Between 27 January and 27 March the third call for proposals for Lot III of the „Equal opportunities and social integration” took place. The operator received 555 grant applications in total, as compared to 666 grant applications in the second call and 1232 in the first. Similarly to the 2nd Lot, it was caused by the fact that a part of potential Applicants implemented their projects within the first and second call, also the influence came from the lack of possibility for ESF financing in the period of the first call.
Following the decision of the Steering Committee from 7th August 2009, 37 Applicants received grants from the NGO Fund. Although the allocation amount was smaller by half, the number of awarded grants was not significantly different from the number from previous calls.
Due to a beneficial exchange rate of PLN for Euro between 2009 and 2010, additional resources came up to be disseminated under the third call for proposals for Lot III. On 16th December 2009, the Steering Committee decided on awarding grants for additional 5 projects, and on 26th February 2010 grants were awarded to additional 4 projects. Under the third call for proposals 46 projects in total were awarded.
Close to 280 Applicants also submitted their project ideas in previous calls. 54 of them received grants. This fact influenced the quality of applications – most of them were very well prepared technically and had necessary information entitling to high markings for particular criteria. It is shown in the assessors’ opinions and analyses of technical assessment. Comparing to previous calls, this competition had a surprisingly large number of applications with high markings. Close to 32% projects received 150 points and more therefore one can draw a conclusion that many Applicants took the assessors’ comments under consideration and corrected their project according to the guidelines. Only 19 applications (3%) received less than 101 points, and only 15 projects (less than 3%) did not fit into aims and focus areas of Lot III and did not receive the required 50% of points for the first criterion, allowing for undergoing technical assessment.
The ceiling entitling to receive a grant set itself very high. Only applications with the number of points higher than 171 points could receive a grant on 7th August 2009. For comparison – in Lot II Environmental Protection and sustainable development the ceiling was 155,5 points..
The third call had also a record number of projects with formal errors: 20% (105 applications) of submitted applications required corrections and over 15% (86 applications) was rejected at the level of formal assessment and therefore did not participate in further assessments.
The submitted applications had lower budget values. Average amount of a grant applied for was less than 300 thousand PLN (in previous calls it was respectively 480 thousand PLN and 420 thousand PLN). Because of the above in the allocation for Lot III amounting to 2.6m Euro, 37 projects qualified for granting. For comparison, in the environmental Lot,which had similar budget, 31 applications received granting.
Despite high level of technical quality of the applications, the projects had small topical diversity. Despite a wide range of topics, the highest interest was again paid to „Support and reinforcement of position of the underprivileged and discriminated” with 60% of all applications submitted. Remaining areas had 10% interest, where the least selected area was „Combining local cultural heritage protection with development of local communities”.
Again, the most represented voivodeship was mazowieckie (27.5% applications), followed by małopolskie (9.2%), dolnośląskie, pomorskie and śląskie (7.7% each).