Grants
Every year, the Prague Civil Society Centre awards millions of euros in grants to civil society and independent media across Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia. With an average grant size of €35,000 for civil society and €54,000 for media, we pride ourselves on providing flexible and responsive funding suitable for all sizes of organisation, media, and movement.
Read more
Many of our grantees take part in the various events, exchanges, workshops, and other opportunities offered by our Events & Exchanges team ensuring the Prague Centre is as close to a one-stop-shop as possible for the changemakers and journalists we support.
The grants we award are informed by the specific needs of our partners on the ground. Every award is designed to be as relevant, flexible, and useful as possible. This can mean awarding a few thousand euros to test a new idea or a few hundred thousand euros in institutional support for a major media. Our grant team works closely with our grantees throughout the grant cycle, always being sure to adapt and respond to whatever challenges they face.
Eligibility
We award grants to media and civil society in 12 countries across Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.
We don’t have strict thematic criteria, more we are looking for initiatives and ideas that strive for more open, democratic, and dignified societies. Due to the difficult contexts many of our partners work in, we often award grants through closed or
invitation-based calls.
When we do have an open call, be sure to check here or on our ‘open calls’ section of the website. The majority of our calls, be it invitation-based or public, are competitive and prospective partners undergo a rigorous selection process that includes external experts.
Formats
Types of grants we offer
Institutional support
It is impossible to stress how important it is for organisations to have access to money that allows them to cover the costs of simply doing their work. We make sure to offer core funding to many of our media and civil society partners and we are often their only source of institutional support. For media in particular, the ability to receive unrestricted funding is a lifeline when operating in contexts that prevent them from accessing advertising or reader revenue.
Project support
We offer funding from a few thousand euros to hundreds of thousands of euros that cover a wide range of projects. If we like what you’re doing then we’re open to supporting it!
Emergency support
Fast, reactive, and no strings attached. When events happen, they happen quickly and thanks to our access to flexible funding we’re able to respond to shocks, deteriorations, and opportunities with maximum speed.
Follow-up grants
These small grants are offered to event, workshop, and accelerator participants to put into practice what they’ve learned or pilot new ideas. Previous follow-up grants have supported various chatbots, apps, and online educational platforms. With these small, flexible grants our partners are able to experiment and try new approaches.
Case studies
Our grants
in action
We’re proud to be able to make grants across 12 countries spanning a wide range of social and political contexts. Due to the conditions in some countries, we’re not able to put a spotlight on all of our partners. Hopefully, the examples below give a flavour of some of the groups, organisations, and movements we support.
Spotlight: Ukraine
The Prague Civil Society Centre has awarded over €7.5m to Ukrainian civil society and independent media since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Our support has ranged from emergency grants in the weeks and months following the invasion to awarding over €3m in predominantly core support to Ukrainian national and local media. Our partners represent the full spectrum of the country’s civil society and includes initiatives that provide critical support to people, document war crimes, and advocate Ukraine’s cause internationally.
Independent media
As well as supporting large brands, our institutional media support aims to get funding to highly localised media in contested areas that serve populations struggling to access critical local information. Particular attention and support is given to frontline media that are working in the warzone and struggle with a lack of human and financial resources. The Prague Centre has provided grants to dozens of local media outlets from Chernihiv, Dnipro, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Luhansk, Mykolayiv, Odesa, Poltava, Sumy, and Zaporizhzhia regions.
Advocating Ukraine’s cause abroad
We aim at strengthening EU support to Ukraine by bringing insights from the ground, building international partnerships, and supporting international advocacy efforts. Our partners not only represent Ukraine abroad during their advocacy trips, but also bring representatives of different groups (politicians, think tankers, intellectuals, artists, media, etc.) from EU countries to Ukraine in order to learn more about Russia’s war against Ukraine first-hand.
One way we did this was with a partnership with PEN Ukraine to invite foreign writers and journalists to Ukraine to witness the consequences of the war first-hand and meet local cultural activists, journalists, experts, and witnesses who survived Russian occupation. As a result of these journeys, new connections were built between Ukrainian and foreign intellectuals and institutions, and foreign authors created content about Ukraine in their native languages.
Local civil society
The Prague Centre supports the resilience of Ukraine’s civil society, providing flexible funding to key actors operating on the ground. The areas of operation include local involvement in the reconstruction and recovery processes, community building, and civic engagement in decision-making. For example, our partners at the Brave Foundation trained a network of volunteers in the Chernihiv and Kharkhiv regions who perform assessments of damaged property and fill in the public catalogue of damaged houses. They also trained groups of scouts and organised clean-ups in selected communities to help local residents with housing renovation following strikes.
