The European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) is the European Union (EU)’s main instrument for investing in people.
Τhe ESF+ will continue to provide an important contribution to the EU’s employment, social, education and skills policies, including structural reforms in these areas.

The objective of the call is to promote the provision of enhanced data capabilities services, as well as impact management tools and practices to social purpose entities (such as –but not exclusively- social enterprises, social economy entities, social start-up, impact firms) to increase their social impact investment capacity.

85%

Project budgets (maximum grant amount) should range between €500.000 and €750.000 per project.

• New Entrepreneurship
• Small-Medium Enterprises and Competitiveness
• Social Affairs & Human Rights

• Investment Funds
• Large Enterprises
• Legal Entities
• Other Beneficiaries
• Private Bodies
• Researchers/Research Centers/Institutions
• Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)
• State-owned Enterprises

In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:

• be legal entities (public or private bodies)
• be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
  • EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs)
  • non-EU countries:
    • listed EEA countries and countries associated to the ESF+ or countries which are in ongoing negotiations for an association agreement and where the agreement enters into force before grant signature (list of participating countries).

Consortium composition:
Proposals submitted by a consortium should be composed of at least 2 applicants (beneficiaries; not affiliated entities), which complies with the following conditions:

• At least one applicant should be a research centre or entity affiliated with a University;
• At least one applicant should be a private or public investor; or a support organisation (an organisation that provides mostly non-financial support to enterprises, in particular business development and investment readiness support. Support organisations include incubators (focussing on new and start-up businesses), accelerators (focussing on existing enterprises) and campuses (providing co-working spaces). In addition, non-financial support is sometimes offered directly by intermediaries);
• The consortium must be made up of applicants based in at least 2 different eligible countries in order to promote mutual learning and facilitate a transnational dimension.

To strenghten the collective intelligence dimension, or to facilitate the scalability of the product or service, applicants can choose to include an additional partner from a different eligible country than that of potential investor and support organisation.
Investors and support organisations can also be from different countries if this makes sense for the achievement of the three milestones.
The role of a support organisation is to ensure to the project the required expertise and skills to set up a successful business development and growth plan through its non-financial support. Therefore, the role of the support organisation is expected to be aligned with the core mission of any support organisation. Differently, the role of the public or private investor within the consortium does not necessarily imply actual investment, as within the framework of the project its function is to ensure the design, development and testing of the product or service is aligned with the social impact investment market needs.

Directorate-General for European Programs, Coordination and Development
29 Vyronos Avenue, Nicosia
Tel:  +357 22-602883

For help related to this call, if you did not find an answer in the various support means, please contact: EMPL-SOCIAL-IMPACT@ec.europa.eu

• Funding&Tenders
• Call document