European Cross-border Grants FAQ

For journalists who’d like to apply a more scientific, methodical and analytical approach to their investigations, the European Cross-border Grants programme now offers them the opportunity to work with a Project advisor and Experts to strengthen their work.

Project Advisors

• Applicants can request the support of a project advisor in the application form when submitting their proposal.Tick the box and explain what support you’d like to receive.
• The Project Advisor is primarily there to provide guidance for identifying and engaging with the expert most relevant for your investigation. Crucially, they can act as an intermediary between the reporting team and the experts to ensure that the peer-reviewed collaboration is fruitful while also ensuring that the principles of editorial independence are maintained.
• The details for managing the relationship between the various parties of this collaboration will be determined once the engagement with project advisors begins. There are various arrangements possible.
• The Project advisor may also play a mentoring for the reporting team by helping them improve their ideas and investigative methods, identify other sources, sharpen the focus of their work, and provide feedback on drafts. This will depend on capacity and specific competence. They are not involved in the research itself, or the writing.
• The project advisor will support the team throughout the entire project development, with up to 4 days of involvement. The project advisor will be assigned to the granted reporting team by SSE Riga from its pool of project advisors, in consultation with the team. The advisors have a range of experience as journalists, project managers and communicators.
• The project advisors will sign a contract with and be paid by SSE Riga. The applicants do not need to include them in their budget proposal.

Experts

• The experts will help enrich and provide a quality control to the investigations by deepening its analytical aspects, validating the research methodologies and ensuring an accurate interpretation of the data.
• All projects seeking the input of an expert should select to work with a project advisor. The experts will be identified and selected according to the topic of the investigation and the choice will be made by thereporting team with guidance from the project advisors.
• The experts are eligible to receive payment for up to 2 days to cover their work reviewing the information in the investigation. They will sign a contract and be paid by Journalismfund Europe. The applicants do not need to include them in their budget proposal.
• While experts are invited review the information, editorial choices are made by the investigative team and their editors. Crediting for the expert’s advice will be discussed in due time.

No, this opportunity is available to those who would like to involve subject-matter experts to review their investigations findings. However, if this is not the case for you, you can simply tick the box “no” in the application form where it asks if you want a project advisor.

Basically, you need a good idea for an investigation, a cross-border team of at least two journalists and or independent media outlets, and at least two letters of intent from European professional news outlets (from which at least one based in the EU) who are willing to publish the result of your investigation.

You can read how to start from there in the grant details.

No. The result of your journalistic investigation can be published by a professional media outlet in any language.

However, it is required to submit your full project application in English. English is the common language of our international jury, and all jury members need to be able to assess all applications on the same basis.

At least one team member must be domiciled in a European Union country. At least 80% of the requested budget should go to journalists or media organisations based in EU countries.

Check out our tip page How to find a teammate.

A team can consist of two types of applicants:

• Freelance journalists (natural persons);
• News outlets (legal entities). This means that journalists in the team who are an employee of a news outlet do not need to be listed as an individual applicant: they fall under the news outlet they work for. An employee of an organisation cannot apply to join a reporting team as a freelancer.

If a grant is awarded to the project, the grant money will be allocated to the different applicants (i.e. the freelance journalists and/or news outlets) according to the submitted budget and the financial report justifying expenditure at the end of the project.

A grant can cover two types of costs:

1. Working time of the journalists to conduct their investigation. (please note: working time will need to be substantiated with a timesheet)

2. Expenses:

   • We allow what directly supports the investigation such as travel for reporting on the ground, visa, accommodation, translation, fixers, access to pay-databases, freedom of information (FOI) requests, legal screening, insurance, etc., ...

   • Following expenses cannot be covered by the grants: overhead, office costs, investments goods (such as IT hardware, mobile phones, cameras, software …), production costs (e.g. web design, illustrations, …), recoverable VAT, food and beverage, per diems, and content distribution.

