DSD Intermediary Funding Body for the Volunteering Small Grants Programme.

Descriptions

i. In May 2013 the Minister for Social Development decided to rebalance the financial assistance provided for supporting volunteering and the mechanisms for delivery. He decided that in the financial years 2013/14 and 2014/15 the financial resources allocated for the Volunteering Small Grants Programme would be increased to £600k each year (it should be noted that this figure includes the costs of any contracted IFB support).ii. The DSD Minister also determined that the application process for Volunteering Small Grants should be redesigned and that the programme should be run as an NI-wide regional programme rather than as localised programmes.iii. It is envisaged that grant assistance will be made available to volunteer-providing organisations across all of NI. To be eligible for grant assistance (minimum award GBP 200 – maximum award GBP 1 500) organisations must not have an annual income exceeding GBP 100 000 per year.iv. Examples of grant awards would be for meeting the volunteer out-of-pocket expenses of an organisation, providing travel or equipment costs for volunteers etc.v. A newly designed application process, developed by the IFB and VCU will identify key objectives of the Volunteering Strategy and clearly demonstrate how each of the applications helps in the realisation of these objectives. All such objectives will be Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Realistic and Time bound (SMART).