It is logical for any organization to begin its path to developing or developing innovations by searching for financial support tools. For Legal Tech projects, grant programs can be such a tool. We must admit that, unlike Silicon Valley or even the European startup market, in Ukraine there are fewer investment and venture funds that can and are ready to finance such projects, accelerating their growth. In turn, Ukrainian startups, including in the Legal Tech field, have a unique opportunity to choose from a variety of grant funding offers that are less available to their colleagues from the USA and the EU.
Today, one of the main donors in Ukraine is the United States Agency for International special database Development (USAID), which has a separate Justice for All Program that supports projects in the field of justice, the Renaissance Charitable Foundation, the EU4Business program, the German Marshall Fund, and the IMC charitable foundation. These grantors regularly hold open competitions that support projects in the fields of justice, democracy, public initiatives, and support for individual social groups. However, this is not the whole list. Programs from the embassies of Denmark, Estonia, Germany, the United Kingdom, the European Union, the United Nations Development Program, etc. are also relevant. These grantors usually do not have permanent programs, but almost every year they open temporary programs to support individual areas of activity in the fields of justice, democracy, control and accountability of state bodies, etc.
Grant funding is especially valuable for Legal Tech startups in Ukraine, where the need for innovative legal solutions is constantly growing, and users still need to develop a habit of using the product. Grant funding allows startups not only to develop and test their products, but also to scale them, overcoming financial barriers, creating user habits and popularizing new approaches to solving legal problems. In addition, significant advantages of grant funding are.