The Ragdoll Foundation and COVID-19: Supporting our grant-holders and applicants

These are challenging times, and the Ragdoll Foundation wants to offer appropriate support and flexibility to our grant-holders and applicants. Our Grants Administrator is already home-based, and we hope to continue “business as usual” as much as we can. We will review this statement as the current situation develops.

If you already have a grant from the Ragdoll Foundation, but need to make changes to your project delivery, budget allocations or reporting, please contact admin@ragdollfoundation.org.uk with an outline of what you would like to do. We will get back to you to confirm that this is ok, or to schedule a phone call for further discussion, if needed. If you don’t anticipate any changes at the moment please tell us so that we know you have received this information. You can always contact us again if the situation changes. This statement has been emailed to all current grant-holders.

If you are making a grant application to the Ragdoll Foundation Main Grants Programme, we appreciate that your organisation is probably closed right now, with staff working from home and direct delivery not possible. Whilst we cannot anticipate when the current situation might end, we are keeping our application timetable unchanged for the moment:

• Applications received through the end of March should be for projects where delivery begins no earlier than September and you would not need to be fully committed to the project until mid-June.
• If you make your application between April and end-July this should be for projects where delivery begins no earlier than the New Year and you would not need to be fully committed to the project until mid-October.
• Please remember that we are a small organisation and assess applications on a rolling basis. Please submit your proposal when it is ready and don’t wait for the end of the round if you can get it to us sooner – thank you.

We will shortly be launching our new Small Grants Programme – for grants of up to £1,500 supporting smaller or pilot projects. The first two deadlines will be:

• 8 May 2020 for projects beginning in July (summer holiday projects)
• 3 July 2020 for projects beginning in September (new academic year)

The new Small Grants Programme has a shorter application form and is a one-step process. We will let you know within five weeks of the deadline whether your application has been successful. For full details please download the Small Grants application form and guidance notes, which will be available on our website soon.

We wish all of our grant holders and applicants well in these difficult days – thank you for everything you do to enrich the lives of children & young people in the UK.

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