Information on obtaining a COCA (Checklist Organisational Capacity Assessment)
What is a COCA?
When applying for a subsidy from Nuffic, you must first apply for a COCA. The COCA stands for ‘Checklist Organisational Capacity Assessment’. It is an assessment performed by Nuffic to determine whether your organisation has sufficient financial and organisational capacity to carry out a project. Nuffic uses the COCA to reduce the financial risks for the programmes it manages.
The validity of a COCA
An approved COCA remains valid for one year and requires renewal or extension within that period. Notably, a COCA approved for the MSP is also applicable to OKP Group Training, and vice versa. However, it is crucial to be mindful of the approved COCA amount and its expiration date.
Who can apply?
The Dutch lead organisation applying for a grant must possess an approved COCA for organising a Group Training. This requirement does not extend to other organisations within a consortium or the requesting entity.
Only legal entities (rechtspersonen) are eligible for a COCA. Legal forms such as sole proprietorships (éénmanszaken/ZZP), general partnerships (vennootschappen onder firma), limited partnerships (commanditaire vennootschappen) and partnerships (maatschappen) are not legal entities and are excluded from educational grants. Being or creating a shell company are also criteria to be excluded from educational grants. COCA applications are restricted to organisations registered in the Netherlands.
What do the COCA results mean?
Upon receiving your COCA result via email, you'll be informed of the maximum grant amount your organisation can receive from Nuffic within the valid COCA year. This subsidy limit encompasses the total of approved projects by Nuffic, excluding scholarships.
For instance, if your COCA limit is €200,000, and your organisation secures a €200,000 grant for an OKP TMT+ project, no new projects will be granted during the COCA's validity period. Please note that we will follow-up to this rule strictly.
Before a call
Before you register for the call, you must first apply for a COCA. We usually advise applicants to submit a COCA as soon as possible, but no later than 2 months before the deadline of a call.
Before registering for a call, a COCA application is mandatory. It is advisable to submit the COCA well in advance, preferably at least two months before a call deadline. In many cases, this means applying even before a call opens, as calls typically last for six weeks. Check information regarding upcoming calls for COCA application deadlines. If your organisation does not have and approved COCA before the deadline of a call, applications submitted for the call will be marked ineligible and will not be taken into consideration for funding.
How to apply
To apply for your COCA, submit the required documents and complete the COCA form, sending them to coca@nuffic.nl in separate PDF files.
The following segments are part of a COCA:
| No | Document | Mandatory | Available upon request |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | A document showing that your organisation is registered with the Chamber of Commerce and/or the appropriate professional association in your country of residence; such documents should not be more than six months old. | x | |
| B | Organisation’s mission statement. | x | |
| C | Strategic Plan and/or other policy documents, which describe what the organisation wants to achieve within a fixed period (e.g. 5 years) and how it intends to realise these plans; in other words, the operationalisation of the mission statement. | x | |
| D | Gender Policy Document. | x | |
| E | An organisation chart and description of staff numbers and functions (including overview holding structure, if applicable). | x | |
| F | Proof of payment of payroll tax return | x | |
| G | Financial statements of the previous two financial years. | x | |
| H | Audit reports for your organisation drawn up by an external auditor for the previous 2 years. | x | |
| I | An overview of previously executed relevant projects. |
x
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| J | Bank account statement (not older than 6 months). | x |
Audit report
The audit report is a mandatory document if available. Organisations that cannot submit an organisational audit report must submit a composition statement. These organisations are subject to a different advance payment and an additional interim financial reporting obligation. The advance payment will be 40% after the grant letter has been sent, 40% after approval of the interim financial report and 20% after the final report in the context of TMT and TMT+.
Updating your COCA
The COCA must be updated annually. If you wish to re-submit a current COCA, we request that you submit the following documents with this updated version 2 months before the expiry date of your COCA: a current (financial) annual report of your organisation including auditor's report; an extract of the registration in the register of the Chamber of Commerce, not older than 6 months. In addition, we would like to receive new documents if they have changed significantly compared to the previously submitted versions. If the last update of the COCA is more than 2 years ago, a complete COCA-form including all mandatory documents must be filled out and submitted.
When applying for a grant
When you apply for a grant in Delta, please upload the e-mail with the result of the COCA application under ‘COCA’.