Comic Relief

Existing Grant Holders

If you already hold an international grant from Comic Relief, there are some key things for you to remember.

GRANT-MAKING CYCLES
FOLLOW-ON FUNDING
REPORTING
PAYMENTS
CONTACT DETAILS
CHANGE OF USE
URGENT ACTION PROCESS
STRATEGIC GRANTS

GRANT-MAKING CYCLES

You can send in one application for a project grant in each grant-making cycle and you can have more than one project grant.

If you already hold a live grant (either project or strategic), you can apply for another grant from us, either within the same programme or in a different programme.

The next and final application deadline under the current guidelines is:

Project Grants : January 11th 2008
Strategic Grants : December 14th 2007 for Strategic Grant Applications.

Following the completion of this cycle Comic Relief will be undertaking a review of our guidelines and we will launch a new set of guidelines in late 2008.

FOLLOW-ON FUNDING

If you’re coming to the end of an existing Comic Relief grant, you can apply for continued follow on funding to continue our support to this project. Before you apply, you must have carried out an independent review or evaluation of the previous grant and given us a copy of the report and your response to it. We recommend that you submit the evaluation report to us 3 months before the application deadline date, so that we can have time to provide feedback to the evaluationreview it before we consider your new application and you with your partners have time to respond to this feedback as you plan your new application. You should try and submit your application for follow-on funding 6 months before your current funding ends, to prevent a gap in funding between grants. We cannot guarantee your application will receive further funding.

REPORTING

You must provide your organisation’s annual Trustees reports to us when they become available. If you have more than one live grant, you only need to send us your annual report once.

You also need to report regularly on the progress of the work that Comic Relief is funding. Check the Guidance to Grant Holders for our full reporting guidelines - please make sure you read and understand these fully before submitting any reports to us.

PAYMENTS

To minimise the overhead in administering live grants, we try to make all payments by BACS transfer. If you currently receive your payments by cheque, and would like to receive them via BACS in future, please e-mail us at internationalgrants@comicrelief.com. Please include in your e-mail your grant reference code (which will start GR002 or GR007.)

We will try and make a payment to you within 4 weeks of receiving your latest annual project report, although in some circumstances this may not be possible.

CONTACT DETAILS

To make it quicker and easier for us to deal with any queries you may have, and to keep our records up-to-date, please advise us if any of the following contact details change:

Your project officer / key contact for a project
Your correspondence address
Your landline contact number
The name of your organisation

You can either e-mail us at internationalgrants@comicrelief.com or write to us at the address shown on the Contact Us page, for the attention of International Grants. Please include in all correspondence your grant reference code.

CHANGE OF USE

A change in local organisations. A significant change to the budget (a significant change might be if you want to change the local organisation you work with, or change a major budget heading by more than 20% of its value, or if you need to make an unplanned major purchase of capital items or there is a significant increase in spending on the costs of the UK organisation.) Or a delay in report, payment or completion of work.

URGENT ACTION PROCESS

Unfortunately, as we have limited funds we can’t respond to general emergency appeals. We do have an urgent action process for when funds are needed as quickly as possible, although we will normally only consider applications from organisations whose work we are already funding. If your current project needs urgent additional funds to deal with a catastrophic event then you may be eligible for further funding through this process. You should contact your Grants Officer to discuss your needs and eligibility.

STRATEGIC GRANTS

To be eligible for a strategic grant, you must have previously received at least 3 years’ funding from us. In addition, most of the local organisations that form part of the strategic grant application must have had at least 3 years’ support from your agency and a track record of having made a significant difference to the lives of poor and disadvantaged people during this time. Any application for a strategic grant must be between £1,000,000 and £3,000,000 over 5 years. If you are thinking of making a strategic grant application, and to find out more about what we will fund in this area, you should contact your Grants Officer in the first instance.