Community Partnership grants

Update: 23 September 2020 – this funding round is now closed to applicants. 

Community Partnership grants are for small, non-governmental organisations.

Registration 

To be eligible you must either have:

• A legal identity in the UK and be registered with Companies House and/or Charity Commission OR
• Be registered in one of the lowest 50 countries in the UN Human Development Index (HDI) OR
• In a country considered to be of high or moderate fragility by the UK Government

It is important to note that when assessing where an organisation is based, the UK Aid Direct team look beyond legal registration. It will consider:

• Where the organisation is controlled from
• The level of autonomy of different offices
• Who governs the organisation, in particular relating to the financial management of the entity
• If there are significant ongoing operations based in the UK/eligible country office related to the oversight and management of the UK Aid Direct grant.

To help demonstrate this:

• If a grant applicant is registered in Bangladesh (an eligible country, in the lowest 50 countries in the UN Human Development Index) but all management support functions take place in the United States head office (an ineligible country), with very little autonomy in the Bangladesh office, this will deem the organisation to be ineligible.

If successful, further verification in this area will be undertaken during full due diligence. Please note that the organisation implementing the project in the country of delivery must be registered with the appropriate body(ies) in that country.

Income

To be eligible to apply, your organisational average income must be under £1m, over the past three years. There is no minimum income level.

• You will need to provide evidence to verify these figures in the form of audited or independently examined accounts
• If an organisation does not have three years of audited or independently examined accounts, internal management accounts (or similar) can be provided
• For organisations who has been operational for under three years, an average will be taken on the correlated number of years.

Considerations

In deciding the final shortlist of grants, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) (from 2 September 2020) will also consider:

• The financial capacity of the applicant to manage the size of grant applied for.
• The dependency that the applicant has or will have on FCDO funding. Note: the average annual grant value must be less than 50% of your average annual expenditure.
• The diversity of organisations able to access FCDO funding and market share.

Financial stability

If your organisation has any of the following, you will not be eligible to apply:

• Negative net assets (where the combined value of fixed assets + current assets – current liabilities – long term liabilities is less than zero)
• Negative free reserves (where the combined value of current assets – current liabilities – restricted reserves is less than zero)
• Negative unrestricted reserves (as per your annual accounts)

The above will be verified with figures from your latest set of annual accounts.

Update: 23 September 2020 – this funding round is now closed to applicants. 

Applicants can apply for funding for up to £250,000 per Community Partnership grant, for projects lasting three years or less. There is no minimum value that can be requested.

The average annual grant value must be less than 50% of your organisation’s average annual expenditure. If it is above 50%, unfortunately your application will be deemed ineligible.

To help demonstrate this, here is an example:

• If you are applying for a £150,000 grant for a three-year period, your organisation’s average annual expenditure should be £100,000 or more. This is because the average annual grant value would be £50,000 which will be 50% of your organisation’s average annual expenditure.

Number of grants

• Organisations can only hold a maximum of two live Community Partnership grants at any one time
• The maximum combined grant model allowance is five live UK Aid Direct grants of different grant types.

A live grant is a project with more than nine months left to run from the start date of the UK Aid Direct call for proposals.

Update: 23 September 2020 – this funding round is now closed to applicants. 

Projects can be set up in one or more eligible country. These are:

• Made up of the lowest 50 countries in the UN Human Development Index (HDI) or
• Countries the UK Government considers to be of high or moderate fragility.

UK Aid Direct funds cannot be used for poverty alleviation work or awareness raising activities in the UK.

Note: Projects based in Kenya: to ensure an even spread of projects across different countries, the number of UK Aid Direct projects already operating in the local area will be considered during the application assessment process. UK Aid Direct currently receives a particularly high volume of proposals for projects in Kenya. For Kenya, priority will be given to projects delivering in areas with high levels of poverty (for example, the North, East and urban slums) and addressing issues such as basic health, girls’ education, family planning, and youth employment.

Please refer to the eligible countries page for more detail.

Update: 23 September 2020 – this funding round is now closed to applicants. 

All applicants will need to demonstrate how they are working with national level implementing partners to create and build partnerships that can drive relevant sustainable development results.

There is no set prescription for the number of partners you might need, it depends on your organisation and the project you are proposing to deliver.

Downstream Partners

Downstream partners must be identified in advance.

Whilst there is no eligibility criteria in relation to the number, size or location of downstream partners, all partners involved must be justifiable, along with any associated budgeted costs. In the spirit of the partnership, the main grant holder will need to be able to demonstrate the longer term benefit of working with the proposed implementing partners in strengthening local and national civil society. The downstream delivery approach taken will be reviewed and considered as part of the application process.

