Organizational and Financial Capacity for Participation in EU-Funded Projects in the Cultural Sector

This paper examines the organizational and financial capacity of Croatian cultural-sector organizations to access and manage European Union (EU) project funding. An explanatory sequential mixed-methods design was applied, combining a survey of 81 organizations with semi-structured interviews with 11 managers of public cultural institutions, conducted immediately before and during the earliest phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Civil society organizations reported significantly more submitted project applications and successfully implemented EU-funded projects than public cultural institutions. Exploratory regression models indicated that project-related knowledge was associated with application activity, whereas organizational revenue was associated with the number of successfully implemented projects. The interviews suggest that limited human resources, insufficient project-related knowledge, administrative complexity, and difficulties in securing co-financing and pre-financing constrain the participation of public cultural institutions. From a sustainable finance perspective, these constraints may increase financial and implementation risks and limit funding diversification. The findings point to the potential value of targeted capacity building, simplified administrative procedures, and predictable co-financing and pre-financing mechanisms, which could strengthen the financial resilience of cultural institutions and reduce their dependence on a single source of public funding, which can potentially strengthen their long-term financial sustainability.