UK Aid Match to grant

Howard Lake | 1 October 2013 | News

The Department for International Development (DFID) has announced the first full round of its UK Aid Match programme, offering £120 million in grants over the next three years.

The programme matches donations from the public to charities' appeals for development activities that address poverty reduction in developing countries. In this way it is designed to enable "the UK public to have a say in how an element of the aid budget is spent".

The full programme follows a pilot phase which match funded 18 public appeals which ran between Summer 2011 and Spring 2013. Charities including Comic Relief, Sightsavers, Trocaire Northern Ireland, and Save the Children received grants totaling £42 million.

In the full grant programme, there will be two funding periods each year for three years. In each of these, £20 million will be made available. At least £1m from each round will be earmarked for small organisations (those with an average annual income of less than £1 million).

DFID will match up to £5 million per appeal. To qualify, appeals must be likely to raise at least £100,000 and offer "a minimum of 400,000 opportunities for the general public to view information about the appeal".

To apply organisations must first submit a Concept Note by email to UK********@df**.uk by 1 November 2013. These must relate to public appeals planned to run within the period from 1 March to 30 September 2014.

The second round of UK Aid Match opens on 3 March 2014.

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.