To note, whilst we encourage collaboration with Government entities, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office funding cannot flow through them.

The grant holder will be required to perform a due diligence assessment on all downstream partners.

Please refer to the partnerships and consortiums page for further information.

We cannot fund certain types of organisations or projects.

Organisations that:

• Are not delivering a project in an eligible country
• Are not either registered in the UK OR in one of the lowest 50 countries in the UN Human Development Index OR in a country considered by the UK government to be of high or moderate fragility
• Are linked to any terrorist organisation
• Discriminate against groups based on gender, sexual orientation, disability, race, colour, ethnicity, religion etc.
• Are a governmental and or / inter-governmental organisation (or any other type of organisation that reports directly to government)
• Are government institutions
• Are insolvent
• Encourage activities which may lead to civil unrest.

Projects/grants that would:

• Support poverty alleviation work or awareness-raising activities in the UK
• Actively encourage civil disobedience or take a partisan political stance
• In the case of organisations that include proselytising in their organisational objectives: fail to provide assurances that promoting religion will not hinder project implementation, or lead to exclusivity or conditionality
• Include major capital expenditure like construction or purchasing buildings, cars or land. Any aspect of capital expenditure included in a proposal needs to be fully justified as directly contributing to a sustainable improvement in people’s lives
• Support orphanages or other residential children’s institutions. Consideration may be given to projects that support the reintegration into families/family- based care of children from institutions.
• Events which are not part of a wider project. For example: one-off conferences/seminars/training events/exchange, or costs associated to participants attending events. Provide educational scholarships.
• Provide organisational support for core costs. Community Partnership grants are designed to provide project funding and all project costs, including administration budget lines, must be clearly related to the project. Refer to the budget classification guidance for further information.
• Deal solely with the overseas transportation of goods and supplies.

Please refer to the what will not be funded page for further information.

UK Aid Direct Community Partnership grants can be only be used to fund new, time-limited projects of up to 36 months (three years) duration.

The length of your project must be three years (36 months) or less in duration.

UK Aid Direct Community Partnership grants cannot be used to fund the extension of an existing project.

No match-funding is required for Community Partnership grants. It is however, welcome, and should be included in budgets where appropriate.

For the purpose of the UK Aid Direct programme, the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) defines consortium applications as those submitted by formal consortia only; that is where two or more organisations come together to create a new, formally constituted organisation, with its own organisational accounts.

Informal consortia – where two or more organisations work together on a specific project or initiative only – will be considered as partnerships, as defined in the partnerships and consortiums page.

All formal consortium members must meet the UK Aid Direct Community Partnership applicant organisation eligibility criteria.

To be eligible:

• The average annual income of each consortium member organisation must be less than £1 million
• The total combined income of consortium members may exceed £1 million
• If registered as a separate legal entity, the average annual income of the consortium must be less than £1 million.

If the formal consortium does not have its own management structure, one member of the consortium will need to be elected as the ‘lead’ organisation; that is the organisation through which all funding would be channelled and who would operate as the main point of contact for the duration of the project.

Organisations may apply both as an individual organisation and as a member of a consortium at the same time. If successful, the consortium grant would be counted as a grant held by each of the consortium members and would count towards the maximum combined grant model allowance of five live UK Aid Direct grants of different type types.

This funding round closed for concept notes on Tuesday 30 June 2020 at 17:00 (UK time). It opened for full applications on Tuesday 25 August 2020 at 11:00. 

Applying for a Community Partnership grant is a two-stage process and all eligible applications are assessed by a team of independent reviewers through:

1. The submission of a concept note – now complete
2. A full application (if an organisation is successful at the concept note stage).

The concept note stage is now complete and all shortlisted full applicants will have received an email inviting them to submit a full application via the UK Aid Direct applications portal (opens in a new window).

All applications must be submitted via the online portal reached from this website. Applications sent via email or post will not be accepted.

Before starting a application, please:

• Read all the guidance available
• Visit the Community Partnership projects page, to see what kind of projects have been supported in the past
• Refer to the news page on our website for the latest information on the funding round. We also encourage applicants to follow UK Aid Direct on Twitter and Facebook (both links open in new windows).

Following submission of the full application (on the online portal), all full applications are reviewed by an independent technical panel and fiduciary risk experts. They are also shared with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) for feedback and moderation, including from DFID country office and policy teams.

