DFID funding opportunity: UK Aid Direct

02 December 2016

We encourage members with an annual operating budget of over £40,000 to consider applying for DFID's UK Aid Direct programme. The deadline for Concept Notes in this round is Tuesday 31st January 2017.

We encourage members with an annual operating budget of over £40,000 to consider applying for DFID’s UK Aid Direct programme.

The deadline for Concept Notes in this round is Tuesday 31st January 2017.

UK Aid Direct is DFID’s central funding mechanism for awarding grants to small and medium sized UK and international civil society organisations working to reduce poverty overseas. Formerly known as the Global Poverty Action Fund (GPAF), the fund was relaunched in 2014 as UK Aid Direct. Since 2010, more than 200 grants have been awarded across 36 countries.

From 4 January 2016 the Fund Manager for UK Aid Direct has been MannionDaniels, working in consortium with Oxford Policy Management (OPM), Education Development Trust, Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC) and Royal Tropical Institute (KIT).

Malawi is an eligible country in this programme. Full details are available at: www.ukaiddirect.org

There are two main types of grants available in this current call, for which £40 million is available:

  • Community Partnership Grants which are open to UK not-for-profits with an annual income under £1m. Grants can be for up to £250,000 over up to three years. There is technically no lower limit to the scale of grants but, given the due diligence process costs DFID c£5,000, we think it unlikely grants of under £47,000 will be awarded. The total funding from DFID cannot exceed 40% of the total income for the organisation over the same period. We therefore think it is unlikely any organisation with an existing operating budget of under £40k a year will succeed in securing funding despite commitments that “even the smallest organisation” will be eligible.
  • Impact Grants which are open to not-for-profits registered in the country of operation with an annual income under £10m, with grants of £250k-£4m. Again, the total funding from DFID cannot exceed 40% of the total income for the organisation over the same period.

MannionDaniels are hosting a webinar on the 7th December (10.30-12.30) for which places are limited. A recording of the webinar will be made available online and a second webinar may be organised.

There are a whole host of excellent supporting videos, resources and information on the website, which we encourage members interested in applying to go through carefully.

Success rate historically has been around 5%-7% with this programme, although the total funds available have been doubled for this call to £40m.

The UK Aid Programme is one of four funding channels forming part of DFID’s Civic Society Partnership Review. We look forward to further news on UK Aid Match, UK Aid Connect and UK Aid Volunteers.

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