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Український кластерний альянс
Published in: Blog about Clusters

Cluster FundRAISE. Project launch – announcement.

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On 18 August 2023, the project “Launching a service model of innovative fundraising for SMEs in the Ukrainian Cluster Alliance” will be launched with grant funds provided by UNDP.

The grant competition took place within the framework of the international cooperation program “EU4Business: recovery, competitiveness and internationalization of SMEs”, which was initiated by the European Union and the German government. The grant competition was made possible due to additional funding from the German government. The program is aimed at supporting economic stability, recovery, and growth of Ukraine, creating better conditions for the development of Ukrainian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as well as supporting innovation and exports. More details: www.eu4business.org.ua

The strategic executor of the program is the German federal company Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. The executive partner of the grant competition is the United Nations Development Program in Ukraine.

Here is the main information about the project.

Project background

Fundraising for innovation development is one of the main challenges for business associations (BAs) of industrial small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Ukraine. According to surveys conducted by the APPAU, services in this area are the No. 1 need for industrial SMEs. Typically, SMEs do not have in-house resources in this area, while access to external grant funding requires qualified personnel to develop projects. Consequently, the level of involvement of Ukrainian industrial market participants in EU development grant programs remains very low. The main reasons for this situation are:

  • Ignoring (lack of awareness) of available grant opportunities by SMEs;
  • insufficient qualifications to apply for grants.

At the same time, there are dozens of general fundraising consultants in Ukraine, but they have little or no knowledge of industrial production and modern technologies. At the same time, there are very few trained, qualified information brokers, and virtually no technology brokers (experts who know technology and how to raise funds).

Thus, the main problem of innovative fundraising for SMEs in industrial sectors is the lack of technical experts in grant writing and the low level of SMEs’ involvement in innovative grants. These two issues are the main reasons why, in previous years, APPAU has not been able to launch a share-related service at the level of several clusters of partners despite already significant investments in the grant’s marketplace platform. Based on previous developments in 2019-2020, the APPAU established a project office and began providing innovative fundraising services, which resulted in more than 10 SMEs winning European grants in 2022. However, launching a full-fledged model of a sharing service, well-managed from a single center and scalable to tens or hundreds of SMEs, requires much more effort and resources.
Thus, in 2022, the APPAU created a prototype but failed to scale this service to tens or hundreds of SMEs present on the market, including among partner organizations (UBA clusters).

Goal and objectives of the Cluster FundRAISE project

The aim of the project is to launch a systematic, sharing (shared) innovative fundraising service for at least 50 industrial SMEs within the framework of an alliance of 3 consortium member organizations.

Main project objectives:

  • Strengthening the resources and optimizing the work of the project office.
  • Improving the marketplace and grant brokerage platform.
  • Developing a network of innovation and technology brokers.
  • Deployment of services—full launch of the innovative fundraising model.
  • Project reporting conference.

Project team

The project team includes:

  • APPAU: Lesia Sobolevska—Project Manager, Andriy Silnichenkov—Project Manager responsible for engaging SMEs and clusters in the Central region.
  • Kharkiv EAM Cluster: Oksana Sytnyk—Project Coordinator, responsible for engaging SMEs in the Kharkiv region.
  • Zaporizhzhia EAM Cluster: Andriy Karpenko—project coordinator for working with technology brokers, Andriy Kuts – project manager responsible for engaging SMEs in the Zaporizhzhia region.

Project implementation activities

Several types of activities are envisaged during the project implementation to ensure that the project objectives are achieved. These activities include:

  • Training sessions for the PO and project experts.
  • Brokerage events in Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, and Kyiv.
  • Individual consultations from experts for SMEs.
  • Meetings of experts and the project team.
  • Final conference in Kyiv.

Involvement of other UCA clusters

Although the three UCA clusters are participants in this circle, the project envisages the involvement of SMEs from all UCA clusters to submit projects to competitions. One of the project’s outcomes is an increase in the number of clusters that have started systematically using EIF fundraising services.

We invite all members of the APPAU and UCA community to cooperate!

This project is implemented within

This initiative is implemented within the framework of the Project “Support to inclusive economic development in Ukraine by linking export strategy with regional development and SDGs” Project, which is funded by German Government and implemented by German Federal Company Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH in cooperation with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Ukraine.

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