Ukraine: Review of Small Grants Programs to Civil Society Organizations and Volunteer Organizations - Quarter 3 2023 [EN/UK]

BACKGROUND

The war of Russia against Ukraine in 2022 constituted a major escalation compared to the previous eight years of conflict and necessitated a rapid scale-up in humanitarian activities. In the first six months of the scaled-up response, the delivery of humanitarian assistance in remote areas and closer to the front lines was undertaken almost exclusively by national CSOs and VOs, who work in close coordination with local authorities and receive goods in kind from multiple donors.

Whilst these types of organizations were delivering the bulk of last-mile assistance, they often faced significant challenges to accessing humanitarian funding, particularly from institutional donors, with less than 1per cent of the US$3.9 billion tracked by Financial Tracking System (FTS) in 2022, going directly to local actors.

In September 2022, the UHF launched a standard allocation of US$75 million, including a $20 million envelope to enable humanitarian actors to partner with national and local partners including civil society organizations (CSOs) and volunteer groups to continue to provide inclusive and contextually relevant humanitarian assistance in remote and front line areas, as well as areas with high concentration of IDPs, and areas with high concentration of returnees.

The allocation was launched to support the August revision of the 2022 Flash Appeal and sought to a) deliver transformative impact on partnerships with local actors to continually enhance their capacity and the reach and quality of their assistance to affected people, and b) to provide appropriate training and other capacity-strengthening support to small CSOs and VOs to be partnered. The allocation strategy paper and supporting Localization guidance note can be found in annexes to this report.

Given the interest particularly from donors and the UHF Advisory Board to derive lessons learned from this allocation to support CSOs and volunteer organizations, in August 2023, the UHF conducted an in depth review of the impact of the funding provided and support given.