GRANT APPLICATION GUIDELINES:
2016 /

Please read these Guidelines before completing our grant application form as it will help you answer our questions as fully and clearly as possible.

If you cannot find the answer below please email us with your questions.

CONTENTS:

  1. About The Marr-Munning Trust
  2. Our Grantmaking Priorities
  3. Who Can Apply for a Grant
  4. What You Can Apply For
  5. How to Apply
  6. How We Choose the Applications to be Awarded a Grant
  7. Deadlines
  8. If We Award a Grant
  9. Why Applications are Unsuccessful
  10. Help to Complete Our Application Form
  11. How to Contact Us
  12. Submitting Your Application
  1. About The Marr-Munning Trust:

The Marr-Munning Trust is an independent grantmaking trust supporting charitable projects in the Indian Subcontinent, South East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

We make grants totalling approximately £300,000 each year to charitable organisations / non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

  1. Our Grantmaking Priorities:

We wish to make a real difference to the lives of people in some of the poorest communities in the world. We believe that the most long-lasting solutions are likely to be those rooted in the communities themselves.

Currently, our priorities are community projects for:

  • theeducation of children and young people (up to the age of 18 years).

or

  • skillstraining for adults which will increase their ability to earn a decent living for themselves and their families.

The Table on page 13 gives examples of the activities we will support and the outcomes and impacts we wish to achieve.

We will consider applications for community-level projects which will clearly improve the life chances of poor and disadvantaged people through work in one or both of our 2 funding priorities.

By ‘community level’ we mean:

a)Projects or activities which are run by, or involve, the people they are designed to benefit – such as the active involvement of village development committees, school management committees, etc;

b)Projects or activities which clearly address the needs of one or more specific local communities – for example one or more named villages or a specific disadvantaged community of people (such as a minority ethnic community);

c)Projects or activities which are delivered bylocal organisations – for example where the grant applicant is a UK-based organisation but where the project will be delivered by their in-country partner organisation.

  1. Who Can Apply for a Grant:

We only consider applications from independent charitable organisations / NGOs with an annual income of between £25,000 and £1m (or the equivalent in that organisation’s national currency). We have chosen this range as we believe that organisations with an annual income of at least £25,000 are more likely to have the capacity to deliver the type of projects we wish to fund than those with a lower income. We also believe that organisations with an annual income of more than £1m are more likely to be able to raise funds from other sources.

We will only consider applications from organisations which can prove they are registered with a local, regional or national regulatory body (such as the Charity Commission for England and Wales or the equivalent in their own country).

We will only fund organisations that can demonstrate they fulfil basic quality standards – for example good financial management, protection of women’s rights and effective safeguarding of children.

Applicant organisations can have their headquarters in any country but the projects for which they seek funding must be in the Indian Subcontinent, South East Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa.

We do not make grants to individuals.

  1. What You Can Apply For:

We will fund the direct costs of the project / activity and we will also consider funding a reasonable proportion of the applicant organisation’s overheads or core costs which are clearly related to carrying out the project – including reasonable monitoring and evaluation costs.

We will fund revenue costs (for example - staff pay or training room rent) and / or capital costs (for example - to buy equipment or to construct buildings) but the applicant must tell us how the cost of running and maintaining the equipment or buildings will be met.

We will consider part funding the project but the applicant must show how the rest of the costs will be met (for example - from other funders, from the organisation’s own resources, from income earned from the project, etc).

We do not fund retrospectively – which means we will not fund any costs that the organisation has incurred or spent before we agreed to award a grant.

We will not fund purely capital projects (such as irrigation or sanitation) which do not improve the livelihood skills of local people by providing training.

We only award grants for fixed periods (for example for 1, 2 or 3 years) or for one-off costs (such as constructing a building).

We generally make grants in the range of £1,000 to £10,000 per year. Our largest grant is therefore likely to be £30,000 over 3 years.

