How long will it take for us to hear from you?
We will acknowledge your application as soon as we receive it; by email if possible, or by letter if you do not have an email address. We then aim to let you know within a month whether or not we are inviting you to submit a second stage application. Please do not phone us to ask about progress if less than a month has gone by since you sent us your proposal.

How will my application be assessed?
All first-stage proposals go through an initial assessment process which involves both the staff team and trustees. We usually make our decision on the basis of the information you provide, but sometimes we may phone you to discuss your proposal as well. We aim to give all proposals equal consideration; the fact that all first-stage proposals are submitted in the same format makes this easier for us.

Do you give feedback on why a first-stage proposal is rejected?
We will write and tell you if we are unable to take your first-stage proposal forward to the next stage, but we can’t give detailed individual feedback. Given that we are only making 350 grants each year it is inevitable that many proposals rejected at the first stage will be for valuable and interesting work; they may be rejected simply because the ideas are not ones that the trustees want to forward at that moment, not because there is anything ‘wrong’ with them.