Europe might seem like a mess at the moment, what with bail outs and debt crises galore, but for charities that know what they’re doing, the European Union can provide lucrative funding opportunities. Lindsay Dalton-Hopwood offers this primer on European funding ahead of a series of articles on how to obtain and deliver EU grants.

Holy straight bananas Batman, surely we’re not going to get into European funding? I may be paraphrasing but this is so often the response I get when suggesting European funding might be a good option. People glaze over, back away and find important phone calls to return to avoid investigating the world’s largest funder.