Civil Society Fund

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The Civil Society Fund (CSF) is an independent support modality financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Civil Society Fund support interventions made in partnerships between Danish civil society organizations, their partners and possibly other actors.

By supporting such actors, the CSF aims to increase citizen participation in governance and development processes. This helps give voice to marginalised groups and holds governments accountable, and address pressing social issues like poverty, inequality, discrimination, and lack of access to services. The CSF contributes to a robust and pluralistic civil society by supporting a wide range of formal and informal organisations, movements, and initiatives. This diversity is crucial for a well-functioning democracy.

Deadlines for the CSF

Go to this overview of modalities and deadlines for the Civil Society Fund.

Access guidelines, formats and other materials

Go to the civil Society FUnd's material site here

Consultation on updated guidelines

The consultation on proposed changes to the guidelines for medium and large programmes under the Civil Society Fund is now open. The consultation runs from 26 August to 6 September at 23.59.
Read more here

Funding modalities and application deadlines under the Civil Society Fund

In the Civil Society Fund you can apply for support to different types of interventions. Below you can see an overview of funding modalities. All deadlines are at 12:00 (noon) Danish time.

Support modalities	Support amounts	Deadlines 2025	Final decisions 2025
Small Project	Up to DKK 150.000	26 August 2026 27 January 2027 26 August 2026 9 September 2027	23 October 2026 19 April 2027 23 October 2026 5 November 2027
Large Project	Up to DKK 700.000
Small Programme	Up to DKK 4 mio	30 September 2026 3 March 2027 29 September 2027	11 December 2026 12 May 2027 10 December 2027
Medium Programme	Up to DKK 15 mio	31 March 2027	18 June 2027
Large Programme	Up to DKK 27 mio	31 March 2027	18 June 2027
Support for Co-funding	Up to DKK 1 mio	Ongoing
Support for Application process	Up to DKK 50.000
Capacity Analysis	Up to DKK 100.000

Useful information about the Civil Society Fund

The Civil Society Fund is available for applications from grassroots organisations based in Denmark (civil society organisations). All interventions must be conducted in partnership with one or more local partners in developing countries.

Requirements for the Danish organisation:

The organisation must be private and have its legal domicile and activities in Denmark.
The chairperson or the majority of board members must be Danish citizens or foreigners with permanent residency in Denmark, unless granted dispensation by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The organisation must have approved statutes.
If the organisation applies for up to DKK 500,000, it must have at least 25 paying contributors. If the organisation applies for over DKK 500,000, it must have at least 50 paying contributors. These contributors can be members, volunteers within the association, or other individuals providing financial support. Contributions must have been made in the current or previous fiscal year. There is no requirement for the size of the contribution. For umbrella organisations, the requirement must be met by at least one of the umbrella organisation's members.
The organisation's accounts, including the annual accounts, must be subject to audit.
If the applicant organisation is an umbrella organisation, at least one of the member organisations must meet the requirements.

The Civil Society Fund cannot support interventions that have the potential to receive support from other funds financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, such as the Centre for Church Development Cooperation, the Danish Youth Council, Danish Disability Organisations, Danish Refugee Aid's Diaspora Programme, or the Danish Institute for Multi-Party Cooperation.

The Civil Society Fund are not open to applications from commercial foundations, consulting firms, educational institutions, organisations established by law – including folk high schools – or organisations with a strategic partnership agreement, fund agreement, or similar with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Read more about applicant requirements in the Guidelines for the Civil Society Fund.

In the Civil Society Fund, you can apply for support for the types of interventions briefly described below. For full details please refer to the Guidelines for the Civil Society Fund.

The fund can support interventions that take place in both stable and fragile contexts. However, emergency relief efforts cannot be supported by the Civil Society Fund.

Support modalities in the Civil Society Fund:

Project support: Small Project (up to DKK 150.000) and Large Project (up to DKK 700.000). Project support enables the strengthening of organizations and partnerships.
Programme Support: Small Programme (up to DKK 4 mio), Medium Programme (up to DKK 15 mio) and Large Programme (up to DKK 27 mio). This modality is only relevant for experienced organisations, who have developed a long-term strategic focus with local partners.
Co-financing support (from DKK 70.000 to DKK 1 mio) supports your partnerships in cultivating different sources to finance your joint interventions. Co-financing support is aimed at applicants who assess that co-financing enables them to raise funds from another main donor, such as the EU. Co-financing does not need to be a requirement from the main donor, but it should enhance the application to the main donor.
Support for application processes (up to DKK 50.000) is an opportunity to seek financial support for relevant expenses if you, along with a partner, are seeking support from a donor not financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, such as a Danish or international foundation.
Capacity analyses (up to DKK 100.000) are aimed at Danish organisations in need of an external professional assessment of the organisation's professional, organisational, and administrative capacity and its partnerships. A capacity analysis can provide valuable learning in terms of strategy, management, and capacity development.