  1. How to Apply:

We only accept applications on our application form. To receive a copy of our application form you must be able to answer YES to all of the following questions:

YES / NO
1 / Is your organisation a charity or NGO which is registered with a local regulator or authority?
2 / If your organisation is based outside the UK, are you able to provide a copy of a registration certificate to prove that your organisation is a charitable organisation or NGO?
3 / Does your organisation have an income of between £25,000 and £1m per year (or the equivalent in your local currency)?
4 / Are you applying for a project which will take place in the Indian Sub-Continent, South East Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa?
5 / Are you applying for a project to provide either:
  • Good quality education for poor and disadvantaged children?
  • Skills training for poor and marginalised adults that will directly increase their ability to earn a living?

6 / Is your organisation able to provide evidence of how it has supported poor and disadvantaged people to improve their lives?
7 / Would another donor or independent organisation be able to provide a reference in support of your organisation’s work if we requested it?
8 / Is your organisation able to provide written financial accounts covering a recent 12 month period?
9 / Are you able to provide a copy of your organisation’s governing document (eg constitution or memorandum and articles of association) in English?

If you can answer YES to all of these questions on our website you will be able to download a copy of our grant application form at:

If you cannot answer YES to all of these questions then we will not consider a funding request from your organisation. You can find information about other possible sources of support on our website at

PLEASE NOTE: We will rely on the information that you include in your application form to decide whether to shortlist your project. You should not answer the questions by referring to attachments or other documents. You should answer each of the questions on the form as fully as possible.

With your completed application form, the other documents you must send to us are: a copy of your organisation’s constitution in English; a copy of your organisation’s most recent annual accounts, and (for non-UK registered charities only) a copy of your organisation’s NGO registration certificate or equivalent proof that your organisation is recognised by your local, regional or national government.

We will acknowledge by email all applications if you include an email address in your application.

We will inform all applicants of the outcome of their application by the end of September 2016.

As a small charity we are unable to give specific feedback to organisations whose application was not successful.

Organisations can only submit ONE application in each grants round. If we receive more than one application from the same organisation we will only consider the first application that we received.

We will not consider applications from organisations which are already being funded by the Trust – unless the application is for funding to begin after our current grant has ended. This is because we wish to know if our existing grant has been effective before we award further funding to the same organisation.

  1. How We Choose the Applications to be Awarded a Grant:

We give every application a score based on the answers given to the questions on our application form. The score is based on the following 4 criteria:

  • Clear Need: how convincingly has the applicant demonstrated the need for the project and how closely does that need match our funding priorities? (mainly answers to Questions 17, 18 and 20);
  • Likely Impact: how effective is the project likely to be in meeting the needs described in the application? (mainly answers to Questions 19, 28 and 30);
  • Ability to Provide Evidence of Results: how clearly has the applicant shown that it will be able to monitor the project activities and provide evidence of the results achieved? (mainly answers to Questions 21 and 22).
  • Capacity to Deliver: how well has the applicant demonstrated that they could deliver the project and achieve the outcomes they have listed? (mainly answers to Questions 23, 29, 31 and 32).
  1. Deadlines:

Our next grants meeting is in September 2016. The deadline for us to receive completed applications is midnight UK time on 31st May 2016.

  1. If We Award A Grant:

If we award a grant to your organisation you will have to agree to our conditions of funding before we will pay the grant (please see the attached Grant Agreement). These include a requirement for you to send us monitoring reports about the work we have funded.

The amount of information we require will depend on the amount of funding we award – the bigger the grant, the more information we will need from you about what you have done and the impact the project has had on the lives of poor and disadvantaged people. We will talk to you about this if we make your organisation a grant offer.

In general, our monitoring requirements are:

For grants lasting 1 year or less:

  • You must provide us with a report on how you have used the funding, including how it has improved the lives of poor people. The deadline for this will depend on the type of project or activity we have funded. Usually the deadline for this will be 2 calendar months after the end of the grant period.

For grants lasting more than 1 year:

  • You must send us an interim report within 1 calendar month of the end of each year of the grant period. If this report is satisfactory we will release the next instalment of the grant;
  • You must send us a final report after the end of the grant period showing how the project we have supported has improved the lives of poor people. The deadline for this will depend on the type of project or activity we have funded.

