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
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.
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.
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.
Grant sought must be less than 1/3rd of the org’s total annual budget in each year going forward.
The Chief functionary (CEO/ED) of the org must fill this application form.
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:
Deadline for this Stage1 application is November 15, 2024
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.
Deadline for Stage2 application is December 7, 2024.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We are a large impact organisation working with over 40,000 students in the country. We want to set up a volunteer management and onboarding system and process for all our donor employees and other urban networks. These volunteers would help create content, support students and also conduct field visits. We used to run a volunteer based model for 3 years, but havent been able to do it actively post the pandemic. Do you think we can still go ahead and apply? We plan to leverage the resources from this grant to set up the volunteering system as it is a high priority for us to engage volunteers in our program at a large scale.
Hi, I need some clarity on how the number of Hours volunteered are calculated? In Q12, the example has confused me. If 45 Volunteers spend an average of 2 hrs a week for 9 months in a year, you get 45vol * 2hrs per week * 39 weeks = 3510 Vol-Hours
However, the example says it is 1080 Vol-Hrs. Please clarify. I think, I am heavily missing some key point here…
No harm in applying. So while your current volunteer data may be zero, pls use the “Anything else you’d like to share” question to share some stats on the scale of your vol based model that you had 3 years ago.
May I know the exact meaning of Volunteer, is it directly to mean the staff members or volunteers who are willing to come and work for the organization
It is defined clearly- 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
Seniors in Seva is a registered voluntary organization with a little over 100 volunteers, mostly senior citizens, with expertise in varied managerial and technical functions. We extend professional / technical support to social organizations looking for such support through the volunteers. The volunteers are not rewarded monetarily either by us or by the supported organizations. We have a little over 20 registered organizations and there has been about thirty projects for which our volunteers have supported / are supporting the organizations in our short duration of existence.
Our expenses have been met by the contribution of the trustees of Seniors in Seva. With the volume of our work growing, we may need financial resouces to meet expenses relating to administrative, legal, travel, communication, etc. though we would like to keep them as minimum as possible.
Are we eligible to apply subject to meeting other conditions?
I dont understand EIV cohort classifications. Will be grateful if some light can be thrown on it.
So while defining the volunteer it states “If you intend to compensate or reimburse expenses at a higher rate, you will not qualify for these grants”.
My question is that if pay the volunteer INR 10/hour from this grant and compensate additional amount from other grants, will it be acceptable?
Thanks
In the last section: Amount of grant sought in Rs in Year3 (Skip this question if your request was for a onetime grant or for a 1 or 2 year grant).
Even though I have checked ‘one time grant’ in the previous prompt, it still asks me for a number - not allowing me to skip. I tried entering 0 but still won’t accept.
Hi Venkat,
We are a bit confused about the “Staff:volunteer ratio must be less than 1:25 at least.”
Does this mean that for every staff, there should be at least 25 volunteers? So, for instance, if our organisation has 7 staff members, then the number of volunteers should be 7x25=175 at least? What if the number of volunteers is less than 175 but our total volunteer hours is more than 40000 hrs per year?
