Emergency Grant

This year, we managed to set up an 'Emergency Grant'.

The Free Rivers Fund's aim is to help small grassroots initiatives as unbureaucratic and straightforward as possible. Having experienced ourselves how time and energy consuming the application processes of grants can be, trying to keep your head over water between forms and paper work, trying to get registered at the fiscal office and as a NGO without breaking any laws when all you want to do is save a river – we know, the struggle is real.

We aimed to be an unbureaucratic alternative to all of that: support initiatives that are just getting started and provided funds quickly in emergency situations. But facing the realities of organising a fund, trying to provide equal chances for the applicants and to establish fair and consistent process - we realised we were not that quick anymore. This is why we were never completely satisfied with our concept of having only one application phase per year. What if someone had to kick off a project, say, in August, half year before the next application period begins? What if initiatives face sudden changes, new court orders or new projects being proposed?

Thanks to the big support we received in 2019, we managed to keep some funds for emergencies like these and have an additional emergency grant of up to 1000€.

The emergency grant is - you've guessed it - for actual emergencies and therefore he target group is much smaller than of our 'regular' grants. The purpose is to help initiatives get started that have just formed in order to prevent a dam or even help out existing initiatives that are facing sudden changes that require urgent action. Whatever your emergency is, anyone can apply, all year round. All it takes is an email.

Here you find all details on how the Emergency Grant works!