Short-term grants of €10,000 available for your cross-border investigations

At the beginning of May, the European Journalism Centre, together with the International Press Institute (IPI) and the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF), launched the Investigative Journalism for Europe (IJ4EU) Fund, providing a total sum of €1 million in grant funding for cross-border investigative journalism in Europe.

Under the Publication Support Scheme (PSS), managed by EJC, teams of journalists/news organisations are able to apply for grants to complete or publish cross-border investigations that have already been started.

Today, we are introducing two updates to this scheme. We believe this will not only increase the number of potential applicants that are eligible to receive support for their investigative projects, but it will also enable us to support a greater variety of stories and teams.

What has changed

The IJ4EU partners strongly believe that cross-border, collaborative investigative journalism is central to the sustainability of European democracy. The newly updated criteria, combined with the rapid response nature of the grants provided under the Publication Support Scheme, will enable us to bolster the teams and investigations that need it most.

1. Teams of journalists and/or news organisations can now apply for a grant of up to €10,000. We have increased the grant amount from €6,250 to provide more financial support to cover the costs associated with finalising and publishing investigations that are in progress.
2. Teams can now be based in only one EU member state or EU candidate country, provided that they are collaborating on an investigation of cross-border relevance that will be published in at least two countries (at least one of which must be an EU member state). It is no longer compulsory for teams to be physically based in two different countries.

The rest of the criteria remain unchanged. Please carefully read the updated criteria and FAQs on the IJ4EU website, and follow the steps to start an application through Award Force.

Is the Publication Support Scheme a good fit for your project?

The Publication Support Scheme is designed to provide short-term, additional funding for completing and publishing investigations that are already underway.

PSS grants of up to €10,000 can be used to cover salary and human resource costs, research-related costs, translation and travel costs.

Some examples of what the funding can be used for include:

• conducting additional research or interviews for a story
• translating an investigation into additional languages
• publishing the investigation in additional news outlets
• producing multimedia content to accompany the final investigation (e.g podcast, video, data visualisations)
• marketing material and dissemination activities to promote the final investigative project.

The scenarios above are by no means exhaustive. They are based on examples from the investigations that our team has already shortlisted under the PSS in the last few months, as well as from our own intelligence gathering and feedback we have received from investigative journalists.

A full list of the cross-border projects that have been funded so far through the Publication Support Scheme will be published soon.

The Publication Support Scheme is accepting proposals on a rolling basis until 18 September 2020. Applicants can expect a quick decision about the outcome of their application.

New investigations that have not yet started and those that are in their very early stages are eligible for support under IJ4EU’s Investigation Support Scheme. Eleven grantees have been selected as part of the first round of this scheme, and a second round of funding is expected to open in August 2020.

Do you have further questions?

The IJ4EU website and the FAQ page provide answers to specific questions about the IJ4EU Fund. If you have questions or if you require additional information before applying, feel free to get in touch with us by emailing publicationsupport@ejc.net.

The team leading the IJ4EU fund and managing the Publication Support Scheme at the EJC are Kathryn Geels, programme director, Zlatina Siderova, project manager, and Madalina Ciobanu, project manager.