Grantmaking Strategy 2026
Our objective is to fund the most effective charitable activities in Sierra Leone, in order to have maximum impact. Our focus is extreme poverty and physical suffering, but effectiveness is more important to us than the cause area. We are particularly interested in work which we expect to remain neglected by other funders.
We will continue to fund well-managed volunteer-led organisations that are small enough for us to understand everything they do. These organisations will be focussed on doing a small number of things well, or meeting basic needs in part of a district. Rather than restricting funds in an attempt to control how they are spent, we will support orgs where we trust and rate the key people and are comfortable with all their activities. We will normally cap our funding at 25% of an org’s turnover, but will consider 40% in very specific cases (eg very small orgs, capital projects, multiple organisations involved)
During 2026 we will allocate around £100k to UK charities working with extremely poor communities in Sierra Leone. For repeat funding we will indicate a three year commitment if we can see this will help the recipient organisation plan effectively, unless there is, in our opinion, a material change in what they do or how they are managed. We will be strategic in the information we ask for before each grant award, so that we learn a little more each year without creating an administration burden.
We are aware that our tight criteria limit the pool of organisations for funding. We will look at options for relaxing the criteria, and may make grants of up to £5k to other organisations which we believe have a high probability of having a significant and verifiable impact.
Whilst grantmaking is the principal way in which we bring about change, we will also
Actively advocate for promising interventions (“Grantmaking Plus”), in a way that doesn’t encourage grant chasing but may help foment new initiatives and increase funding as part of any subsequent roll outs; and
Support the NGO ecosystem in Sierra Leone in areas such as knowledge, communication, anti-corruption, fundraising, mapping, succession, trustees and volunteers
We will consider in detail how, and to what extent, we do the above by Easter 2026.
We will return to Sierra Leone in Nov 2026. The main objectives of the visit will be to
Gain comfort that orgs have spent our funding as reported
Judge the extent to which the interventions have been beneficial
Identify the organisations that have capacity to spend more, without each £ becoming less effective
Identify opportunities to take forward our work on climate
Continue to develop our understanding of the issues facing the country and the organisations working to address them.