DERF - Danish Emergency Relief Fund

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The Danish Emergency Relief Fund (DERF) is a humanitarian funding mechanism, managed by CISU – Civil Society in Development, in a consortium with Save the Children Denmark.

Aim and objective of the DERF

The DERF provides flexible and rapid funding to save lives and prevent further escalation of suffering in humanitarian crisis situations.

The objective is fulfilled through supporting the humanitarian interventions of Danish Civil Society Organisations (CSO's) (those without strategic humanitarian partnership with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Denmark) who have relevant access, capacities and expertise. This can either be through local or national partner CSO's and/or within their own organisation enabling them to respond to the humanitarian needs of people affected by crisis.

The fund supports lifesaving interventions through localised humanitarian response and assists particularly vulnerable groups of people, hereunder refugees, IDPs (Internally Displaced People) and host communities.

The DERF can only provide funds to address humanitarian crisis situations in countries included in OECD/DAC-list of countries eligible to receive support.

The DERF supports lifesaving interventions through two modalities:

Rapid Response responding to an acute humanitarian crisis.
Early Action acting in anticipation of humanitarian crises.

Find more information about the DERF and the two modalities below.

Access guidelines and other materials

Go to the DERF material site here

News and updates from the DERF

Find all updates on calls and alerts as well as news related to DERF here.

Find all DERF news and updates here

Join the the DERF mail-list

Join our DERF mailing-list by subscribing here. You will receive direct e-mails with activities and news related to the DERF.

Please be advised that adding derf@cisu.dk as a trusted contact in your inbox will help keep DERF emails from ending in your spam folder.

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Useful information about the DERF

All Danish CSOs who do not have a strategic partnership with the MFA are eligible for DERF funding. Danish CSOs must demonstrate that they have relevant access, capacity, and expertise to assist people affected by crisis through partnerships with local or national implementers or in exceptional cases through their own organisation (self-implementing).

Requirements for the Danish CSO:

The organisation needs to be private and must have a legal and organisational domicile, as well as activities in Denmark.
The chairperson or most members of its governing body must be Danish citizens or foreigners with residence permit and home address in Denmark.
The organisation must have existed for at least one year.
The organisation must have a minimum of 50 paying members or contributors in Denmark.
The organisation must have a set of statutes and accounts subjected to an audit

Requirements for the partnership:

The humanitarian intervention must be carried out in collaboration between one or several CSOs from Denmark and one or several implementing partners from the crisis affected area, except in cases where self-implementation by Danish CSOs has been approved.
The intervention must be based on existing partnerships.
The Danish CSO must ensure that partners and others that receive part of the granted funds are not included on the UN’s or EU’s sanctions lists.

The DERF can support lifesaving interventions through two modalities:

a) Early Action, acting in anticipation of humanitarian crises (EA). This modality is funding humanitarian interventions in the timespan between being able to document early warning signs and before a humanitarian crisis becomes a reality. The DERF defines Early Action as the window of opportunity to act ahead of a predicted, potential humanitarian crisis. It can function as a bridge between disaster risk reduction and preparedness on the one hand and crisis response on the other.

b) Rapid Response, responding to acute humanitarian crises (RR). This modality addresses the humanitarian needs amongst particularly vulnerable populations during or immediately following a humanitarian crisis. The RR modality can only be activated through the DERF call system, enabling the DERF to open a call for applications within a short timeframe. A call is triggered in response to one of the following:

An international or national appeal from UN, governments or similar. The DERF assesses appeals to open a call.

An alert raised by a Danish CSO and their partner(s). This must be done by sending the DERF an alert through the Vores CISU platform. A guide on how to raise an alert can be found here and the online alert system also includes guidance notes throughout the steps.

The organisational capacity of applicants is assessed when applying for an intervention. To give all a fair chance of funding support, the DERF operates with three funding ceilings, where the smallest ceiling requires only little previous experience and the highest ceiling more experience and thus more demanding standards. The ceilings are:

Below 200,000 DKK per intervention and maximum 1 million DKK per year.

Above 200,000 DKK per intervention and maximum 3 million DKK per year.

Above 1 million DKK per intervention and max 4 million DKK per year.

You can read more about the requirements of the three ceilings in the DERF funding guidelines .

If you wish to alert the DERF about a particular crisis, this can be done through CISUs online platform, Vores CISU. After the log-in, you can find the raise an alert box at the bottom of the front page.

When raising an alert, you will be asked to provide some basic information about the crisis and who is sending the alert. This is done directly in the online platform.

You will also be asked to upload a filled alert note document with more information about the crisis. The DERF format for alert notes must be used.

You can find the alert note format here.

Please read the DERF Funding Guidelines for more information about timeliness of sending alerts, types of crises the DERF may be activated for, and how an alert is assessed.

For information on existing call for applications see the news section on the DERF site, where you can also subscribe to the DERF news list.

Note: You do not need to raise an alert if you wish to respond in anticipation to a crisis. In that case you need to apply under the DERF funding modality: Early Action

Applications for interventions are submitted through the Vores CISU platform during the call period, being the time from the DERF opens a call until its closing date. The following information is needed when applying:

General information about the applicant (must be checked for potentially needed updates since last time of applying for CISU/ DERF grants). Also, general information and contact information about the local implementing organisation must be entered.

Information about the planned intervention:

Basic information about the intervention must be entered in the online system.

An application form with detailed information must be submitted through the system.

Annexes to the application include a) a signed cover page, b) the context description written and signed by the implementing partner, and c) the budget.

All applications must be submitted via Vores CISU, where you upload your application and budget.

Find all relevant guides and formats for the application here.

Alerts must be submitted timely through the Vores CISU platform to respond in a way that implementation of potential interventions can begin within 3 months of the start of a humanitarian crisis. This usually means that an alert must be raised within the first 4-6 weeks of a crisis / a spike in a protracted crisis.

The DERF assesses incoming alerts within 3 working days. From the day an alert is received, if an alert is assessed to be eligible for opening a call, a call will be opened within a week. Calls are in average open for applications for 2-3 weeks, depending on the 3 months’ timeframe. Applications are assessed in the order they are received. With the argument of being a rapid funding mechanism, the DERF does not wait with approving applications until the closing date of a call window.

Calls for applications are announced on the DERF website, where you can also subscribe to the DERF news list.

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 in CISU you can always request an advisory session throughout the application process.

Book an advisory meeting here

Applicants that are not members of CISU can receive advice on the application procedures. Contact CISU at +45 86 12 03 42 or derf@cisu.dk.