Spotlight: Armenia
The Prague Civil Society Centre has supported variety of media, organisations, and initiatives to strengthen democracy, empower the regions, and respond to needs following the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020. The civil society partners and movements we support cover a wide range of topics including environmental activism, anti-corruption, community mobilisation and empowering youth. Meanwhile, our independent media partners include various online platforms, investigative outlets, and regional media across the country. In the face of disinformation from Russia and non-democratic political actors in Armenia, independent media have an important task of delivering accurate and quality information to the public.
Tavush TV
The Prague Civil Society Centre provided institutional support to Tavush TV, a regional television channel in Armenia. They swiftly earned trust among local residents and became a reliable media partner for civil society organisations in the region and neighbouring areas. Through our support, Tavush TV was able to invest in their capacity to cultivate partnerships with regional TV stations across Armenia creating a strong network of media that is able to share content and reach diverse audiences.
InfoCom
Founded as a volunteer-led start-up during Armenia’s Velvet Revolution in 2018, InfoCom played a crucial role in keeping the public informed via its Telegram channel. They have since grown to become one of Armenia’s leading independent media outlets, with a strong focus on data-driven and investigative journalism. The Centre has supported InfoCom from the very beginning, providing funding to help strategise their mission, strengthen organisational capacity, ensure financial sustainability, and expand their investigative department. With the Centre’s support, InfoCom established a video production team that has helped generate additional income.
Mentorship
The Prague Civil Society Centre launched its Civil Society Capacity Development Programme in 2022 to strengthen our Armenian partners. The programme focuses on mentorship. Each year, around 20 organisations take advantage of the opportunity to work with mentors, boosting their skills, and improving the quality of their work. The programme is done in partnership with the For Equal Rights NGO. We have also established a pool of mentors in Armenia available to our partners with expertise in key areas such as: strategic planning, impact assessment, advocacy and campaigning, strategic communication, community organising, and base building.
Media and activism in exile
The Prague Civil Society Centre is committed to supporting media and activists in exile – as long as the focus remains on serving people in their home countries. Independent media in exile are proving to be particularly adept at reaching audiences in countries such as Russia, Belarus, and Azerbaijan where the authorities deny their citizens access to free thought and information.
Free Media Hub EAST
The Prague Civil Society Centre’s Free Media Hub EAST initiative provides support to established Russian and Belarusian media working in exile in the EU. We’re proud to work with consortium partners in Czechia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland to provide grants, training, networking, and psychological support to media and journalists. We have regranted some €2m to fifteen media in exile, journalists have received over 1,500 legal consultations, hundreds of hours of psychological support, and dozens of journalists in Berlin and Warsaw have benefitted from language courses and other localisation support.
Free Media Hub EAST is reliable, adaptable, and increasingly vital media support instrument that can provide media in exile with fast, secure, and tailored support that allows them to focus on what they do best: fearless, factual, and creative journalism.
Activities
Project funding for Armenian grassroots groups (2024)
The Prague Civil Society Centre is happy to invite civil society and grassroots groups in Armenia to apply for project funding. We support the development of new civil society organisations looking to expand their network and build connections with changemakers across the country.
Project funding for Armenian grassroots groups (2023)
The Prague Civil Society Centre is happy to invite civil society and grassroots groups in Armenia to apply for project funding. We support the development of new civil society organisations looking to expand their network and connections with changemakers across the country.
Strengthening Ukraine’s voice in the EU
An open call for grants to Ukrainian civic organisations and initiatives to support them in building partnerships with other European counterparts. We want to give Ukrainian organisations an opportunity to establish partnerships in other European countries, strengthen new solidarity networks that popped up in response to the full-blown invasion, and foster more long-term exchange between Ukrainian organisations and key partners in other European countries.
Ukraine truth defenders fund
The Prague Civil Society Centre has started a special fund with a goal to raise €5 million in support of independent media and civil society.
Get involved
Apply to our events through our open calls. The application process varies depending on event but in general we’ll be asking you to fill out a form with a few questions to get to know you, your focus and how you will benefit from participating.
Stay informed!
Receive the latest updates from the Prague Civil Society Centre via our newsletter. We respect your time, and you can easily unsubscribe at any moment.
Before you subscribe! Note that we’re considered to be an “undesirable organisation” in Russia and our work is not welcomed everywhere. Please think if you want to receive our branded content to your inbox if you live in certain contexts.
INITIATIVES
ORGANISATION
JOIN US