Reporting guidelines for grantees

Your Grants Programme Manager will remain your main contact throughout the term of your grant and if you need to discuss any aspect of your project, please do not hesitate to contact them. You will mostly communicate via email, online meetings and written reports but we may also arrange to visit your project.

Please let your Grant Manager know as soon as possible if there are any substantial changes to the project during the course of the grant. In particular, you should let us know about:

• any changes to your bank details
• variation of project start or end dates
• changes to staffing, funding sources, budgets
• content of project activities

You should also inform us without delay if any issues arise which might materially impact your funding or might damage your reputation (including safeguarding concerns). It is important that you keep us informed so that we can respond and support you as appropriate.

If your application has been successful you will receive an official Grant Offer Letter together with an Award Agreement approximately 3 months after the closing date of the grant round. Please add adobesign@adobesign.com to your safe senders list to ensure you receive all the relevant communications from our online application system.

Please read your Grant Offer Letter and Award Agreement carefully before e-signing and returning it with the necessary supporting documentation. It may contain additional conditions which you will need to address before starting your project.

• Bank Statement: You will need to provide a copy of your bank statement to validate your bank details. This will be accompanied by a Bank Details form. Please note, we will only make payments to a bank account in the name of the organisation receiving the grant. Payments through a third-party organisation are not allowed.

• Additional conditions and documentation: We may attach certain conditions to your grant or ask you to provide additional documentation. You can include details about how you will meet these conditions in your Baseline Report or submit them via email. We can not make any payments until we are satisfied that all conditions have been addressed.

We encourage our grantees to think about the different ways in which you will tell people about the work you are doing and increase the range and numbers of people who can benefit from your project.

In your Baseline Report you will be asked to outline of the type of communication activities you have planned (e.g. social media posts, press release, marketing material, online events) and where you hope these will feature (e.g. press, newsletter, social media, blog etc.)

In your Progress and Final Reports you will have an opportunity to list examples of press coverage, social media activity or marketing materials which have featured the work you are doing as part of your project, so please remember to keep records.

Please remember that you may not use our name or logo on any material without our written permission. You’ll find more information on the Acknowledging our support page.

This will be made available once you have received confirmation of your grant. Please fill it out as fully as possible and use it to detail any changes to the project since first submitting your application.

As part of the Baseline you will also need to submit a workplan and updated budget. We use this information to schedule the payments for your grant and the Outputs are used for monitoring the progress of your project.

Please note: we can not make any payments until a satisfactory Baseline Report has been submitted.

If you have received a multi-year grant you will be required to complete an annual Progress Report and a form will be sent via email about a month before the report is due. In some cases, we may ask you to report more often and your Grant Manager will let you know whether you need to send additional Project Updates. Please note: no further payments will be made until you have submitted a Progress Report and it has been approved.

The Progress Report will enable you to tell us about your achievements, successes and challenges. Please include information about any changes to the project or events which may endanger the success of your project or affect its future. If you need to make any changes to the project then we may agree to these after further discussion. As part of the Progress Report it’s also helpful if you can also include photos, digital copies of flyers, brochures and any press coverage the project has received.

If for any reason you will not be able to submit your Progress Report by the required date please get in touch with your Grant Manager as soon as possible.

For projects lasting up to 12 months, we will usually only request a Final Report. However, you may be asked to submit a Project Update at some point during the project, especially if this is the first time we have funded your organisation.

All grantees are expected to send a Final Report within 2 calendar months of the completion of their project. A Final Report form will be emailed to you about a month before the project end date.

In the final report we will ask you to:

• describe how you achieved the aims of the project based on the outcomes included in your Baseline Report
• describe challenges you faced including issues or changes to the project which may have had an impact on the workplan or costs
• submit evidence of the activities undertaken as part of the project eg. photographs, marketing material, press coverage
• complete a Financial Statement based on the updated budget submitted as part of your Baseline Report
• submit the latest set of Audited Accounts for your organisation

If you fail to produce a Final Report within 2 calendar months it will impact negatively on any future applications you may submit to the Foundation. Our Trustees consider an organisation’s administrative track record as one of the criteria when evaluating proposals.

If for any reason you will not be able to submit your Final Report within 2 calendar months of the end date of the project please get in touch with your Grant Manager as soon as possible.

Our funding is awarded in pounds sterling. The grant is paid (inclusive of any taxes which may be payable) either in GBP or it can be converted and paid in Euros or US Dollars.

You will be expected to submit annual budgets as part of your reporting requirements. If you are based outside the UK please use the following method for financial reporting:

• Calculate the exchange rate on the day you receive payment
• Use the amount you receive in your local currency and track all project expenditure against that amount throughout the year
• When completing your annual Progress Report(s), convert your actual expenses back to GBP using the exchange rate on the report date (oanda.com).
• If there are discrepancies in the budget due to fluctuations in the exchange rate, please provide details in the ‘budget explanation’ field together with the exchange rates used.

When submitting your Final Report, please combine your annual GBP budget reports into one final budget covering the entire grant period. Please use the ‘budget explanation’ field to explain any discrepancies due to fluctuating exchange rates and give details of the exchange rates used over the period of the grant.

We are not responsible for any shortfall in funding as a result of fluctuations in currency exchange rates (see section 2.2 of the Grant Agreement).

As part of your Final Report you may be asked to submit some quantitative questions (metrics) that will help us assess the aggregated impact of our grants. We also carry out our own programme evaluation research and may ask you for additional information on your project outcomes as part of your work.

Outcomes – we mean the change that you want to see as a result of your project.

Outputs – we mean the activities that you will implement within the project.

Monitoring – you are regularly collecting information about the progress of your project so that you know what you are achieving and can tell us about it.

Evaluation – using the information you have collected to tell us about what you have learnt about the project. This should help you to review your project and compare it to what you hoped to achieve before you started. Evaluation tells us about the difference your project made, and whether anything has changed because of your project. Please help us learn from your successes and your mistakes.