Funding FAQs

If you are a campaigning organisation that has strong and clear reasons for not being a UK-registered charity, including not being able to register, then you can apply to us. We will accept applications from companies limited by guarantee, including CICs, or fiscally hosted organisations. We do not accept applications from companies limited by shares, or any of the organisation types listed in our ‘What we do not fund’ section. Companies limited by guarantee must have an asset lock, be able to demonstrate that they have charitable objects, and not pay dividends or excessive salaries to Directors. You must meet all of our other funding criteria. For fiscally hosted organisations, you will need to evidence that your organisation or group (rather than the fiscal hosts’ aggregated income) is above £100k and below £10m. We may ask to meet with fiscal hosts, where applicable, as part of our second stage process.

Yes – we support environmental work in the UK Overseas Territories (UKOTs). This is usually delivered via a pooled funder collaboration called The UKOTs Fund and different funding guidelines are applied for this work. When The UKOTs Fund is open, we will announce it via an open call. However, when the pooled fund is closed, UKOTs based organisations can also apply to us using these main funding guidelines, for environmental work related to the triple planetary crisis only. If you are considering applying for work in the UKOTs, we recommend you get in touch with us first and we will be happy to discuss a potential application.

For work in the UK Overseas Territories, we fund UK-based charities working in the UKOTs, and we are also happy to accept direct applications from Territory-registered charities, including through UK-based conduits. We aim to take a nuanced approach and distinguish between Territories based on their respective charity governance systems. In practice this means the following:

• NGOs registered in Territories with UK-modelled charity governance systems (e.g. Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, and St Helena) will be able to apply directly.

• Charities registered in Territories which have non-profit oversight systems that are primarily finance-focussed (e.g. Anguilla, British Virgin Islands, Montserrat, Turks & Caicos) will also be considered for direct funding. However, to ensure an extra level of compliance, NGOs from these Territories will be required to show evidence that they have been successfully accepted as the lead organisation on a UK Government Darwin Plus project grant.

• Given the minimal local charity governance we will not accept direct funding requests from NGOs which are registered solely in the Falkland Islands and will require applications to be made via a UK-registered charity.

If your Territory is not listed, or if you have any queries regarding the most appropriate application mechanism, please feel free to contact a member of the Grants Team for advice.

The Crown Dependencies of the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey which make up Channel Islands, and the Isle of Man are not part of the United Kingdom. Organisations registered in the Crown Dependencies are therefore not eligible.

We feel that there are two types of systems and that these will always co-exist as they each learn and grow from the other.

1. Existing systems are able to grow, but sometimes experience decline because they are not operating as effectively as they should and/or are not benefitting all people and our planet. These kinds of systems are sometimes described as dominant systems.

1. New systems seek out and champion new approaches and solutions to the challenges and opportunities we face. They can also be described as emergent systems.

Examples of systems include (but are not limited to) civil, economic, natural, and political. We want to invest in work that seeks to build on and improve the world as it is. We also want to invest in new approaches that seek to reimagine more fundamentally how the world could be. We feel the four areas we are prioritising in our current strategy all offer examples of ways of working in existing and new systems.

It is our belief that systems rely on different people from all walks of life. Some will be protecting existing systems from decline so they can continue to provide support to people, society and the natural world. There will be people highlighting the ways in which these systems are (or are not) working and why, and what we need to consider keeping and what we need to consider letting go of. Others will be focusing their energies on promoting and developing new systems due issues and frustrations within the existing systems.

We know that there are a range of ways of making change and progress within systems. We support recognised approaches to changing systems, as well as approaches that are less tried and tested or could be described as outlier or edge case approaches. We do not expect applicants to be working in every part of these systems. However, we do expect them to be able to explain which systems they seek to influence, what their place is within them, and how they aim to do so.

For more detail about our approach to systems change and changemaking, please see our strategy for 2025 to 2030 [insert link] which can be accessed by clicking here.

We use the term ‘justice’ as a framework to understand the systemic root causes of issues. We see organisations in the voluntary sector regularly use ‘justice’ as a frame for a variety of different and intersecting issues, e.g. racial justice, climate justice, migrant justice, gender justice. Our understanding of justice relates to access to resources, equity of outcomes, participation, diversity and countering discrimination, and human rights.

Current grant-holders can reapply up to three months before their grant end date.

We are always happy to discuss potential applications. Before you get in touch, please read our guidance. You can reach out to our team using the details on the ‘Contact Us’ section of our website.

Your accounts must adhere to Charity Commission guidance, and so if you are able to submit accounts that have been reviewed by an independent examiner then we will accept these too. If you are not a registered charity, then your accounts must be reviewed as per the processes in place for your organisation type.

We are a Living Wage Funder, which means we are committed to tackling low pay by encouraging the organisations we support to pay the real Living Wage. You can find out more about the Living Wage by clicking here.

We want to support our grant-holders to pay their employees the Living Wage as outlined above. Please do consider this when applying for funding to cover salaries within your proposals. The Grants Team may suggest changes to budgets where we think that the Living Wage is not being offered.

We want organisations and the individuals submitting applications to contact us if they have feedback on our application process that could lead to improvements. We also have a Complaints Policy that you can use if you would like to make a complaint, which is available on our website and can be accessed by clicking here. Complaints are managed by our Senior Grants Manager. Furthermore, every two to three years, we run an independently commissioned audit of our application process that is sent to all applicants and grant-holders – this offers a review of our application process too.

We aim to distribute the first payment of a grant as soon as possible after receiving and approving the required bank details as set out in the offer letter. The only time this is delayed is if there are conditions on the grant, for example: grant is payable upon recruitment to a role.

You can include some hyperlinks to supplementary information that support what you have referred to in your application. We encourage you to offer some context for the hyperlinks, as we may not be able to read the information contained within the hyperlinked information in full. Hyperlinks should not be used as appendices to increase the overall word count of the application, but rather as an opportunity to point to already existing and publicly available information such as blog posts, news articles, or strategy documents. Images can also be used, but please note that these images will need to be included as part of the two-page limit we set for first stage application.

Eligibility quiz

PDF version of our first and second stage application forms

Our 2025 to 2030 Strategy

Funding Guidelines

Link to the online application portal