   • Grantees must minimise unnecessary travel, particularly air travel. Our policy is to only facilitate essential reporting trips, and not meetings of collaborators to discuss and coordinate research or editorial approaches. This can be done online. It will save time and money, and reduce carbon emissions.

   • All costs should arise during the project period and after the signing of the grant agreement with Journalismfund Europe.

The grant can only cover costs for the investigative research work. We do not cover costs for producing the end-product, such as online design support tools, design costs for visualisations or post-production videos, unless these are core to the project’s output and format and approved by the jury.

Please note that this grant does not cover publication fees that ought to be paid to freelancers by the publishing media organisations.

The grant is distributed in two instalments, two thirds (2/3) up front and one third (1/3) upon the project’s completion. We don’t distribute the money in a lump sum at the outset.

At the end of the project we’ll ask you to submit a financial report, with supporting documents to justify each expenditure.

Applications must include a budget calculation according to the budget template.

It is perfectly understandable to ask. We get this question a lot...

However, there is no clear answer. The amounts vary per project and depend on the duration of the investigation, the number of team members, and the necessary expenses.

We want to stress that you should initially plan a convincing project proposal, assess the necessary tools and resources you will need to conduct your investigation, and only then draft a realistic budget to fund your project. Jury members will consider your project proposal if you submit a good quality and realistic budget plan. This is one of the criteria assessments the jury will look for in awarding you grant money. Therefore, it is NOT a good idea to inflate your budget.

In practice, grants could vary from e.g. €2,000 for smaller investigations to €14,000 or even more for very large investigations that involve newsrooms in many countries, require a lot of research and expenses, data access, legal screening, etc., and yield a large series of publications.

Any subject is acceptable as long as it has a European angle. There are no specific thematic recommendations for this grant. Journalists and media organisations retain full editorial independence throughout the projects. You can find an overview of the supported stories here.

Applicants are usually informed about the jury decision around 40 days after the application deadline.

The total grant budget is €1,680,000 to distribute over six application rounds (€280,000 per call).

From 2026 to 2027, the programme will be funded by the European Union, Stichting Veronica and by other philanthropic organisations (TBC).

All formal agreements between Journalismfund Europe and its donors stipulate independence and no editorial interference. (Representatives from) donors can never be part of the juries that award the grants. Journalismfund Europe does not take money from donors that don’t agree with these terms.

We adopted an Ethical Funding Policy to ensure that Journalismfund Europe properly manages its priorities and projects with appropriate independence from its funders. This Policy also aims at providing transparency regarding the identity of Journalismfund Europe’s sources of funding to avoid any suspicion of inappropriate influence or conflicts of interest concerning Journalismfund Europe’s activities.

Journalismfund Europe’s financial records are reviewed annually by an independent auditor. You can find all funding information and financial documents here.

All formal agreements between Journalismfund Europe and its donors stipulate independence and no editorial interference. (Representatives from) donors can never be part of the juries that award the grants. Journalismfund Europe does not take money from donors that don’t agree with these terms.

We adopted an Ethical Funding Policy to ensure that Journalismfund Europe properly manages its priorities and projects with appropriate independence from its funders. This Policy also aims at providing transparency regarding the identity of Journalismfund Europe’s sources of funding to avoid any suspicion of inappropriate influence or conflicts of interest concerning Journalismfund Europe’s activities.

Journalismfund Europe’s financial records are reviewed annually by an independent auditor. You can find all funding information and financial documents here.

You are welcome to publish your investigation in part or in its entirety on your own platform or blog. We request, however, two letters of intent (LOI) for publication from professional independent news outlets in two different countries, that will be independent from your own platform.

Journalismfund Europe strives for the highest standards for data protection and security. Read about our privacy and data protection measures here.

Journalismfund Europe vzw is a Belgium based independent non‐profit intermediairy established by citizens with the purpose of promoting independent investigative journalism.

Check the general FAQ about our organisation.

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