Our call for proposals is open to two types of non-for-profit / nongovernmental organizations registered in Lebanon: (A) organizations with 4-10 years experience; and (B) early-stage organizations with 0-3 years of experience.

In Lebanon, the only legal entity available for CSOs that can receive humanitarian funding and donations is a non-for-profit organization. Our program and grant are open to all NGOs registered in Lebanon.

Our association is also concerned with empowering women economically. Our only problem is that we are still waiting for the Minister of Interior to sign our association papers although we received the approval from the General Security and the Ministry of Social Affairs. […] Do we currently meet the required specifications to benefit from this grant?
 

If a local NGO that is awaiting confirmation of registration and has a legal registration in a different country, are they still able to participate in this proposal even as a lead?
 

Is complete legal registration essential for new NGOs too? 

We are a non-governmental organization registered in the Ministry of Interior and Finance, but we have agreed to enter into an alliance with another organization in its last stages of registration, can we get the grant in this case?

We do understand the challenges new NGOs are currently facing due to the low capacity of state institutions, fuel shortages and subsequent electricity and internet challenges, and ongoing COVID-19 safety concerns. To ensure that grants are issued in a timely manner, all coalition partners need to be registered at the Ministry of Interior, and at least one needs to be registered at the Ministry of Finance with a fresh US dollar bank account. 

We look forward to inviting organizations that are still going through the registration process to join us in future grant cycles once their registration is complete.

Our program and grant are designed to build the capacity of organizations with 0-10 years of experience without being put in competition with long-established organizations.

The years of experience apply at the time of applying for the grant. If a coalition partner will enter its 11th year of work on the ground during the course of the project, they are still eligible to apply. Same applies to early-stage organizations that exceeded the 3 years limit yet did not turn 4 yet.

Please explain any dormant period in your application to clarify any discrepancy between the date of your establishment and the number of years of experience you have as an organization. A few months would not classify as dormant, but rather a year or more.

Are social enterprises registered as SAL companies eligible to apply to the grant in collaboration with another non-for-profit NGO?
 

Is it important to be an NGO or we can partner with a startup in our coalition?

Only not-for-profit organizations registered in Lebanon may apply to this call for proposals.

I do not have an organization, a partner, or anything. I am in desperate need for support. I can open a project to secure my future and support my family. 

Unfortunately, this call for proposals is not able to fund private individuals and personal bank accounts.

Our grant is meant to fund programs, projects, and initiatives, and cannot be used to directly support families, unless they are part of a cash assistance program.

In order to avoid favoring any one religion, denomination, or sect, we are unable to accept applications from faith-based organizations.

Women’s economic empowerment is a very broad system of challenges and opportunities. If you have not directly worked in economic empowerment before, but you believe you have an important and very relevant project to enable women’s economic empowerment today, we welcome your ideas in your round one application submission. 

Each coalition must have two or three partners.

Do ALL coalition partners that apply need to be registered NGOs? Or can only one organisation be a registered NGO and partner with us as a CSO? 

Our program and grant can fund coalitions of where all applicant are locally-registered NGOs. However, you can be working with additional executing partners that can be unregistered initiatives to implement your important work. Please help us understand why working with non-registered initiatives as executing partners (not coalition applicant partners) is important to be able to deliver on your concept /program to effectively serve your communities.

Beyond your coalition partners, should you require the support of an executing partner that can assist you in delivering your program with specific specialties or expertise as part of your program development, that is welcomed. 

Directly including your target constituents into a project is very appropriate, as it can bolster the authenticity of the work you are doing on the ground. It would be important to make sure that you are not creating new negative power dynamics or introducing risks to the community by doing so. Sometimes, projects can empower a few people in a project, which results in isolating others. How would your organization manage that risk and how would you vet your community partners?

This is another reason why we welcome coalition applications. Early-stage organizations can partner with a 4-10 years experience organization that is registered at the Ministry of Finance and has a fresh US dollar bank account.

At least one coalition partner would need to be registered at the Ministry of Finance and have a fresh US dollar bank account.

Invited coalitions will have the opportunity to specify in their Round 2 budget submissions how the budget / cash-flow would need to be transferred to each coalition partner. If both coalition partners have fresh dollar accounts, this will allow transfers to be made to each account, as required.

We are only able to accept proposals from coalitions where at least one of the organizations has a financial registration number and a fresh US dollar bank account.

