Commonwealth Foundation Grants

Application Deadline: 17.00 GMT on 4 January 2017

The Commonwealth Foundation awards grants for sustainable development projects that contribute to effective, responsive and accountable governance with civil society participation.

With more than 2.3 billion citizens, the Commonwealth provides a potentially huge pool of ideas for advancing societies. The Commonwealth Foundation’s grants help civil society organisations get their ideas across to policymakers.

• Initiatives on participatory governance in Commonwealth Countries from grass roots to national level
• Projects range across sectors and themes from creative expression to community empowerment; from health to human rights.
• Grantees learn from each other and develop the tools to monitor and evaluate their projects through our learning workshops

Eligibility
To be eligible for a grant, the following criteria must be met:

• The applicant is a registered national or regional civil society organisation (CSO)2.
• The applicant is seeking £30,000 per year or less.
• The applicant is applying for funding for one to three years
• The average of the applicant’s total income over the last two years is less than £3m
• The project must address one of the four focus areas
• The project will take place in an eligible Commonwealth Foundation member country
• The project has not yet started
• The application includes counterpart resourcing4 of a minimum of 10% of the total project budget. Applicants will be required to provide a detailed budget at full application stage where counterpart resourcing must be clearly reflected.
• The applicant does not have an existing grant from the Commonwealth Foundation at the time the application window is opened. Please note that in order for a recent grantee to be eligible they must have submitted all reports on existing grants and received notification that the existing grant is closed.

Focus areas

Grant projects must focus on one or more of the following:

1. Creative expression
2. Capacity development
3. Constructive engagement
4. Learning and sharing

The Commonwealth Grant

• Open to civil society organisations (CSOs)
• Up to £30,000 per year
• Multi-year funding available (up to three years)
• Delivered in Commonwealth Foundation eligible member countries

Application Documents:

• Guidelines for applicants Dec 2016 – Africa, Americas, Asia and Europe.pdf | 190K
• Preliminary application form questions for Africa Americas Asia and Europe.pdf | 325K
• Annex 3 – Beginning with the end in mind – value of results chains and logic models.pdf | 247K
• Annex 4 – Logic model template.docx | 21K

For More Information:

Visit the Official Webpage of the Commonwealth Foundation Grants 2017