European structural funds and programmes

Funding SSE and social innovation

Publié le 21 février 2024 - Mise à jour le 01 août 2025

Avise has been an Intermediate Body for the European Social Fund+ (ESF+) at national level since 2004. Its mission is to provide financial support for SSE and social innovation projects with a national scope.

Under the National Programme (NP) of the European Social Fund +, Avise manages a global grant of €70 million for the period 2021-2027. In particular, through calls for projects and support for the selected winners, it supports:

The Local Support Mechanism (DLA), with the aim of supporting the DLA's sectoral resource centres at national level and the departmental and regional DLA operators in their work to assess, guide and support SSE structures;
National-scale engineering, coordination and tooling projects aimed at promoting the development of social utility structures and strengthening SSE, through calls for projects in the following areas:
- Support of national social innovation support programmes;
- Industry-specific impact assessment tools;
- Support for efforts to foster social innovation in vulnerable and especially rural areas;
- Funding social innovation scale-ups.

Discover calls for projects of the ESF+ diffused by AVise

Practical guide to understand the ESF+ produced by Avise

Avise has produced this practical guide to explain how the ESF+ works during the programming period 2021-2027. It is destined to stakeholders of the SSE and social innovation sectors. Factual and informative, the guide requires no prior knowledge of the subject and provides an introduction to European structural funds, followed by guidance on how to prepare an ESF+ funding application.

Consult our practical guide (in French)

A map of European funding opportunities produced by Avise

Cartographie des financements de l'Avise

Avise has mapped European funding opportunities for SSE enterprises according to their area(s) of activity, status and the nature of the actions to be funded. Each funding opportunity is accompanied by a practical information sheet detailing the eligibility criteria, terms and conditions and amounts offered, as well as the key players and resources.

Consult our funding map (in French)

Projects co-financed under the 2021-2027 programming period

Over the period 2023-2026, Avise is supporting 36 projects on four themes:

"Support for programmes to disseminate innovation(s) within a national SSE enterprise, based on a centralised innovation organisational model";
"Design, test and disseminate social impact assessment tools and approaches";
"Support for national programmes to assist SSE enterprises";
"Support for the interregional expansion of social impact projects led by SSE enterprises".