Project design and development: how to prepare a project that will become a successful application and receive a smooth preliminary evaluation
During the 4th module of the Community Recovery Academy, participants will learn about the key stages of creating a quality project that will be highly evaluated and funded. Sylvia Slomiak, Senior Climate Finance Advisor at Eurocities, shared her expert vision and advice on how to effectively prepare project applications.
The main task is to make the application as substantiated as possible. Donors evaluate not only the idea, but also the depth of the problem analysis, the realism of the action plan, and the clarity of the expected results.
Silvia spoke in detail about the typical mistakes that lead to funding rejection. These include overly general wording, discrepancies in different parts of the application, and unrealistic expectations of project impact. She emphasized that a successful project is based on verified data and well-designed logic.
For an application to have a high chance of being funded, it must have a clear structure without unnecessary generalizations, be based on real data, and take into account the actual needs of the community. All project elements must be logically linked, and the application itself must meet the donors' goals and strategic priorities.
One of the important preparation tools is the “problem tree,” which helps not only to identify the root of the problem but also to understand what steps will lead to its solution. It is also worth paying attention to risk assessment and mitigation strategies, which demonstrates a responsible attitude to project implementation.
The lecture also discussed how to calculate the budget correctly and what costs can increase the credibility of the application. Particular attention was paid to the issue of correspondence between “outputs” (specific results of activities) and “outcomes” (real changes that they should cause).
The Community Recovery Academy, founded by the Association of Ukrainian Cities and the NGO Mariupol.Reborn, aims to train municipal managers for the recovery period. The project is being implemented with the support of the UK Government under the UK International Development program and the International Republican Institute (IRI Ukraine) in partnership with Metinvest and SCM. The educational partners of the project are Metinvest Polytechnic and the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
