Between 6th January and 6th March 2009 we opened the third, and therefore the last, call for proposals for Lot II “Environmental protection and sustainable development”. As compared to the previous calls, this one attracted least attention from the Applicants. One of the causes for this may come the fact that some of the potential Applicants had already implemented projects form the NGO Fund in the first and the second call. Moreover, in the period when the first call was implemented there were less opportunities to receive financing from different support programmes. Basing on our own analyses and information from the Beneficiaries, one can make a hypothesis that less interest of the Applicants is also influenced by the fact that in 2007, when the first call for proposals was opened, there was a hiatus in implementation of operational programmes within the European Social Fund.
In the third call the Operator received 188 applications in total, whereas in previous years it was respectively: 370 applications in the first, and 237 applications for the third.
According to the Steering Committee’s decision from 22nd June 2009 granting from the NGO Fund was provided for 31 Applicants. One of the applicants declined to implement the project and a grant contract was not signed with him.
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 II. On 3rd December 2009, the Steering Committee decided on awarding grants for additional 2 projects, and on 26th February 2010 grants were awarded to 8 projects. Under the third call for proposals 40 projects in total were awarded.
Applications submitted by the Beneficiaries were better in quality as compared to previous calls, which can be seen in opinions of the assessors, who appraised the projects, and analysis of technical assessment results. Only 7 applications (less than 4%) received less than 101 points, and only 4 projects (2% of applications) did not fit into the objectives and focus areas of Lot II, and did not receive the required 50% for the first criterion of points allowing for a full technical assessment.
Again, as in previous calls, a significant amount of projects (30 projects) were rejected at the level of formal assessment and therefore did not take part in the further assessment process.
The third call had a relatively high proportion of awarded grants. Despite the fact the available allocation amount being lower by half, initially almost 20% of applications qualified for granting.
Despite a wide range of focus areas was available in the environmental lot, the highest attention was paid to „Activities for increase of social awareness” (41% of projects) and „Education and information activities for environmental protection” (29%). The smallest attention the Applicants paid to the following focus areas: „Support for sustainable regional and local development” (4%), „Implementing the legal regulations from the field of environmental protection” (1%), and “Combining cultural heritage protection with local communities development” (1%).
Over a half of applications which received granting were from the focus area of „Activities for increase of social awareness”.
Again, the the most represented voivodeship was mazowieckie (17% of the application), followed by śląskie voivodeship (11% of applications), and łódzkie (10%).