French international solidarity organisations (ASI) know how to raise funding for their field projects. Financing their own internal transformation — reviewing governance, overhauling a business model, structuring a finance function — is far harder: these costs fit almost no donor budget line.
The FRIO fund exists precisely to fill that gap. This article covers what it finances, under what conditions, how to build an application that passes the decision committee — and how to extend the support with tooling that anchors the strengthening for the long term.
FRIO fund: financing institutional and organisational strengthening for your NGO
Reading time: ~9 min
- What is the FRIO fund?
- What FRIO finances (and does not)
- Who is eligible?
- Amounts and co-financing rules
- The application procedure, step by step
- The emergency FRIO
- FRIO funds consulting, not tools
- Equip to strengthen: where Abvius comes in
- Four tips for a strong application
- Mini FAQ
What is the FRIO fund?
FRIO — the Fonds de renforcement institutionnel et organisationnel (institutional and organisational strengthening fund) — was created in 2007, is run by Coordination SUD, and is financed by the French Development Agency (AFD). Its principle is simple: it co-finances external consultancy to support a French solidarity organisation in strengthening its structure. Not its field projects: its structure.
Since its creation, FRIO has supported more than 250 strengthening actions across more than 150 different organisations. It now plays a triple role: observer of the sector's transformations, support in identifying strengthening needs, and backing for the resilience of international solidarity actors.
What FRIO finances (and does not)
FRIO can step in at any stage of a strengthening effort: organisational diagnosis, strategy definition (overall or specific), change management. The themes are broad: associative project and internal organisation, governance, business model, funding and fundraising strategy, HR policy, gender mainstreaming, partnerships, communication and advocacy, climate strategies and digital strategies.
The exclusion to know before anything else: FRIO does not finance consulting, studies or evaluations relating to operational field activities. A final project evaluation, a feasibility study on an intervention area, a programme capitalisation: out of scope. It is the leading reason applications are set aside.
Who is eligible?
FRIO is open to any French international solidarity association or foundation with a majority of its budget dedicated to international solidarity, more than three years old, whether or not a member of Coordination SUD, with no size or sector criteria.
That last point deserves emphasis: you do not need to be a Coordination SUD member, nor a large NGO. Two frequency limits apply: an organisation may not apply to FRIO more than three times in six years, and may only run one supported project at a time.
Amounts and co-financing rules
FRIO co-finances an action of up to €35,000, at a rate that depends on the organisation's budget size:
| Organisation's annual budget | FRIO co-financing | Own contribution |
|---|---|---|
| ≤ €3 million | 70% maximum | 30% |
| > €3 million | 60% maximum | 40% |
Eligible costs fall into two categories: fees of experts or consulting firms, and non-consultancy costs capped at 30% of the total (direct costs — transport, venues — and the project lead's time valued at a flat €300 per day). That internal-time valuation is an underused lever: it lets you build a significant share of the required own contribution without mobilising additional cash.
The application procedure, step by step
1. The information meeting. The FRIO team helps organisations formalise their need and shape the project. This upstream exchange strongly shapes the quality of the application.
2. The letter of intent, a short document setting out the strengthening need, its origin and the expected change.
3. The full application, then review by a decision committee of six to seven resource people drawn from international solidarity organisations — in other words, peers.
4. The decision, which can take four forms: accepted; accepted with committee recommendations to incorporate; deferred (reworked with support from the FRIO technical secretariat); or a recommendation for an upstream support phase to clarify the priority need — 3 to 6 days of external consultancy financed at 100%. This fourth outcome is often read as a failure. It is not: it is a free diagnostic, which markedly improves the odds of the next application.
5. Procuring the external expertise. Below €20,000, a minimum of three technical and financial offers must be collected. Above that, a formal call for tenders published on the Coordination SUD website is required.
The emergency FRIO: a modality created for the funding crisis
Facing successive cuts in official development assistance — the suspension of USAID funding in early 2025, European and French disengagements — Coordination SUD opened a complementary modality: the emergency FRIO, supported by Fondation de France. Its rules differ markedly: 100% financing of the expertise and related logistics, projects of €10,000 maximum, support lasting 6 months maximum.
Eligibility adds two criteria: at least 50% of the budget dedicated to international solidarity, and at least one salaried employee. As the scheme launched with a pilot phase reserved for Coordination SUD members, check the conditions of the current call for expressions of interest. The organisation must also substantiate an emergency linked directly or indirectly to the funding-cuts context; projects that could fit a standard FRIO are excluded.
