On 2 December, the €2.3 million NGO Fund made available a new tranche of project funding. Applications may be submitted by recommended letters or brought to the office of fund intermediary Open Estonia Foundation (Estonia Avenue 5a, Tallinn) by 3 February 2009. All project activities need to be completed by January 31 2011.
More than 380 project proposals were submitted in the three previous calls for proposals. The third call was recently concluded, bringing the number of awarded grants under the NGO fund to a total 86.
Compared to previous calls, the fourth round comes with an update of application documents and evaluation criteria. Applicants do not longer need to include a copy of the applicant's registry card, and the necessity of planned costs has to be explained in more detail. Also, the new budget form is activity-based, making it easier for the applicants to link activities to the budget. All application forms are available at www.oef.org.ee/norra.
According to Maris Jõgeva, NGO fund coordinator, the NGO fund has attracted significant interest among Estonian NGOs and the calls have on average been oversubscribed five times. "The uniqueness of the grant scheme is that it also supports small-scale projects, thus enabling smaller or less experienced NGOs to use the support to invigorate their activities," Jõgeva said.
The two last open calls will follow in 2009 and 2010. Further information on the fund is available on the Open Estonia Foundation's web page.