“We, the European Union, want to develop democracy throughout the whole country. Re-granting is a flexible instrument that we use to reach out to small organisations that do not have the capacity to implement larger projects”, stated Nicola Bertolini from the EU Delegation at the opening of the Debate on re-granting organised by the Civil Society Resource Center on October 30th in Skopje.
The first session of the debate was focused on regional experiences of re-granting. Dario Di Benedetto from the EU Delegation to Kosovo, shared their experience in Kosovo where 317 sub-grants were awarded in a two-year period and where they are facing overlapping of activities, as well as with the insufficient level of mentoring of sub-grantees.
Tina Divjak from Slovenia pointed out that the donor should adjust the bureaucratic processes to the size of the project grant. “If you do not deal with bureaucracy, you will devote more time to the project activities. The donor dedicates 20-30% of the project funds on monitoring in order to prevent 2% loss”, she added. Irena Ivanova from the EU Delegation in Skopje spoke about the situation in the country, stating that 350 sub-grants ranging from 5.000 to 25.000 Euros were awarded. She agreed that the procedures should be simplified, but only if there were better practices and greater transparency.
During the second session, representatives from Konekt, Center for Civil Communications, Preda Plus and ALDA shared their experiences as organisations that have awarded sub-grants to other organisations within their EU-funded projects. All of them provide mentoring to their sub-grantees not only for the activities that they implement, but also for the management of grants. All of them make sure that the sub-grantees are younger organisations with smaller budgets and they are evenly distributed throughout the whole country.
Representatives from GANIMED from Bitola, Center for Sustainable Development from Debar and the Initiative of unemployed intellectuals from Vinica presented the views and the experience of the organisations that are sub-grantees. They are satisfied with the cooperation and agreed that this financial support is great small support for the organisations. The remarks were related to the complex administrative procedures that do not correspond to the size or duration of their project, in particular, the procedure for registration of the projects in the Secretariat for European Affairs and the Public Revenue Office.
