Deadline: October 20, 2025
The Civic Innovation Fund (CIF) by THE CIVICS Innovation Hub supports pioneering ideas in civic education to strengthen democratic participation and resilience across Europe.
The Civic Innovation Fund targets start-up ideas in civic education that apply interdisciplinary and inclusive approaches to promote resilience, diversity, and collaboration in democracy. Projects should focus on strengthening democratic competencies that promote participation, cohesion, and resilience, and can include workshops, cultural interventions, eyewitness talks, exhibitions, scientific studies, scenario methods, apps, or augmented reality storyboards. Projects should align with NECE topics or a specific topic of the call and incorporate principles of diversity, interdisciplinarity, and inclusiveness. They should be carried out in a transnational partnership with at least one partner from Europe, with one partner coming from either the formal or non-formal/informal civic education sector.
Each selected project receives funding between 10,000 € and 12,000 € for piloting, incubation, and scaling up over a 12-month period. The CIF primarily targets young civic educators under 35 and young NGOs under three years old, although well-established NGOs, university teams, and SMEs are also eligible to apply if their projects relate directly to civic education.
CIF awards also enable the selected startups to become informal NECE Impact Spots, connecting them with the broader pan-European network of civic educators and involving them in NECE activities. The fund covers direct project costs, with office costs capped at 10%. For applicants without partners, CIF provides a virtual map of civic educators to help form transnational collaborations.
The 2025–2026 call for projects is open until 20 October 2025, 11:59 pm CEST.
For more information, visit THE CIVICS Innovation Hub.