Following review, it is anticipated that applicants will be notified of the outcome in December 2020. Please note that this timeframe could change and applicants will be notified in such circumstances.

For applicants that are awarded a provisional grant, the organisation will be required to undergo a financial management assessment (FMA), also known as a due diligence assessment. This will be conducted by an experienced member of the fiduciary risk team at UK Aid Direct and must take place before grants are approved or any funds are released. Further information about the due diligence process and the requirements of UK Aid Direct grants are available in the grant holder guidance section of this website.

This funding round closed for concept notes on Tuesday 30 June 2020 at 17:00 (UK time) and opened for full applications on Tuesday 25 August 2020 at 11:00.

All full applicants will have received an email inviting them to submit a full application via the UK Aid Direct applications portal (opens in a new window).This round will support small to medium-sized organisations who can demonstrate how they help achieve the Global Goals (opens in a new window) whilst also addressing the longer term impact of COVD-19.

COVID-19 will have impacts over and above the above the immediate consequences of the pandemic. In the longer term, these impacts may affect the quality of the lives of the most vulnerable and marginalised more than COVID-19 itself. The long-term impacts of the virus will be experienced across many sectors and any interventions that contribute towards the achievement of the Global Goals should be considering how these impacts can be addressed in the project design.

We anticipate that potential longer-term impacts could relate to the full range of Global Goals, including impacts on the most vulnerable and marginalised, delays to education outcomes and access to basic services.

COVID-19 considerations

Applicants are expected to outline the anticipated impact and consequences of COVID-19 throughout their applications. Consider the current context in the proposed country of implementation, highlight the challenges and how you plan to address them throughout each element of your application.

We appreciate that the context may be significantly different between now and when projects are planned to start and ask that applicants outline the anticipated consequences of COVID-19 when providing the rationale for the proposed interventions.

We will work with successful applicants during the grant set-up process to review the project design and agree appropriate adaptations that reflect the change in context.

Proposed project

A concept note must:

• Explain the key objectives of the proposed project, outlining where interventions would be delivered and why these regions have been selected
• Demonstrate clear understanding of the needs of primary beneficiaries. Primary beneficiaries are individuals who directly benefit from the project interventions.

Project context

A concept note must:

• Demonstrate clear analysis of the project context and justification as to why the project is needed. This should include available data and evidence to outline the scale of the problem
• Describe which key stakeholders have been consulted during the project design and an explanation of how this has informed the design
• Outline the anticipated impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the target population.

Approach and delivery

A concept note must:

• Clearly outline why the proposed activities are the most effective and appropriate approach to address the identified problem
• Describe how the project will identify and work with the most marginalised and vulnerable groups
• Outline approaches to beneficiary feedback, gender equality and disability inclusion
• Explain how the project impacts will be sustained beyond the life of the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) funding
• Explain how the proposed approach presents strong value for money
• Demonstrate how the project will adapt and respond to changes in context, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Capacity

A concept note must:

• Demonstrate how the past experience of the organisation (or consortium) applying for funding, enables effective implementation of the proposed project. Provide evidence of achievements.
• Demonstrate strong in-country capacity to manage and deliver the proposed project.

Risk

A concept note must:

• Outline the identified key risks and present appropriate approaches to manage and mitigate these risks. Risk areas to consider include: project delivery, reputational, fiduciary, safeguarding and operational.
• Outline the safeguarding (guidance link opens in new window) measures to be implemented at project level to prevent and respond to exploitation, harassment and abuse of programme beneficiaries, staff, volunteers and project stakeholders.

Financial

The concept note requires the submission of:

• Audited or certified accounts. If it is not possible to provide audited accounts (for example your organisation is newly registered) you will instead need to provide internal or management accounts.
• Information on your income – detailing the annual income of your organisation for the last three years. If you do not have the information for all the three years, please note it for the years you do have available.
• An outline of your proposed project costs
• An outline of any match funding being provided and from where this will come from
• A budget (template provided).

Please ensure the figure you provide in your concept note application is converted into pounds sterling (£) otherwise your application may be deemed ineligible. Always double check the decimal point in your application. A missed or incorrect decimal point could mean that your project budget reads as £198,000,39 (ineligible) rather than £198,000.39 (eligible).

