EIV Grants - Criteria, Process and Timelines

General
1

IWT is happy to announce EIV Grants, where organisations involved in “volunteer-driven impact” can seek grants for upto 3 years, from Rs5 lacs to Rs80 lacs per year. We intend to make multiple grants with an upper cap of Rs3cr p.a.

Our definition of “volunteer”- Those contributing time without any compensation and reimbursed expenses (conveyance, phone, etc.), at a rate less than Rs10 per hour volunteered. If you intend to compensate or reimburse expenses at a higher rate, you will not qualify for these grants.

Our focus is only on URBAN volunteers (who may volunteer anywhere, but are essentially living in cities and towns with a population of 1million or more.

Grant Purpose: Anything that will help scale up the org’s engagement of volunteers to create social impact. However, funds cannot be used for direct costs like food, books/stationery, paints/gloves/seeds, etc. Funds may only be used for staff costs and overheads.

These can be 1-time grants or recurring ones for a maximum of 3 years.

Eligibility

  1. Organisation must have a valid 12A registration and be registered on or before 31/3/2024. They must not be current Eivolve Cohort3 organisations. Cohort 1 and 2 orgs may apply.
  2. Corporate Foundations are not eligible. Orgs set up by HNIs with a family networth > Rs5cr will have to contribute between 1/4th to an equal amount of the grant sought.
  3. The organisation must seek to engage volunteers at scale (at least 20,000 volunteer hours in a year), to create significant measurable social impact (in Stage 2, we will ask you for your theory of change and impact metrics). Staff:volunteer ratio must be less than 1:25 at least.
  4. Grant sought must be less than 1/3rd of the org’s total annual budget in each year going forward.
  5. The Chief functionary (CEO/ED) of the org must fill this application form.
  6. The Chief functionary or a nominated senior colleague must be willing to engage on email and/or g-meet calls with a maximum 24 hour response time to emails.

Selection Process:

  1. Deadline for this Stage1 application is November 15, 2024
  2. We will shortlist a maximum of 50 organisations from Stage 1, and invite them to one of 2 workshops to be held on November 19 and November 23, during which our grantmaking approach, criteria and further selection process (including the Stage 2 form) will be explained in detail.
  3. Deadline for Stage2 application is December 7, 2024.
  4. Between Dec 8, 2024- Dec 31, 2024, we will engage in deeper conversations with stage 2 applicants to understand their proposal and/or seek further information.
  5. By January 6, we will announce a FINAL SHORTLIST of organisations. Those receiving grants of Rs10L per annum or less (or whose proposals are very straightforward and simple) will move into a simple process of agreeing on the terms of the grant and signing an MoU, followed by release of the first grant instalment.
  6. Others in the FINAL shortlist (and definitely for those seeking more than Rs30L p.a.) will receive a “design grant” of Rs1-2 lacs and be encouraged to design their proposal in a lot more detail, and submit the same by February 10, 2024. A few more interactions with such orgs may happen between Feb 11-Feb 28 to decide whether to proceed further or not, and to agree on the terms of the grant.
  7. The larger/more complex grants in (6) above will be announced on March 5-6, 2025 at Volcon 2025.

Selection Criteria:
While Trustees of IWT retain absolute discretion to decide which orgs to select, our primary criteria are

  • Likely IMPACT per rupee spent (we will measure this in detail at Stage 2 especially for larger grants). Impact can be on beneficiaries/society/ecosystem, or on the volunteers themselves, but they will need to be measurable.
  • Extent of “volunteer transformation” - to that extent, “one time volunteering activities” are unlikely to get support unless they have a tangible way to demonstrate longer term, sustained volunteering by those they engage.

DEADLINE FOR STAGE 1 APPLICATION- NOVEMBER 15, 2024. No extensions will be given.

Link to the form- here.

Doubts can be asked in this forum post.

2

We have an entire volunteer system at the village level who contribute to effective running of government schools in 800 villages of 7 Districts of one state. We have invested in this process for the last 7 years with good results. We would like to expand. It meets the criteria except that it is rural in nature and that’s where we see the need. Could you criteria allow for volunteers coming from rural areas.

3

Our focus is on urban volunteers only. We have no issues with urban volunteers volunteering in villages, but their base shd be urban.

4

We are working in Pune for last 5 years to empower underprivileged school children by enhancing their psychological and emotional well-being, creating a safe & supportive environment where students can learn to explore themselves that fosters personal growth and resilience. There are hardly any organizations working in this area from1st standard students, though it is the need of the hour. In the 5 years we are witnessing amazing results.

Currently our volunteer hours in a year are less than 3,000. However with grant, we plan to cover more schools and thus fulfil the criteria.

5

Pls fill the form- there’s no harm in trying.

6

An additional aspect that we didn’t mention earlier but has now been added in the form description- Our focus is on volunteers from PRIVILEGED sections of society, and not on volunteers ‘from the community’. We believe that people in rural areas and in underserved communities already do enough. It is the privileged that need to be pushed to get more engaged on social issues.