Allocation of public funds represents a serious task for each public administration or governing body. Proper allocation of public funds confirms the good intentions of governments for the responsible management of assets of public spending and service provided to its citizens. The goal of this methodology is the allocation of budget funds, especially funds from local self-government units’ budgets, so as to allow a more useful and transparent transfer of funds to Civil Society Organizations (CSO)1. Although this methodological approach is focused on local self-government units (LSU) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it can also be applied to other governing bodies and different government levels.

The methodological approach for transparent allocation of funds intended for civil society organizations, has been developed based on the need for simple tools that can be used primarily by local communities for the distribution of their own budget resources, but also based on the demands of civil society organizations and their desire to have an easier and simplified access not only to financial funds from the budgets of local governments, but also to funds from various other sources.

Reinforcement of Local Democracy – LOD bases its approach on experiences from previous United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) projects, conducted in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in the field of local governance (SUTRA programme), as well as experiences in working with over forty local self-government units, some of which already use this approach. Also, this model aims to combine the recommendations of the European Union (EU) in Project Cycle Management (PCM), as well as EU guidelines on the evaluation of the project proposals approach, and provide tools for efficient spending of public funds. One of the main goals of this approach, simply named LOD methodology is, to ensure quality in the process of planning and implementing projects and, uniformity in the use of tools and documentation for the successful implementation and monitoring of projects and expenditure of funds allocated for CSOs.