Contribute towards stronger emergency and sustained support ecosystems
We provide short-term and long-term support to civil society activists and organisations, recognising that different contexts require diverse forms of solidarity.
Emergency, prevention and proactive grants
Through the Crisis Response Fund, we will continue to channel short-term financial and accompaniment support to formal and informal civil society groups, enabling them to respond to emerging or escalating restrictions and threats to their work. The Bridging the Gaps programme will support around 52 organisations, with 40 ongoing and 12 new grantee-partners, prioritising those defending human rights, including LGBTQI+ and women’s rights, and traditionally excluded communities including Indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, rural populations and young people.
Through the Flexible Support Mechanism, we will extend support to a further 24 civil society grantee-partners through Advocacy, Resiliency, Sudden Opportunity and Prevention and Proactive Grants. At least 75 per cent of reactive grants will respond directly to early warning mechanism triggers, while proactive grants will help partners prevent further deterioration or seize opportunities to strengthen their operating environments. We are also developing an internal referral pathway with the Crisis Response Fund to ensure that people seeking relocation or personal assistance are directed to the right support quickly.
Digital resilience support
Through the Digital Democracy Initiative, we will continue to provide support through six regional support mechanisms, reaching 600 local groups through financial and non-financial support. We will deliver digital resilience support through the Digital Resiliency Grants programme, fund a third cohort of the Digital Action Lab and provide elections grants that target digital threats to civic participation in priority countries. A new Civic Tech Lab will provide grants to 25 organisations to advance and scale civic technology innovations.
Grantee accompaniment and learning
We will complement financial support with structured learning, designing sessions for grantee-partners that foster exchange of experience and connect partners with CIVICUS advocacy and communications channels. We are strengthening sub-granting systems through regular joint coordination meetings across all response mechanisms and documented processes to preserve institutional knowledge, and leading funder diversification efforts.
What we are doing differently:
- We are shifting from purely reactive crisis response towards more anticipatory support, recognising that emergencies are no longer exceptional but chronic and that civil society needs flexible mechanisms it can rely on before crises escalate.
- As international funding shrinks and major funders retreat from human rights work, we are working both to channel resources ourselves and build and protect the broader infrastructure that keeps civil society support flowing.
- We are integrating civic technology and digital security and resilience into our core support offer, recognising that financial assistance alone is no longer sufficient in an environment where digital threats are inseparable from physical ones.