New initiative to solve Europe’s most pressing social challenges

January 2020

Topic

The European Social Catalyst Fund provides supports to bring together public and private resources to improve social services.

Szilvia Szabó ⬤ Author

Journalist, Editor

The European Social Catalyst Fund (ESCF) is a new initiative designed to have a significant impact on some of Europe’s most pressing social challenges The objective of the program is to bring together public and private resources to improve social services to enable people who need support to live as valued and participating members of their communities.

The ESCF will provide financial and capacity-building support to develop plans to scale proven social service innovations.

The purpose of the grants is to support the development of detailed implementation plans aimed at reducing, or overcoming, social challenges.It is anticipated that these plans will provide details of how public and private resources (philanthropy and/or social investment) can be brought together in a range of collaborations. The key focus will be on further exploring the role that philanthropy and social finance can play in working with the public sector to help re-focus public spending in a more effective direction in the interest of European citizens.

It will award planning grants across a range of priority social challenge areas within, or across, European Union Member States. Support is being offered to successful applicants to develop plans that can be implemented in one or more EU Member States and that are relevant to at least 5 EU Member States.

Preference will be given to innovations that have the most robust evidence of success and that aim to reach the most significant scale.

Each selected applicant will receive a planning grant of up to €100,000 along with capacity-building support. A minimum of €600,000 will be allocated to support at least six plans. Applications close: 15 April 2020.

The European Social Catalyst Fund has been established and co-funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, Genio (Ireland), the Robert Bosch Stiftung (Germany) and the King Baudouin Foundation (Belgium).