All applications must be submitted to CISU electronically by completing an online form in the online system Vores CISU, where you also need to upload the application format, budget, and a signed cover page for the application.

You can find all the necessary formats for an application via the Civil Society Fund material page.

Small and Large Projects

Deadlines: Two deadlines per year.

Assessment Period: CISU aims to process applications as swiftly as possible, typically within six weeks. However, if there are detailed queries for the applicant, the processing time may be extended.

Small Programme

Deadlines: Biannually.

Assessment Period: Applicants typically receive a response within nine weeks.

Support for Co-Financing

Application Deadline: There is no fixed deadline. Applications can be submitted continuously. Please be aware that the extent of funds for co-financing is determined annually, and applications are processed on a 'first-come, first-served' basis. Therefore, we encourage you to contact CISU to check the current status of funds before applying.

Assessment Period: CISU aims to process applications as swiftly as possible, typically within four weeks. However, for comprehensive applications requiring follow-up with the applicant, the processing time may be extended up to eight weeks.

Applicants do not need to wait for the potential donor to assess the application. An application for co-financing can be submitted simultaneously with the main donor application. If the application process for the specific donor involves a preliminary step with the submission of a concept note, an application can be submitted to CISU based on the concept note.

Please note for all applications:

During holiday periods (Christmas, Easter, and February Break), the assessment period may be extended by up to one week. During the summer holiday period (July), the assessment period is extended by up to three weeks.

The actual assessment process begins when the application meets all administrative requirements and can be forwarded to CISU's external assessment system.

First time applicants can apply for up to DKK 500,000.

To apply for more than DKK 500,000 the applicant must have existed for more than one year and have completed at least one intervention with a budget of more than DKK 200,000 funded by CISU or completed an intervention of similar style with reporting requirements similar to those of CISU and/or the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

If one wishes to apply for a Small Programme one must within the past four years (the past 8 semesters prior to the time of applying) have been granted interventions of a minimum of DKK 750,000 from the Civil Society Fund (of funds from CKU og DUF). The reason for this is that to apply for a Small Programme one must have some experience with civil society work and partner experience from the Global South.

See grant limits for the different modalities under the heading ‘What types of support are available?’

From 2025, applications under the Neighborhood Fund will follow the same application deadlines as the Civil Society Fund, which are available at www.cisu.dk.

All initiatives in the six neighborhood countries must still be covered by the Neighborhood Fund.

Grants under the Neighborhood Fund count towards the grant ceiling (except for Resilience and Democratic Development Ukraine).

All applications are evaluated based on a comprehensive holistic assessment.

The assessment is based on both the guidelines of the Civil Society Fund and the specific objectives and assessment criteria associated with each support modality.

For more details on the specific assessment criteria, refer to the guidelines for the Civil Society Fund

The processing of the application proceeds in four steps:

CISU's fund managers assess whether the application meets the formal requirements. Applications that do not meet these requirements may be administratively rejected. If the application meets the formal requirements, it is forwarded to CISU's external funding system. Applications are also screened by the grant organizations, the Center for Church Development Cooperation (CKU), and the Danish Youth Council (DUF), to ensure that the same intervention does not receive support from two different funds. CISU also informs the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about all incoming applications to ensure that there are no repeat applications for interventions that have previously been rejected elsewhere. For applications exceeding 1 million DKK, the relevant Danish embassy is also informed to obtain any possible comments.
The applications are processed by CISU's external funding consultants, who assess them based on the guidelines for the Civil Society Fund. If additional information is needed during the processing of the application, the applicant will be contacted directly. Subsequently, the funding consultants submit a recommendation to the Civil Society Fund Allocation Committee.
The Allocation Committee reviews the recommendation from the funding consultants and makes the final decision. For Medium and Large Programme the Ministry of Foreign Affairs must make a final approvement of the application.
The Allocation Committee's response to the application is sent in writing to the applicant.

During the processing of the application, it is not possible for the applicant to communicate with either the Allocation Committee or the funding consultants, except when responding to any additional questions posed by a funding consultant.

Under the Civil Society Fund (CSF), each organisation can apply for and receive project and programme grants that together can provide a maximum of DKK 5 million in commitments per calendar year. Grants from Co-funding, the Information Fund, OpEn, Connect, CCAM, Resilience and Democratic Development Ukraine within the Neighborhood Fund, or DERF are not included in the grant ceiling. Organizations that receive a grant for a Large Programme under CSF can exceed the grant ceiling.

