Good practice:

Lower Saxon Social Innovation Funding Instrument

The Lower Saxon Ministry for Federal and European Affairs and Regional Development developed the idea. The ministry wanted to set incentives to find new ways of tackling social challenges in two fields:
- Services for the public: Securing the access, improvement and expansion of affordable, sustainable and high-quality health and social services in order to secure services for the public. (esp. for certain social target groups and by promoting trans-sectoral approaches)
- working environment in transformation: Adaptation of enterprises and labour to the complex changes in industry.
2 step procedure for application
1.(Interessenbekundung) with the help of the 3 institutions for social innovation. A monitoring committee evaluate maturity of the Interessenbekundungen.
2.The application of adequate candidates
-Since 2018 (2014-2020) 145 declarations if interest with 58 final applicants in 5 rounds for application.
Scoringcriteria:
•Level of innovation
•Quality of application
•Methodological competencies of the applicants
•EU Cross-sectional goals
-Max. fundingperiod: 33 months

Finances: 14,5 MEUR ESF (Due to the high demand the aid got extended by 2 MEUR)
-2 MEUR were used for the funding of the 3 institutions for social innovation.
-Funding rate: 60%
-Cofinancing through money from private and public bodies running projects (~10 MEUR).
Total volume: 24 MEUR

The Lower Saxony Multi-Fund Programme, defined the indicator for measuring the success of promoted social innovations: One third of all projects have to be recommended for mainstreaming, i.e. for a transfer of the project approach to other regions or places. So far, it is expected that the ministry will exceed the set minimum goal.
Most of the completed projects were successful in terms of their approach and were at least partially recommended for mainstreaming.

• Giving applicants easy access to consulting in order to successfully apply for funding
• Close interaction of the three institutions for social innovation, the NBank and the Ministry for Federal and European Affairs and Regional development in order to evaluate projects and adjust the funding instrument.