Grant Making Guidelines
What you need to know before you apply
APPLICATION AND DECISION-MAKING PROCESS
OUR GRANT MAKING PRINCIPLES
GRANT MAKING CYCLES
EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES AND DIVERSITY
APPLICATION AND DECISION-MAKING PROCESS
The process of making an application to us for international funding is split into two stages. The first stage is for you submit a Summary Application to us, which we will shortlist against a range of criteria. If your application is shortlisted, you will be asked to submit a Full Application, with more details about your budget and other information. We will then visit you to complete an assessment.
All assessed applications will be discussed by a programme-specific group, and make a recommendation on funding to our International Grants Committee. The final decision on whether to approve a grant will be made by our Trustees.
OUR GRANT MAKING PRINCIPLES
- We will assess your application against the following principles:
- Helping those in great need
- Meeting people’s basic needs and promoting their basic rights
- Involving local people
- Working with others
- Supporting local organisations and social movements
- Making a long-term commitment
- Learning from experience and improving practice
- Delivering effective projects
Approximately 87% of the applications we receive are rejected because they do not meet one or more of these criteria, so it’s essential that you read more about each of these principles in our full International Grants Guidelines (word/pdf).
GRANT MAKING CYCLES
We make grants in cycles, and your application must reach us by the cycle deadline to be considered in that cycle. If your application arrives after the deadline, you will need to resubmit it to us in the next cycle. You can send in one application for a project grant in each grant-making cycle.
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.
EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES AND DIVERSITY
When we make grants, we want to make sure that we consider the needs of people from a range of different backgrounds, especially the needs of people who are often left out. Some of the grants we make will serve everyone in a community, others may be targeted at specific groups who are very disadvantaged or find it particularly hard to get funding. We encourage applications to all our programmes to look at how you involve women, disabled people, people with HIV and AIDS, children and other disadvantaged groups such as elderly people or minority groups.
Please remember that even if your application fits our guidelines, it may not be possible to give you a grant as we always receive many more applications than we can fund.