Community Partnership grant

The funding window is currently closed for Community Partnership and Impact grant applications.

Find out about the new Small Charities Challenge Fund or register here to keep updated of future funding window openings.

Eligibility

Open to applications from small-sized, non-governmental organisations that are registered as a not-for-profit organisation in the UK.

To be considered as registered in the UK, your organisation must be registered as a not-for-profit organisation in the UK. If your organisation is part of a larger international family, we will expect you to demonstrate significant autonomy; your organisation must be registered in the UK and have its own UK specific constitution and an independent board of trustees, i.e. the board must be locally appointed and be free and able to make independent decisions on strategic and operational issues. You may be asked to provide relevant documentation as evidence of this status.

The organisation must have an average income of less than £1,000,000 per annum for the past 3 years, as shown in approved organisational accounts. You may be asked to provide relevant documentation as evidence.

New organisations with fewer than three years of accounts may also apply and in such cases, average annual income will be calculated based on the organisation’s length of operation.

Purpose

Small grants for initiatives focused on delivering results at a smaller scale, piloting new or innovative approaches or focusing on the most marginalised, working at the community level.

Grant size

Applicants can apply for up funding for up to £250,000 per grant.

Total grant funding from DFID over the last 3 years must not exceed 40% of the total income for the organisation over the same period. This excludes incomes received through commercial contracts with DFID.

DFID funding rules prohibit an organisation from receiving more than 40% of its income from DFID grants in each project year. Applicants must be confident that they will be able to abide by this condition over the lifetime of the UK Aid Direct grant.

Project countries

Projects can be set up in one or more of these project countries, made up of the lowest 50 countries in the UN Human Development Index (HDI) and countries DFID 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.

Duration

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

Limit of concurrent grants

Maximum grant allowance per organisation of 2 Community Partnership grants at any one time.

A live grant is a project with more than 9 months left to run from the start date of the UK Aid Direct call for proposals.

The maximum combined grant model allowance is 5 live UK Aid Direct grants (a maximum of 2 Community Partnership grants and 3 Impact grants).

Matched funding

No match-funding is required for Community Partnership grants.

Additional components of on-going programmes must be clearly identifiable as discrete projects, with a well-defined project outcome, a clear, time-limited schedule for delivery, and a distinct budget.

Consortium applications

For the purpose of the UK Aid Direct programme, DFID defines consortium applications as those submitted by formal consortia only, i.e. where two or more organisations come together to create a new, formally constituted organisation, with its own organisational accounts.

Informal consortia, i.e. where two or more organisations work together on a specific project or initiative only, will be considered as partnerships, as defined in the How to apply section.

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 £1,000,000
• the total combined income of consortium members may exceed £1,000,000
• if registered as a separate legal entity, the average annual income of the consortium must be less than £1,000,000

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, i.e. the organisation through which all funding would be channelled and who would operate as the main point of contact with DFID 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 5 live UK Aid Direct grants (a maximum of 2 Community Partnership grants and 3 Impact grants).