For organisations that have Projects or Small Programmes, the commitment is calculated based on the calendar year in which the grant is approved. This means that a Small Programme of, for example, DKK 3 million over three years is calculated as DKK 3 million in commitments in the year it is granted, and zero DKK in the following years. This allows for applying up to the grant ceiling again in the following calendar year. We call this the principle of "Full Commitment".

For organisations that have a Medium Programme (e.g., DKK 3.7 million per year), it is possible to apply for a Small Programme up to the grant ceiling of DKK 5 million. However, any commitment to the Small Programme is calculated per year. This means that if the applicant applies for a Small Programme totalling DKK 3.9 million over three years, the commitment will be distributed evenly over three calendar years (with DKK 1.3 million per year) starting from the year the commitment is given as well as the following two years. Therefore, the organisation will reach the grant ceiling in those three years (1.3 + 3.7 = DKK 5 million) and can only obtain new grants after the three years. We call this the principle of "Annual Commitments."

A Medium Programme's commitment is included in the grant ceiling based on the principle of Annual Commitments but is calculated from the first year of implementation (and not in the year the commitment is approved).

CISU uses several tools for grant allocation management:

An annual estimated distribution of the total funding budget across the different support modalities
Maximum limits for individual types of applications
Maximum limit for each organisation
Scoring/prioritisation of applications for one or more support modality according to a transparent scoring system

Throughout the year, there is close and systematic monitoring of allocated grants allowing the the possibility to redistribute among support modalities/adjust maximum grant limits/postpone the processing of applications/transfer between years/add unused grants.

The score for each application will be sent to the applicant along with the grant notification. An applicant who has not received a grant can use the score to improve the application if they wish to reapply.

The scoring system is based on the assessment criteria outlined in the Civil Society Fund Guidelines.

The score is an expression of the fulfillment of the criteria in relation to to the amount requested and the given context.

1	Weak indication that supports the criteria
2	Some indication that supports the criteria
3	Indication that supports the criteria
4	Solid indication that supports the criteria
5	Comprehensive indication of implementation and/or indication of an established approach/system in supporting the criteria

If, when scoring the eligible applications, the situation arises where the lowest score qualifying for funding (based on the allocated funds) is shared by multiple applicants, the following principles will be applied to determine which of these can receive a grant:

If the amount needed to grant all interventions with the same score is less than 10% of the total of those applications, funding is granted with the condition that individual budgets are reduced by the necessary percentage.
If this is not possible, priority is given to an intervention that clearly follows a previous intervention. If there are several such interventions, those with the lowest requested amounts are prioritised.
If all interventions are new, funding is provided to the one with the lowest requested amount, and so forth.

In CISU, we handle two types of inquiries regarding grants and the organisations/people involved in CISU-funded projects:

Reports: Must be used by grant holders who discover irregularities in/with their own project/partners. Read more about reports here.
Complaints: Must be used to complain about behavior related to CISU, grant holders or other member organisations. Read more about complaints here.

For a thorough elaboration on procedures regarding CISUs report- and complaint mechanisms, we refer to CISUs Code of Conduct (Chapter 7).

As a member organisation, you can always request advice throughout the application process. Remember to book well in advance of any deadlines.

Book an advisory session here

Applicants whose organisations are not members of CISU can receive guidance on application procedures. Contact CISU at +45 86120342 or puljer@cisu.dk.

The Grant Committee for the Civil Society Fund determines whether an application is approved or rejected.

If your application is rejected and you decide to reapply, we encourage you to seek advice from CISU before submitting the revised application.

When resubmitting, please note the following:

When writing the new application, CISU encourages you to improve it based on the observations and recommendations in the grant notification (BU note). You should also update the application if there have been any changes in context or among partners that affect the initiative.
The maximum page limit for the revised application is the same as for the original application.

In Vores CISU, you must:

Upload a cover letter (maximum two pages) summarizing the changes made in the new application and/or budget, and briefly explaining how you have addressed the reasons for rejection.
Check the box indicating that the application is a resubmission and select the journal number of the original application.

All applications—including resubmissions—submitted from January 1, 2025, must use the new application formats for the Civil Society Fund, which take effect alongside the updated guidelines for the fund (January 2025).

To be eligible to apply for a Small Programme grant under the Civil Society Fund (CSF), applicants must have been granted minimum DKK 750,000 in total from the CSF over the last four years. For members of CKU and DUF this calculation will include their grants from the CKU-fund and DUF’s International Fund. The relevant organisations must note the CKU and DUF grants under the organisation’s ‘stamdata’ in Vores CISU.

Grants from the CKU-fund and DUF’s International Fund are included in the calculation of the CSF’s yearly grant ceiling off DKK 5 million.