The International Renaissance Foundation (Ukraine) has launched a small grant competition as part of its ‘Impulse: empowering civil society for Ukraine’s sustainability and recovery’ project, launched together with the Eastern Europe Foundation (co-funded by the EU), with support from the Norwegian Agency for Development and Cooperation (Norad) and in partnership with Sweden (Sida).
The small grants competition is designed to support local and regional civic initiatives that will promote recovery, inclusivity, gender equality, and environmental sustainability in communities in the regions most affected by the conflict.
The project plan may include the following types of activities (this list is not exhaustive):
- Raising awareness and demand among residents of local communities for inclusive, nature-oriented, and people-centred solutions during the planning of Ukraine’s recovery, particularly at the local community level.
- Actively involving local residents in recovery planning processes and advocacy efforts, representing various stakeholders and vulnerable groups of citizens, such as internally displaced persons, veterans, people with disabilities, and others.
- Developing a local/regional civic network and participating in civic networking initiatives and campaigns.
- Analysis of critical issues facing the local community.
- Communication activities accompanying the project and based on materials from the organisation’s own work (including research, observations, and analysis).
- Measures to enhance the institutional capacity of the CSO, particularly through strategic planning of the applicant organisation’s activities.
In 2026, the geographic scope was expanded to include three additional regions. The competition covers the following regions: Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Luhansk, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Sumy, Kharkiv, Kherson, Chernihiv, Kirovohrad, Poltava, and Cherkasy.
Organisations registered in Kyiv are eligible to participate in the competition provided they operate in communities within Kyiv Oblast or any of the other regions listed above.
Optimal budget for a single project – from 1,000,000 to 1,500,000 hryvnias.
The deadline for submitting project proposals is 27 August, 2026.
