The Asia Foundation announces a call for proposals for the South Asia Small Grants Program (SASGP).

The SASGP will provide small grants to eligible civil society organizations (CSOs) in five South Asian countries: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.

Driven by the broader goal of creating a free and open South Asian region, SASGP will strive to increase CSO-led policy reforms, constructive engagements, and social accountability in core areas of governance; enlarge the space for civil society to engage with and influence key democratic institutions in the region; and increase the capacity of CSOs to effectively pursue longer-term reform in the governance sector.

This involves helping to build the capacity of civil society actors to respond to governance and capacity challenges and providing expertise, mentoring, and concrete tools to sub-grantees to apply in promoting good governance and developing their organizations.

Themes

Designed as a flexible mechanism to respond to existing contexts and emerging opportunities, the grant will support CSOs to work on critical governance challenges around four core themes:

• Increasing public sector accountability and transparency
• Strengthening the rule of law
• Promoting civil society participation and media in these efforts
• Strengthening democratic institutions and practices

Objectives

To contribute to this broader goal, SASGP hopes to support civil society to achieve three main objectives:

• To promote greater transparency, accountability, rule of law, and responsiveness in their respective governments;
• To broaden the space to meaningfully engage with democratic institutions including those related to the criminal justice sector, anti-corruption bodies, human rights commissions, election administration, parliament, media and local governments;
• To enhance the internal capacity, knowledge base, and programming capabilities of CSOs through capacity development inputs from SASGP.

Funding Opportunity

The Asia Foundation invites all eligible CSOs in Sri Lanka to submit proposals for funding projects under the South Asia Small Grants Program (SASGP). The small grant window is open to innovative and actionable proposals to deliver results that contribute to the above objectives in these domains: Fiscal and Institutional Domain, Political Domain, Social Domain and Informational Domain.

Priority Areas

• Fiscal and Institutional Domain
  • Core Objective: Institutional and fiscal integrity strengthened
  • Strengthening oversight and anti-corruption institutions
  • Promoting accountability in public procurement processes
  • Promoting greater understanding and oversight of contracts and international agreements that may impact the public interest
  • Strengthening budget transparency laws and/or practices
• Political Domain
  • Core Objective: Political & electoral system integrity strengthened
  • Promoting and strengthening financial disclosure practices for public office holders
  • Promoting citizen participation in policy processes
  • Research support to legislative committees with oversight responsibilities or independent commissions
• Social Domain
  • Core Objective: Social attitudes reinforce democratic systems
  • Promoting tolerance and communal harmony
  • Strengthening policies on inclusion
  • Promoting affirmative action policies
  • Combatting sexual and other forms of discrimination
  • Protecting space for civil society
  • Enhancing accessibility of people with disabilities
  • Improving access to justice
  • Promoting interfaith dialogues
• Informational Domain
  • Core Objective: Access to information and informational integrity strengthened
  • Promoting investigative journalism and journalism skills
  • Strengthening tools and institutions to combat disinformation in social media
  • Promoting open data, including open data policies, and data for evidence-based decision making

Funding Information

Applicants can apply for grants with a floor level funding of USD 25,000 and a ceiling of USD 75,000 in equivalent local currency.

Eligibility Criteria

• Grants will be limited to national not-for-profit organizations. ‘Not-for-profit’ organizations include national civil society organizations (CSOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), consortia, networks, federations and membership bodies, think tanks, universities etc., but exclude government bodies, for-profit entities, and individuals.

Criteria for eligibility of the organization

CSOs and NGOs

• Be a duly registered non-profit or charitable organization.
• Apply in the country where the organization is registered.
• Has been in operation for a minimum of 3 years.
• Has demonstrated capacity in project/program management.
• Has sound credentials in financial management and shall demonstrate good current audited financial statements for the organization.
• Has experience in effective governance related programming
• Favourable if organization can demonstrate experience in implementing programming that is sensitive to diversity and promotes inclusivity. If not, demonstrates willingness to incorporate such expertise into a project proposal.

Professional Associations (consortia, networks, federations and membership bodies)

• Be a duly registered or recognized non-profit or charitable organization.
• Apply in the country where the organization is registered.
• Has been in operation for a minimum of 3 years.
• Has demonstrated capacity in project/program management
• Has sound credentials in financial management and shall demonstrate good current audited financial statements for the organization.
• Has experience in effective governance related programming
• Favourable if organization can demonstrate experience in implementing programming that is sensitive to diversity and promotes inclusivity. If not, demonstrates willingness to incorporate such expertise into a project proposal.
• For all consortia, a lead organization must be declared, and all consortium partners should be not-for-profit organizations.

Academic/Research Institutions (think tanks, universities etc.)

• Be duly registered or recognized by Universities or Campuses and registered as a Research Institution and be a non-profit or charitable organization.
• Has been in operation for a minimum of 3 years
• Has a demonstrated capacity in project/program management.
• Has sound credentials in financial management and shall demonstrate strong audited financial statements.
• Has experience in effective governance related programming
• Favourable if organization can demonstrate experience in implementing programming that is sensitive to diversity and promotes inclusivity. If not, demonstrates willingness to incorporate such expertise into a project proposal.

For more information, visit The Asia Foundation.