Non-project attributable costs (NPAC/overheads)

Non-project attributable costs (NPAC or overheads), are the costs incurred by an organisation that cannot be directly attributed to a specific project. These can include items such as annual audit fees, trustee meeting expenses, and general office costs. The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office recognise that this type of overhead expenditure supports the overall cost of delivering organisational activities and therefore, allows a proportion of these costs to be included in your budget. The amount that can be included will be proportional to the amount of funding requested and is calculated by using the ‘support’ costs, as identified in your annual financial statements, as a percentage of total organisational expenditure.

These costs will need to be calculated as part of your overall project budget and within the budget allocation. You do not need to calculate this for the application itself as we will calculate appropriate NPAC with you – should you be successful – during your grant set-up stage. However, you should bear these costs in mind whilst you are developing the budget for your application.

For guidance in preparing a proposed budget refer to the UK Aid Direct budget classification and management guidance document.

Update: 23 September 2020 – this funding round is now closed to applicants. 

If your concept note application was successful you will have been invited to submit a full application for a Community Partnership grant.

COVID-19 will have impacts over and above the above the immediate consequences of the pandemic. In the longer term, these impacts may affect the quality of the lives of the most vulnerable and marginalised more than COVID-19 itself. The long-term impacts of the virus will be experienced across many sectors and any interventions that contribute towards the achievement of the Global Goals (opens in a new window) should be considering how these impacts can be addressed in the project design.

We anticipate that potential longer-term impacts could relate to the full range of Global Goals, including impacts on the most vulnerable and marginalised, delays to education outcomes and access to basic services.

COVID-19 considerations

Applicants are expected to outline the anticipated impact and consequences of COVID-19 throughout their applications. Consider the current context in the proposed country of implementation, highlight the challenges and how you plan to address them throughout each element of your application.

We appreciate that the context may be significantly different between now and when projects are planned to start and ask that applicants outline the anticipated consequences of COVID-19 when providing the rationale for the proposed interventions.

We will work with successful applicants during the grant set-up process to review the project design and agree appropriate adaptations that reflect the change in context.

Full application will be assessed against key criteria related to:

Contextual analysis

Applicants must demonstrate clear analysis of the project context and justification as to why the project is needed. Within this, it is important to consider the root causes and drivers of the problem, and use credible facts and figures which demonstrate the scale of the problem in the local context.

Project approach and design

• Applicants must provide rationale and evidence to demonstrate that the proposed approach is the most appropriate and effective to address the identified problem
• A clear theory of change is required to outline the problem, key factors that influence the issue. This should include a clear hypothesis, with explicit assumptions, casual links and strong evidence. Please refer to the Theory of Change guidance for further information.
• A robust approach to sustainability must be provided, with consideration of the social, economic, and environmental components of sustainability. Applicants should demonstrate how key stakeholders have been engaged, and how this has informed the approach to sustainability. Please refer to the UK Aid Direct sustainability guide for further information.
• Stakeholder engagement is essential in project design. Applicants should outline what stakeholder engagement has taken place, and with whom and demonstrate how this consultation has informed the design of the project. Stakeholders may involve local government, community members, traditional leaders, service providers and other NGOs. Within this, applicants should identify what other stakeholders are working in the target area, and outline plans to work with them to avoid duplication of activities and capture and share learnings and resources.
• Beneficiary accountability is key to successful project design and applicants are expected to work to strengthen the rights and voices of target beneficiaries in order to generate greater accountability within communities. Outline what mechanisms and approaches are in place to capture and respond to feedback and how beneficiary accountability will be strengthen.
• It is important to reflect on lessons learnt from previous programming. Outline what lessons have been learnt and how these have informed project design.

Gender equality and disability inclusion

• UK Aid Direct grant holders must ensure all programming is disability inclusive (refer to the disability inclusion guidance for further information). Applicants must demonstrate how people with disabilities and or disabled peoples’ organisations have been consulted in the project design and outline how this has led to incorporate appropriate adaptations to ensure accessibility and inclusivity.
• It is important that applicants consider gender equality throughout project design (refer to the gender equality guidance). Demonstrate how men and women have been consulted, and how gender differentiated needs have informed the design. Outline what adaptations have been made to support gender equality.

Monitoring, evaluation and learning, and value for money

• It is important that applicants clearly articulate the changes and expected improvements to be seen at the end of the project, and propose appropriate approaches to monitor progress. Applicants must ensure proposed outcomes and outputs are both realistic and achievable within the project timeframe.
• It is important that applicants provide evidence that the proposed activities will lead to the anticipated changes and improvements. For instance, applicants must ensure there is a clear link between the theory of change and logframe.
• The logframe provided must clearly demonstrate the improvements that the project will deliver and outline realistic targets and milestones to track performance. It is important that applicants refer to the logframe guidance when preparing the proposed logframe.
• All applications are reviewed against value for money criteria. Applicants must outline the approach to value for mon, with consideration for the ‘4Es’ (Economy, Effectiveness, Efficiency, Equity) and providing evidence to demonstrate the strategy’s appropriateness and effectiveness. Refer to the UK Aid Direct value for money guidance.

