Your Journey

Your first ‘Check-in’ email tells you who your grants team contact is, which fund we’ve selected for you and the date the donor panel will meet to make a decision on your bid.

It may also ask you for any outstanding pieces of supporting documentation.

Your application is then passed to your grants officer for assessment. During assessment, we will read through the application and prepare it for a panel meeting where volunteers will make a decision on your bid.

When we read through the bid we will be able to anticipate what questions the panel may ask about your specific project. We are looking to plug any knowledge gaps so we can present the best possible case for you.

The extra questions we come up with are not generic but will be unique to your bid and should lead to a stronger chance of success.

Assessment also allows you to build a relationship with us as a local funder through personal contact. It also allows us to keep our application form shorter and less daunting.

Please note that assessment usually take place in the few weeks leading up to the panel date.

We aim to get you a decision within 12 – 16 weeks of your application arriving at Foundation Derbyshire, although sometimes it can take a bit longer or alternatively it can be much quicker – this is dependent on when your application actually arrives and when panels have set dates to meet.

As such, we always advise you to plan ahead and get applications in a good 5 – 6 months before you need the funds.

Once the decision-making panel has met we will get a written response to you within 2 weeks – often sooner. You can also call us after the panel meeting date to get a verbal update over the phone.

We always give open, honest feedback suggestions and advice where we can.

If you are successful, you will receive an email award pack containing all the information you need to release the funds and monitor your project.

Within the award pack, is a document called a grant agreement. Once you have signed and returned this, our Trustees can release the funds directly to your group bank account via an electronic BACS payment.

We aim to have a BACS run every two weeks. How quickly you return the paperwork to us determines how quickly we release funds.

The email award pack will also contain links to publicity material and logos you can use to promote your grant.

You will need to return a simple monitoring form to us. You will be given a date for this to be submitted and a link to the online monitoring form within the award pack described above, so please keep it safe. If you can you should try to include receipts for purchases etc.

Once you have a grant and if you have any concerns or questions then you can call the grants team.