackling relevant open government reforms in active OGP member countries and locals in the Eastern Partnership region.

The grants will be used for one of the following purposes:

• to propose and implement catalytic approaches to open governance reforms and advocate for their inclusion as commitments in OGP action plans;
• to support co-implementation, monitoring and oversight of action plan commitments, ideally focusing on approaches that can be scalable across action plan cycles.

The grants will also be used to explicitly expand the base of civil society and other non-governmental actors engaging with OGP in the EaP countries and locals. Strong preference will be given to ideas that engage new actors like the private sector, media, or youth groups.

OGP is seeking proposals for strengthening civil society engagement in OGP around the following policy areas:

• Anti-corruption
• Justice
• Public service delivery, including strengthening citizen participation and feedback mechanisms, or enhancing government responsiveness to users for improving public services
• Civic space and media freedoms
• Business integrity and ease of doing business
• Any other themes related to COVID-19 Response, Recovery or Renewal

• The call for this category of grants will be open to registered civil society organisations and consortia from Armenia, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine. Preference will be given to multi-stakeholder teams. Cross-country partnerships are allowed.
• Applications are welcome from organisations not engaged with OGP at this time. However, applicants should be willing to work closely with the OGP Support Unit, the country’s OGP Multi-Stakeholder Forum (Coordination Council) and the official Point of Contact. Applicants will also ideally engage the EU delegation in the country for relevant activities.
• Applicants should be willing to document and share their approaches, methodologies and outputs, and participate in OGP-organised peer exchange and learning events.

• Up to 15,000 EUR for 4-12 months of the implementation period. Note that funds will be disbursed through a cost-reimbursable grant scheme, and financial reports must be accompanied by 100% receipting. Note: Selected grantees will be asked to provide a roadmap of activities at the inception stage of the grant, a mid-term progress report, and a final report.
• Access to technical support from the OGP Support Unit and relevant partners.

Note, grantees will be able to use the award funds for:

• purchase, rental or leasing costs for equipment and supplies (provided that ownership is transferred at the end of the action when required);
• goods and contractual services for specialised tasks (translations, production of documents, external consultants time, accountancy, etc.);
• activities, including local travel, accommodation and subsistence costs, etc.;
• cost of staff assigned to the action;
• admin costs directly assigned to the action (supplies, rental of meeting rooms, etc.); 
• general admin costs (overhead costs) up to 7% of the total eligible direct costs for the action (maintenance, utility bills, office furniture, etc.).

These funds cannot be used for:

• costs that are not associated with the purpose of the grant;
• costs incurred outside of the grant implementation period (with the exception of costs related to final reports and audit certificates);
• costs already covered by another donor;
• personal expenses, such as clothing and toiletries;
• flight upgrades to first class;
• alcohol;
• currency exchange losses;
• debts and debt service charges (interest);
• provisions for losses or potential future liabilities;
• purchases of land or buildings, except where necessary for the direct implementation of the action;
• credits to third parties, unless otherwise specified in the special conditions; 
• salary costs of the personnel of national administrations, unless otherwise specified in the special conditions and only to the extent that they relate to the cost of activities which the relevant public authority would not carry out if the action were not undertaken;
• in kind contributions (except for volunteers’ work);
• performance-based bonuses included in costs of staff;
• deductible VAT.