Funding from elsewhere
Several funds and bilateral donors provide funding for governance assessments, and it is advisable to aim for a basket of funds.
Part of ownership is to demonstrate that stakeholders’ own funds are put into the governance assessment. While many will not be able to fund 100 percent of these efforts, stakeholders must be ready to provide matching funds or assume some amount of cost sharing.
DGTTF is open only to UNDP non-liaison Country Offices in developing countries. In 2008, the fund supported country-led governance assessment in China, Ukraine and Montenegro through the respective UNDP Country Offices.
This fund is increasingly emphasizing the innovative and catalytic character of project proposals. These include initiatives that serve as a staging point for bigger programmes or probe into unexplored territories of democratic governance, such as indigenous governance practices or politically sensitive areas where the use of core funds is more problematic.
Developing nationally owned governance performance assessments is a specific priority of this fund.
In 2008 DGTTF made US$12 million available for country-based projects. The amount of funding ranges from US$ 40,000 to US$ 300,000.
UNDEF is a recent fund, established in 2005, and provides assistance to government, non-government, national, regional and international organizations on topics related to democracy support, including democratic governance assessments.
For example, in 2006, UNDEF funded the Integrity Index for Panama’s Public Institutions as well as the Support in Achieving Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 9 on Human Rights and Democratic Governance in Mongolia.
This fund is particularly interested in projects that give civil society voice and are innovative in the area of supporting democracy.
Applying to the fund is a competitive process. In 2007 the fund received 1,873 applications and recommended only 86 projects to the Secretary-General.
