Digital Support Grants
Hub Cymru Africa has launched a small grants scheme to support the Wales Africa community to use digital tools with partners in Africa.
You can apply for £500-£1000 to support international solidarity projects. The funding could be used for new hardware, software, licenses, training, skills development, data allowances, online communications and other tools which would support your partner’s work or your partnership.
This scheme is supported by the Waterloo Foundation.
Hub Cymru Africa has launched a small grants scheme to support the Wales Africa community to use digital tools with partners in Africa.
You can apply for £500-£1000 to support international solidarity projects. The funding could be used for new hardware, software, licenses, training, skills development, data allowances, online communications and other tools which would support your partner’s work or your partnership.
This scheme is supported by the Waterloo Foundation.
FAQs
A constitutional document could be a governing document (if you are a registered charity), an MOU (for instance with an NHS health board or Trust), or a steering group Terms of Reference.
Guidance on what your constitution should contain can be found here.
Your constituted group must have a bank account with two unrelated signatories
We will fund activities and purchases which are intended to help your partner make better use of digital technology to support their work. This could include new hardware, software, licenses, training, skills development, data allowances or online communications which make a difference. We will not fund activities which would happen anyway – for example, funding data costs for your regular meetings or paying a designer to put together your online newsletter. Get in touch if you would like to talk through your idea.
When working collaboratively with others, it is essential you collectively write a partnership agreement or a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which is then signed and dated by representatives from each of the organisations involved.
Many Wales Africa groups have told us how the process of writing the partnership agreement was as important as the document itself in providing clarity and focus, and it is common practice in community-, development-, and contracting work.
The purpose of the agreement is to provide a common reference point on joint activities and helps avoid misunderstandings. It outlines roles and responsibilities, individual organisational aims, as well as the joint project’s aims and activities. It is worthwhile highlighting the benefits to each partner of the collaboration, and can identify how long the collaboration will last and how the collaboration can be dissolved.
It is worth having a section on communications between your organisations (key contacts, communications method, frequency and responsiveness) and to the public (how to reference your funders appropriately). Decision making and dispute resolution should also feature in this section.
Financial management needs to be articulated too, to ensure clear accountability for your trustees. For example, how money will be managed and who is responsible for what in regards to raising funds and over-seeing expenditure.
A basic example of what an MOU or partnership agreement can look like is here.
Further advice has been provide by the National Council of Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) here.
We do not fund:
- the costs or expenses of any organisations involved (e.g. international NGOs) that are based outside Wales or Africa
- training courses for individuals (in Wales or Africa) where this is not an integral part of a wider project/programme
- academic research
- unrestricted donations to southern partners
- humanitarian (emergency relief) operations
- direct applications from Southern-based organisations
- evangelical or proselytising activities
- for-profit activities (exceptions may be made in the case of community cooperatives or microfinance initiatives within a livelihoods programme)
- political parties
- activities that aim to deny equal rights.
When considering whether your project is good value for money, lots of factors need to be considered and weighed up against each other. There’s no single rule, but rather it is about the balance of what is most pertinent to your project. For example, some things you might want to consider when compiling your budget are the rationale for:
- Can you demonstrate significant in-kind or match funding?
- Is the purchase of equipment appropriate?
- Could it be purchased in country, to avoid costly delays, issues with customs as well as supporting local markets?
- Do the staff and volunteers have the appropriate skills and qualities to support the project’s success and build relationships with your partner?
- Are you requesting unreasonable consultancy fees or staff costs?
- Will your project have a positive impact?
If your costs seem high to you, can you explain why? Is it because you are working with a particularly remote or hard-to-reach group? Consider how this can be demonstrated within the form so that when the budget is considered the costs are understandable.
We define match funding as any contribution of cash funds to the project that comes from another source.
This could include your own organisation’s fundraising activities, a grant from another funder or donated funds from a local business, for example.
We want to make sure that the funding is not used for something that will become useless once the project is over. Some examples:
- setting up and designing a website which you can’t update without more funding
- buying computer equipment which can’t be used to get online because you can’t afford the data costs
- skills training for one key member of staff who leaves your organisation three months later
- moving all your information to a Customer Relations Management System which you can’t afford the licence for next year
If you want to use the funding for something which will need expertise or funding for some time to come, let us know how that will be put in place.
Risks involved in implementing the project
The people coordinating your activities (in Wales and/or Africa) may become ill or unable to fulfil their role. What would you do if this happened? Are there others in the group/organisation who could take over the project? Could severe weather, political turbulence, conflict or outbreak of disease in Africa potentially interrupt your activities, and if so how might you handle your project in these circumstances? If you intend to hold an event in Wales, is there a risk that very few people come? Do you need to consider timing of the event and in what time of year it takes place? How will you promote/publicise the event or work with other partners to ensure that you achieve good attendance and participation?
Risks to sustainability of the project
If you are training people to acquire new skills and ways of working, do they have the resources to be able to use their new skills in the future? Will there be any further support to monitor or assist these people following the end of the project funding? If you are funding salary-type payments for delivering a new or additional service, what will happen to these workers when the grant comes to an end? If you are providing important equipment, are there arrangements in place to ensure that it can be maintained and spare parts replaced?
Financial risks to the project
Is your match funding secure? If not, can you still deliver the project activities or can they be scaled-down appropriately? If your partner NGO in Africa lost its core funding and had to significantly downsize or close in the middle of your project, would there be any alternative way to deliver the project? What would happen if currency fluctuations or rises in costs meant a significant increase in key project activities? How would you handle this?