GEF Small Grants Programme

The UNDP-GEF Small Grants Programme (SGP) has disbursed over $500 million dollars in grants and in-kind financing to NGOs, community groups, and other development organisations. The SGP finances climate change projects in the energy and transport sectors.

The principle objectives of the GEF Small Grants Programme are to:  

• Develop community-level strategies and implement technologies that could reduce threats to the global environment if they are replicated over time;
• Gather lessons from community-level experience and initiate the sharing of successful community-level strategies and innovations among CBOs and NGOs, host governments, development aid agencies, GEF and others working on a regional or global scale, and;
• Build partnerships and networks of stakeholders to support and strengthen community, NGO and national capacities to address global environmental problems and promote sustainable development.

The SGP provides grants of $50,000 or less to community-based organizations (CBOs) and non-government organizations (NGOs). The grants are channeled directly to the implementing organizations by the UNDP/GEF.

Eligibility for the SGP relies on the status of the applying group. It must be a recognized CBO or NGO in one of 101 countries that participates in the SGP. The application process then follows these seven steps:

1. The project proponent contacts the SGP National Coordinator (in the local UNDP country office or in the host NGO) to receive project application guidelines and forms.
2. With assistance from the National Coordinator and using the standard SGP format, the proponent prepares a brief project concept paper and submits this to the coordinator.
3. The national coordinator reviews and pre-screens the concept paper according to GEF criteria and criteria adopted by the National Steering Committee (NSC) for activities in that country.
4. If the project is judged eligible, the project proponent prepares a project proposal; in some cases, this step may be supported by a planning grant.
5. Completed project proposals are submitted by the National Coordinator or the NSC.
6. The NSC reviews the proposal and either accepts it, rejects it, or returns it to the proposer with a request that further work be done on formulating and refining the project data.
7. Approved proposals enter the national SGP work programme. SGP grants are usually paid in three installments: an up-front payment to initiate the project; a mid-term payment upon receipt of a satisfactory progress report; and a final payment on receipt of a satisfactory project completion and final report.