How communities can raise funds: challenges, trends, and practical steps

Grant funding is increasingly becoming one of the key instruments for the development of territorial communities. In conditions of limited budgetary resources, international support programmes are often what enable communities to implement projects in recovery, social infrastructure, energy efficiency, and local economic development.

At the same time, practice shows that access to grants alone does not guarantee results. The decisive factor is the real capacity of a community to work with such instruments.

What is the situation now?

A recent study by BDO in Ukraine analysed how local communities worked with grant programmes in 2024–2025: their strengths, key challenges, and ways to strengthen capacity.

Data were collected through an online survey conducted in 2025, with 290 communities from 22 regions of Ukraine participating. The main objective was to assess the level of engagement with international donors and identify the most urgent needs of local self-government.

🔹 28.7% of communities nationwide (excluding Donetsk and Luhansk regions) took part in the survey.
🔹 77.4% have experience participating in grant competitions.
🔹 94.5% of communities believe they need additional training on working with grants.
🔹 The majority of respondents note a lack of qualified specialists for preparing grant applications.

This leads to an important conclusion:
👉 the problem is not access to grants
👉 the problem is the ability to work with them systematically

In fact, most communities have already “entered” the grant field but have not been able to turn individual applications into a stable financial development tool. This is an important signal that allows us to see the situation more deeply. The problem lies not in a lack of opportunities, but in the difficulty of transforming isolated attempts to attract funding into systematic and predictable work.

Key challenges

A number of typical barriers to effective grant fundraising can be identified:

✔️ Searching for potential donors and investors. Information about programmes is scattered and frequently updated, while identifying relevant opportunities requires significant time and constant monitoring.

✔️ Lack of knowledge and practical skills in grant work. Insufficient experience in building project logic, preparing budgets, working with indicators, and meeting donor reporting requirements.

✔️ Limited number of project management specialists. Grant work is often carried out alongside other local government functions, complicating high-quality preparation and subsequent project implementation.

✔️ Need for modern digital tools. The absence of systems for managing applications, projects, donor communication, databases, and analytical tools.

✔️ Lack of a single information resource on grant opportunities. Difficulty in quickly comparing donor requirements, evaluation criteria, deadlines, and implementation conditions in one clear format.

Why “applying for grants” ≠ “attracting grants”

In many communities, work with grants remains episodic. Information about a call often appears randomly—through individual mailing lists, personal contacts, or social media. Decisions to apply are made hastily, without a pre-developed project idea or a clear understanding of implementation capacity. As a result, applications are prepared in an emergency mode just before the deadline, inevitably affecting their quality and logic.

Most often, the process looks like this:

• the grant announcement is noticed late or at the final stage of application acceptance;

• the project idea is shaped “for the call,” rather than based on real community needs;

• the application is prepared under tight deadlines, without time for proper refinement;

• responsibility is split among several overloaded staff members.

This approach rarely delivers stable results. It is important to emphasise that this is not the fault of individual people or a lack of motivation at the local level. Rather, it reflects the absence of a well-structured system for working with grant instruments—one that enables planning instead of reacting.

The study confirms that the key barriers faced by communities are structural. Most commonly cited are:

• a shortage of trained specialists who focus specifically on grant activities;

• overload of local government staff for whom grants are an additional, not primary, task;

• lack of structured and up-to-date information about donors, their priorities, and requirements;

• weak project management after a grant is awarded, complicating implementation and reporting.

At this point, it is important to be honest. Donors clearly see these weaknesses and take them into account when assessing applications. As a result, funding increasingly goes not to the communities with the greatest needs, but to those that can demonstrate a prepared team, clear project logic, and real capacity to deliver results.

What does the path from idea to funding look like?

In communities where grants function as a development tool, the process begins with a clear understanding of needs and priorities. Project ideas are not created for a specific call, but are based on real local challenges. These ideas are then translated into project logic with defined objectives, results, and indicators.

In parallel, there is continuous monitoring of grant opportunities and ongoing communication with donors. A crucial role is played by having a team or designated staff who accompany the project at all stages—from application submission to final reporting.

1️⃣ Community priority → driven by need, not by a grant call
Donors fund solutions to concrete problems, not abstract “ideas.”

2️⃣ Project logic instead of problem description
Objectives, results, indicators, sustainability—without these, there will be no funding.

3️⃣ Systematic search for opportunities
Not “a grant for an idea,” but one idea aligned with multiple funding instruments.

4️⃣ Team and process
Even a small grant involves procurement, reporting, audits, and communication.

5️⃣ Donor trust
One well-implemented project = an invitation to the next one.

➡️ Result: a stable resource, not a one-time stroke of luck.

Where do digital tools and the eGrants platform fit in?

Ukrainian communities are already active participants in the grant ecosystem and have basic experience working with international support programmes. The next stage of development is not about increasing the number of applications, but about building sustainable capacity to work with grant instruments in a systematic and predictable way.

In this context, clear and accessible digital solutions play a crucial role. The eGrants platform is designed to lower entry barriers for communities, organise information about financial opportunities, and help establish transparent and professional interaction with donors.

The eGrants platform is conceived as a practical tool for communities that want to work with grant opportunities systematically rather than episodically. It helps reduce the workload on local government teams and streamline work with funding.

✔️ A single space for grant opportunities
Up-to-date grants, programmes, and calls collected in one place in a structured format with clear conditions and deadlines.

✔️ Convenient navigation and filtering
The ability to quickly identify funding by community type, sector, donor, or project focus without lengthy manual searches.

✔️ Verified community profile
Creation of a profile with basic information, experience in implemented projects, and verification through official registers, increasing donor trust.

✔️ Clear language and a user-friendly approach
Information is presented without complex terminology, allowing even teams with limited prior experience to use the platform effectively.

✔️ Communication and feedback
Communities can always contact platform experts for support and receive consultations on programme selection and project preparation.