FRIO funds consulting, not tools
One point deserves to be stated plainly, because it produces many miscalibrated applications: FRIO co-finances days of external expertise — a diagnosis, a strategy, change-management support — not the purchase of software, an information system or a licence.
That distinction is not an obstacle: it is a sequence to organise. A FRIO project on structuring the finance function, the business model or the digital strategy typically produces a diagnosis, a process map and a specification. Implementation — the actual tooling — is then financed from own funds, from donor indirect costs, or through dedicated structural funding. The organisations that get the most out of FRIO are those that planned this second stage from the letter of intent onwards: support that ends with a fine report but no capacity to implement produces little real change — and the decision committee, made of practitioners, notices.
Equip to strengthen: how Abvius extends a FRIO project
Capacity strengthening is too often reduced to training. But training rests on people: when they leave — and turnover is high in the sector — the capacity leaves with them. The complementary approach is to embed the capacity in the tools themselves, so it survives departures and no longer depends on individual memory.
That is the design principle behind Abvius, a modular ERP built for francophone NGOs and their local field partners. Concretely, strengthening works through four mechanisms:
- Donor rules are embedded in the data-entry workflows. Rather than asking teams to memorise each donor's eligibility rules (AFD, ECHO, the European Union…), the tool applies them at the very moment the expense is entered. A newly recruited team, a local partner discovering the requirements of a co-financed grant: everyone is guided by the system. Compliance stops being a rare expertise and becomes a tooled reflex — with a measurable outcome: fewer expenses declared ineligible by donors.
- Enter once, report in every framework. Accounting is kept once and rendered in the expected frameworks: French PCG and FEC, each donor's budget formats, multi-donor analytical allocation with co-financing logic. Financial reporting stops depending on manual spreadsheet rework and a single person: it becomes a repeatable process.
- The audit file builds itself as you go. Automatic currency conversion at the InfoEuro rate filed to the audit pack, automatic screening of suppliers with archived evidence, consolidated audit trails: the organisation faces controls with far more confidence — a classic marker of organisational maturity.
- Shared monitoring with funders. For donors and network leads running a CSO support facility, Abvius provides a portfolio monitoring dashboard: the strengthening of supported organisations becomes visible and steerable, rather than observed after the fact in reports.
The virtuous sequence with FRIO looks like this: the fund finances the diagnosis and the strategy; the organisation turns it into a specification; the tooling then anchors the decided changes for good. The consultant defines the target; the tool makes it hold over time.
Four tips for a strong FRIO application
Start from a need, not a solution. An application that opens with "we want a new org chart" is weaker than one that opens with "our donor reporting deadlines have been slipping for two years; here are the observed symptoms".
Make the expected change verifiable. Describing the target state at twelve months, with simple indicators, carries more weight than a general ambition — the same logic as a capacity assessment: evidence, not declarations.
Involve governance early. The projects that fail are almost always those where the board discovers the process halfway through.
Take care over the terms of reference. FRIO requires competitive procurement; the quality of the ToR determines the quality of the offers received, and therefore of the support itself.
Mini FAQ
Is FRIO reserved for Coordination SUD members?
No. The standard FRIO is open to French international solidarity associations and foundations, members or not. The emergency modality, however, launched with a pilot phase reserved for members: check the conditions of the current call.
What is the maximum amount?
Up to €35,000 of co-financing for the standard FRIO (60–70% of the action's cost depending on budget size), and up to €10,000 financed at 100% for the emergency FRIO.
Can FRIO finance the purchase of software?
No. Eligible costs cover consulting fees, plus direct costs capped at 30% of the total. Acquiring tools falls under other funding — and is best prepared during the consultancy itself.
How many times can an organisation apply?
Three times maximum over six years, with only one supported project at a time.
Can FRIO finance a project evaluation?
No. Assignments relating to operational field activities are explicitly excluded.
Co-financing rules and committee calendars evolve; refer to the current procedures manual on the Coordination SUD website before applying.
FRIO is also only one of the available levers: see our map of funding schemes for organisational strengthening (DLA, FDVA, indirect costs, foundations).
Preparing a strengthening project and want the transformation to last: let's talk about your organisation.