Organisational capacity to deliver

• The applicant, and downstream partners’ ability to deliver will be assessed. Applicants must provide evidence to demonstrate experience of delivering successful interventions in a similar context and/or within a similar scope. It is important that applicants provide impact and results information to effectively demonstrate and evidence their capacity to deliver.
• A delivery chain risk map is required to illustrate all implementing partners and demonstrate the approach to delivery chain risk management. Refer to the guidance on the delivery chain risk map.

Risk management and safeguarding

• Applicants must demonstrate an appropriate and well-considered approach to risk management. Applicants must identify all relevant project risks and provide appropriate and comprehensive mitigation strategies for each. It is important that a thorough risk assessment of all project risks is conducted to inform project design.
• It is essential that applicants demonstrate appropriate consideration for safeguarding. Safeguarding in its broad sense means protecting people and the environment from unintended harm, particularly in terms of preventing and responding to harm caused by sexual exploitation, abuse, harassment or bullying. Applicants must outline the project specific safeguarding measures to be put in place to help prevent safeguarding incidents and enable an appropriate and effective response. This should include clear and appropriate plans to engage project beneficiaries in the projects safeguarding approach.

Financial

• Applicants must provide a detailed budget which aligns with and reflects the overall ambition of the project. It is essential that budget notes are provided to outline the breakdown of costs and help demonstrate that the budget is both realistic and sensible.
• Applicants should review the budget classifications guidance to avoid the inclusion of ineligible costs.
• Applicants must only use the budget template available. Applicants submitting budget information in different templates will be deemed ineligible.

Required documentation
All organisations invited to submit a full application for a Community Partnership grant are asked to upload several documents, in addition to completing the application form on the online portal, SMILE.

A list of the fiduciary documents required are listed below. All required documents must be submitted via the online application portal:

• A copy of your organisation’s registration document in the country in which you are based
• Physical proof of your organisation’s registered address
• A signed letter of good standing from your bank to confirm bank details.

Applicants must also provide the names and designations of the following individuals involved in the management of the organisation, along with their identity documents (for example, passport):

• CEO
• Finance Director
• Project Manager for the proposed project
• Chair of Board
• Deputy Chair of Board
• Treasurer.

At concept note stage, applicants were required to upload copies of the three most recent sets of audited accounts. If a more up-to-date copy is now available, please upload it against this question alongside the rest of the requested documentation.

A list of the project-related documents required for the full application is listed below:

• A theory of change (ToC): a document summarising how change will happen
• Draft logframe: a document summarising the proposed project’s outcomes and outputs
• A graph (see example graph document), demonstrating the specific targets over the project timeframe
• A delivery chain risk map (template and guidance document available to download)
• A completed budget template.

Please ensure the figure you provide in your full application is converted into pounds sterling (£) otherwise your application may be deemed ineligible. Always double check the decimal point in your application. A missed or incorrect decimal point could mean that your project budget reads as £198,000,39 (ineligible) rather than £198,000.39 (eligible).

Non-project attributable costs (NPAC/overheads)

Non-project attributable costs (NPAC or overheads), are the costs incurred by an organisation that cannot be directly attributed to a specific project. These can include items such as annual audit fees, trustee meeting expenses, and general office costs. The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) recognise that this type of overhead expenditure supports the overall cost of delivering organisational activities and therefore, allows a proportion of these costs to be included in your budget. The amount that can be included will be proportional to the amount of funding requested and is calculated by using the ‘support’ costs, as identified in your annual financial statements, as a percentage of total organisational expenditure.

These costs will need to be calculated as part of your overall project budget and within the budget allocation. You do not need to calculate this for the application itself as we will calculate appropriate NPAC with you – should you be successful – during your grant set-up stage. However, you should bear these costs in mind whilst you are developing the budget for your application.

For guidance in preparing a proposed budget refer to the UK Aid Direct budget classification and management guidance document.

Here you will find some further guidance and templates you may need when considering a UK Aid Direct grant. These are designed for you to read and share with your colleagues and partners before completing and submitting a UK Aid Direct grant.

Simply select the + sign on the right hand side to expand the sections and read further.