The Van Tienhoven Foundation has launched a grant program aimed at protecting threatened species and key ecosystems across the world.

The grant is available to finance direct actions on species, ecosystem, and community-managed nature protection that lead to a significant change in policy and practice.

The Foundation is particular about the well-being of living species and their ecosystems, believing that humans can play crucial roles as actors and factors in biodiversity, and mitigate the pressures of climate change on biodiversity and the living environment.

The Van Tienhoven Foundation strives to influence and collaborate with governmental and non-governmental organizations, communities, individuals, and other relevant stakeholders for the sake of the conservation of nature and the promotion of knowledge into the causes of threats and pressures on nature, in order to generate concrete actions that halt, counteract or mitigate these causes.

Eligibility criteria

The Van Tienhoven Foundation makes use of eligibility criteria to determine whether applications can proceed to the assessment phase. If these criteria are not met, the application is identified as non-eligible for receiving funds.

The foundation recommends that grant-seekers carefully take note of the ‘eligibility criteria before applying.

The Van Tienhoven Foundation uses the following eligibility criteria:

• Projects must be from not-for-profit organizations that are registered as legal bodies (NGOs and scientific institutions).
• Only one application per organization will be taken into consideration for each call for proposals. If an organization has been given a grant before, a final report must have been submitted for any project previously supported by the Van Tienhoven Foundation. An organization can be supported a maximum of three times within eight years.
• Projects must have a track record in species protection, ecosystem protection, and/or community-managed nature protection that can be demonstrated by background documentation (e.g. websites, social media, annual and/or final project delivery reports).
• Projects must be implemented in developing countries, predominantly following the most recent DAC list of ODA Recipients.
• Project costs must be based on local rates. Costs of salaries and consultancy fees based on rates outside the countries of implementation are not covered. Travel costs (from) outside the countries of implementation are not covered. The purchase of vehicles (e.g. cars, boats) is not supported. The foundation does not support overhead costs.
• Projects must not be part of a study leading to any academic title and/or aimed at delivering a book.
• Projects must have not started yet at the time of submission and must have a project time span of two years maximum.
• Projects requesting a maximum budget of €10,000 euro from the Van Tienhoven Foundation and a total project budget of no more than €50,000 euro. Applicants have to indicate co-funding in the budget if applicable. If projects are to be co-sponsored by the Van Tienhoven Foundation, a financing plan has to be added which includes incontestable evidence of subsidies already applied for and awarded by other organizations.

Benefit

The Van Tienhoven Foundation (co-)sponsors projects with a maximum of €10,000 through an annual call for applications.

Program focus

The grant program only focuses on threatened species and ecosystems and/or key biodiversity areas and projects that:

• Aim to counter the human-induced causes for these threats, in order to have maximum conservation impact.
• Are practical, hands-on, and directly applicable in order to generate change.
• Are initiated, owned, or widely supported by local stakeholders, in order to ensure sustainability.
• Are exemplary for a wider problem, serve as a catalyst for raising awareness and engaging other stakeholders.
• Create leverage and can demonstrate that small grants and individual efforts can make a difference.

Application process

An application must be submitted before the designated submission deadline and must contain a completely filled out online application form of the Van Tienhoven Foundation.

For more information and application details, click here.