Database Grants

ObjectivesThese grants are designed to support European fact-checking organisations to:Contribute full text fact-checks from September 7, 2026, onwards until the end of project to a European fact-check database operated by the EFCSN and its partners; successful applicants are encouraged to continue ingesting data after the end of the project; continued data ingestion will be governed by the aforementioned data licensing agreement;Set up technical infrastructures that may be necessary for contributing to the fact-check database; the Consortium will provide specific options and support for this;Review AI-generated metadata associated with ingested fact-checks and if necessary correct or annotate data manually;Grant licensing rights for the data to the EFCSN on the grounds of fair and reasonable conditions;Promote the database.Eligibility CriteriaTo be eligible for funding, applicants must meet the following requirements:Legal entity: Applicants must be a legal entity, whether for-profit or non-profit.Fact-checking: Applicants must be fact-checking organisations or fact-checking teams or units within larger organisations. Fact-checking is defined as the use of an evidence-based method to verify the accuracy of claims made in the public sphere. Applicants must publish at least four human-authored fact-checking articles a month on average. In their editorial work, applicants must have a substantial and demonstrable focus on a country that is a member of the Council of Europe, Kosovo, Belarus or Russia, to apply.Certification: Applicants must be EFCSN certified fact-checking organisations in order to ensure the highest data quality of the database.Location: Organisations must be based in the European Union or DEP-associated countries (please consult this document for the most updated version).Single applicants: This call is intended for single applicants, i.e. consortia of organisations cannot apply for this call.Budget, Funding, Payment Terms, Grant DurationTotal Call Budget: €860,000.Maximum Grant Amount: €70,000 per project.Funding Rate: 50%Form of Grant: lump sumsNumber of Grants: 40-60 grants will be awarded. Exact amount must be calculated using this template table. Grant amounts are calculated based on size of applicant’s organisation and projected number of fact-checks ingested into the database in relation to the total of the entire grantee cohort. At the final reporting stage the actual number of ingested fact-checks will be used to calculate the final payment.Payment Structure: 40% of the call budget upon grant signatures, 30% following the approval of the interim project reports, 30% following the approval of the final project reports.List of eligible costs:direct personnel costs – employees or equivalent: editorial personnel, research personnel, technical personnel, administrative personnel, others; natural persons under direct contract; seconded persons; SME owners and natural person beneficiaries; volunteer costssubcontracting costs – subcontracting may cover only a limited part of the action (max. 15%).direct purchase costs – travel and subsistence: accommodation, travels, subsistence; other goods, works and services: consumables, services for meetings and seminars, services for dissemination activities including website, publication fees, other (shipment, insurance, translation, etc.)Indirect costs – 10%Grant Duration: 24 monthsSelection ProcedureThe selection of applications to be funded will be conducted in three distinct phases:Phase 1: Eligibility & Compliance: The EFCSN team will perform an initial check to ensure all applications are complete, meet the basic requirements and applicants are eligible.Phase 2: Review: The EFCSN team will review and rate applications based on the following award criteria which will result in a ranking of the applications. All applications that can be covered by the budget can be funded, provided the ranking is approved in Phase 3.CategoryDescriptionMax PointsReadinessTo what exten