We will give you a report form to complete and return to us – along with any other information you have about the project we have funded and the impact it has had. For example, we particularly value photographs and videos which show the project taking place. You can see examples of our report forms at the end of this Guidance.

If you already have a report (for another funder or for your own management purposes) which answers all our questions you can send us that report instead of completing our form.

We may publish some or all of the information you send to us – for example on our website or in our annual report.

We generally pay grants in advance. For larger grants we will pay the grant in instalments.

  1. Why Applications Are Unsuccessful:

There are two main reasons why applications are unsuccessful:

  • We receive many more applications than we can support;
  • Applications do not clearly answer the questions on the application form – often giving answers which contain too little information for us to understand exactly what the project will do to achieve our funding priorities.

Other common factors for applications not to be selected include the following:

  • The project is poorly planned or there is too little information about the activities the organisation will carry out.
  • Applicants budget inaccurately or provide too little information about the costs of the project and how the grant will be spent.
  • Applicants do not display good financial management (eg there are errors in their budgets).
  • The application does not demonstrate that the organisation is well managed and is capable of successfully running the project, including effective monitoring and evaluation of the activity.
  • The application asks for much more money than we are likely to award or for a grant which is significantly higher than the applicant organisation’s total income in previous years. Our largest grant is likely to be £10,000 per year for a maximum of 3 years (ie £30,000) but most of our grants are smaller than this.
  • The applicant answers the question by referring to an attachment (we will use only the information on the application form to shortlist applications).
  • The applicant asks us to help start an activity that will become self-sustaining so that it will continue after our grant ends – but the application does not contain specific information to show how this will happen.
  1. Help to Complete Our Application Form:

In order to be able to make a decision about whether to award a grant, we need to know specific information about:

  • your organisation;
  • the project you would like us to fund;
  • the needs of the people or community that your project will help;
  • how you will know if your project has been successful in meeting those needs;
  • what will happen after our funding comes to an end.

To help you complete our application form, we have explained below what information you should include in your answer to some of our questions (PLEASE NOTE – our application form is a separate document that must be downloaded from our website):

18 / Describe the need for your project, giving as much evidence as possible: (in no more than 200 words)

Tell us about the needs your target group has - either for education for poor / disadvantaged children or training for poor / disadvantaged adults which will improve their ability to earn or create an income to support themselves and their family. Your answer should include:

  • How do you know that they have such needs? For example, can you include statistics from a recognised source or have you or a local partner conducted your own survey/questionnaire asking people about their views?
  • Why is it important that these needs are met?
  • Why are these needs not being met already (for example, by local or national government or other NGOs)?

19 / What will your project do to meet this need? eg. What activities will your project carry out over what period?(in no more than 200 words)

Your answer should briefly describe what you will do with our grant to meet the needs you have described in Question 18. Your answer could include:

  • when and where your project is going to happen;
  • how you are going to carry out your project and what you need to do it (such as equipment, premises, staff);
  • who will be responsible for doing the project and for managing it;
  • the number of things your project will do. We call these ‘outputs’ – for example, if your project will provide training courses for adults you should tell us how many courses you will provide;
  • how you know the project or activities will be acceptable to the community.

For skills training for adults to increase their ability to earn a living for themselves and their families, you should show:

  • How the training will be provided to a good standard of quality. For example:
  • a standard that employers will accept;
  • will participants receive a government approved certificate;
  • How the training will increase the likelihood that trainees will be able to earn a living. For example:
  • How do you know the skills the trainees will learn are what local employers want;
  • Will trainees be linked to an employment agency to be able to find job opportunities;
  • If the training is to enable people to become self-employed, how will you help trainees start their own business (for example – to find money to buy equipment) and develop entrepreneurial skills as well as technical skills;
  • If the trainees will be self-employed, how do you know there will be a market for what they will produce or the services they will provide after the training.

If your organisation is based in the north but you will be working with/through a partner based in the south, you should clearly describe what each organisation will do.

20 / Who will benefit from your project? eg. How many people? Who are they? Where are they based?(in no more than 200 words)

Please tell us the total number of people who will benefit from this project each year, who they are and where they are. You should tell us the number of: