Serbia

The Trag Foundation was established in 1999 as a UK charity called Balkan Community Initiatives Fund (BCIF) that was subsequently registered in Serbia in 2004. BCIF changed its name to Trag Foundation in 2013. Trag’s main mission is to contribute to the development of active and open communities by providing financial, capacity building and other types of support to citizens’ initiatives in these communities. Trag achieves this through grantmaking, philanthropy development and the provision of other types of support. Trag has 20 years of experience in grantmaking, with over 13 million EUR awarded to over 1,500 civic initiatives mostly in Serbia but also in Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and North Macedonia.

Apart from implementing its own grant programs supported by different donors, Trag serves as an intermediary or administration partner to private foundations and businesses in their grants management. When it comes to philanthropy development, Trag actively promotes and develops strategic giving, advocates for a more favorable legislative and fiscal framework, builds capacities of CSOs to mobilize resources on the local level and, most importantly, since 2019, with the support of the C. S. Mott Foundation, Trag is working on building the movement of community foundations in the Western Balkans region. It has two offices one in Belgrade, Serbia and one in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.