We cannot trust that we will be able to withdraw any deposits at their maturity date to finance the project activities. Is it possible to find another financing mechanism other than the banking system? Can the grant money be transferred through OMT? Can there be partial direct financing to suppliers? 

We appreciate how challenging it is becoming to operate within the significant limitations of the banking system today. Given our regulatory and governance requirements as grantors, grant disbursements will be made directly to bank accounts on a cash-flow scheduled basis.  

You are welcome to also specify where direct payments need to be made to suppliers so that we may consider if / how we can arrange for this.  

We are not able to make transfers via OMT for the purposes of this grant.

We are very committed to supporting all women in Lebanon, regardless of nationality, race, religion, or any other identifying factor. The selection of proposals will be merit-based and we welcome proposals that cater to one or multiple communities of women in Lebanon, from local communities to refugee communities of all nationalities, as well as migrant workers. 

Each organization or coalition may only apply once during the program and grant cycle. We hope to offer additional opportunities to apply in the future.

We invite you to recommend the projects, programs, or initiatives that you believe are necessary to strengthen the economic potential of women in Lebanon today. We welcome both new ideas that you believe are important to invest in, as well as existing programs and projects that have a proven track record of delivering positive impact.

Yes, we are very happy to fund existing programs, projects, and initiatives. Please demonstrate for us the value-add of receiving this funding from this grant to support an ongoing effort. For example, if you are looking to expand a program offering, prolong its duration, or reach more program participants – these are all great reasons why a project should receive further funding. 

Our application process invites applying coalitions to demonstrate how they believe the grant money should be best used to economically enable women in Lebanon. If this includes funding cash assistance programing, we welcome learning more about how and why this is important.

Is there an expiry date after which all of the grant money would have to be disbursed?

We invite our coalition applicants to suggest what you believe the duration of the grant money should be based on your proposed program / project / initiative. We do not want to be prescriptive; we recognize that some coalitions have programs that could use the entire grant money within three months or six months, and some would actually need ten or twelve months. 

There is no expiry date to disburse grant money. We will agree with finalist coalitions on a schedule for the disbursement of the grant that suits the needs of your project.

Our grant is open to all areas of Lebanon, we are not limited to just Beirut or the Beirut Explosion devastated areas.

Our grant welcomes working in uplifting the economic potential of women in any part of Lebanon, including the rural areas and the agricultural sector.

If your organization does not yet have a website, kindly answer this question with: www.notapplicable.org

Absolutely! Please do RSVP to join our July 21 training workshop on how to answer our concept note questions.

As soon as we know when we will be hosting a new call for proposals, we will make sure to publish and share this information.

Please go ahead and share both, noting which is the latest information and that you have requested that this information be updated at the Ministry of Interior.

Your partner NGO can submit its organization documents in Arabic. Given Sections B and C are consolidated responses from all coalition partners and not a specific partner, we would recommend one language to make sure that your responses are coherent.

Transparency and integrity are of utmost importance to us! All information about the grant, including its design and key objectives have been published on our website to guide the applications of applying coalitions. Furthermore, rather than include general points in the information section of the application, we have detailed specific assessment points / recommendations after each question to help facilitate the submissions of all coalitions.

We invite all of our coalition applicants to include in your applications an explanation of your budget. Our program and grant are going to be awarded between 35,000 US dollars and 100,000 US dollars in “fresh money”.

We invite you to recommend what is the best use of the grant money for your project. If you believe it is important for the sustainability of your team to allocate relevant salaries, just make sure to help us understand this. If you prefer to use all the budget directly for women beneficiaries, please help us understand how the salaries and other operating expenses would be covered so we can be assured that the allocated grant money would not pose a risk to your project.
 

As for target percentages, you are welcome to propose what you believe are suitable allocations to achieve your project goals, if applicable.

In Section C of the application, please do demonstrate that it is important that our grant fund support investing in assets. Our grant is open to not just covering operating expenses.

We are inviting applying coalitions to help us understand your budget requirements for your proposed project, including the preferred currency. All US dollar budget items will be transferred to “new money” / “fresh money” accounts to ensure our grantees are not restricted in their cash withdrawals / local bank transfers to partners and suppliers. This will ensure the grant can be deployed in fresh US dollars.

We want to make sure that our grant is a capacity building opportunity for everyone. You are welcome to attend any workshop or training even if this grant might not be for you at this stage.