Impact Acceleration of Slovak CSOs

ongoing

Civil society organisations (CSOs) are an important “third leg” of healthy democracies, the other two being fair government and fair business. Mapping the state of the social innovation ecosystem in Slovakia confirmed the presence of a large number of initiatives with notable innovation potential. However, their solutions often lack long-term sustainability and scalability. The most common reason is limited capacity, both in terms of financial and personnel. Their support in the form of mentoring or incubation programs is almost non-existent. The experience of the majority of CSOs in Slovakia also shows that they are not taken as serious and equal partners by state authorities and the state often misses opportunities to find effective and working solutions to the most pressing social issues. The main goal of the ImpactAS project is to secure the best possible acceleration and impact of the Slovak CSOs through financial support and innovative capacity building. High quality incubator and accelerator programs and with financial support in four calls will: · help develop impactful and resilient CSOs and · support them in building strong partnerships. Primary target group in the project are 70 CSOs in Slovakia, which by their activities improve rule of law and democracy, education and inclusion of the selected vulnerable groups of people into the society. Majority of supported organizations will be small, grass-roots organizations from remote regions in Slovakia (50). The rest (20) will be organizations with a higher level of experience. All supported organizations are expected to be strongly in line with European democracy values. The project will help achieve higher capacity of CSOs for system change – on local, regional and national level, higher innovation potential of the non-profit sector, higher cross-sectoral and intra-sectoral cooperation of CSOs, and strengthen sustainability potential and organizational resilience of CSOs