Grant criteria

The Trust makes grants of between £2000 and £5000 to approximately five NGOs each year. We have tended to build long term partnerships with NGOs, and have rarely made grants to new organisations we do not know. We welcome approaches by NGOs, but also have to caution that our limited resources, and desire for long term partnerships, mean that new grants are not made frequently.

Lord Deedes had a life long interest in overseas aid, and particularly Africa. He travelled regularly, and wrote extensively on development. Our donations criteria are driven by his interest in communications, education and people. While this is not exhaustive, we have in the past funded:

• Visits by journalists, where we believe a small amount of funding can initiate significant coverage for an NGO
• Visits by members of NGO staff to overseas projects. We have often funded trips for non-development personnel ( accounts, or fundraising) where we believe their understanding of development will be significantly enhanced for the benefit of their NGO
• Communications activity by an NGO. Lord Deedes was interested in any aspect of communications that would raise an NGO’s profile and reputation
• Capacity Building. We have funded activities that we hope will enhance the ability of NGOs to work well
• Education. We have funded projects in the education area
• Journalism training. We have funded projects supporting younger journalists. We have also funded training for journalists in areas such as Freedom of Information
• Unrestricted support. We have funded events and Annual Reports to cover purely unrestricted costs

In all our grants we try to be led by our NGO partners and to be guided by their own priorities. Our grants have often been unrestricted. We require a full report each year, but during the funding period we have always tried to give our partners significant flexibility.

We meet as a Board of Trustees every September and make our annual grant decisions at that meeting. We ask therefore for applications to be received by the end of August. We will not generally look at applications outside this timetable, and we tend not to respond to unsolicited approaches.