Armed Forces Families Fund: Research Grants programme

Overview

This programme will award grants of up to £60,000 for research projects that explore particular challenges faced by Armed Forces families.

Eligibility

To be eligible for this funding, you must be either:

• A UK-based university
• A registered charity

What’s available

Grants of up to £60,000 over for projects delivered over 18 months. They expect most grants awarded under this programme to be £30,000 or less.

Themes and priorities

They are looking for projects that will contribute to the wider understanding of complex educational or welfare issues affecting Armed Forces families, and propose solutions.

This is a targeted and strategic programme that aims to develop a stronger understanding of the specific needs and challenges faced by Armed Forces families. Applications must address at least one of these 6 key challenges:

• The impact of Service life for children with SEND
• The impact of separation of Service personnel from children in their key early years development.
• Whether Service children achieve the highest GCSE grades at a comparable rate to their civilian counterparts.
• What are the key educational risks and benefits associated with transitions between education systems for Service children?
• What evidence is there that Foreign & Commonwealth Service families are overrepresented in statutory social care services and single Service welfare provision.
• How do Forces families currently receive information from Defence, including what are their preferences?

What can funds be spent on?

Most of the things you’ll need for your research project can be covered, whether it is people’s time, travel, costs of delivering work online or perhaps venue hire for focus groups.

The Trust will consider applications that include a reasonable contribution to overhead/core costs. They would expect to see this reflected within your budget breakdown.

It is highly unlikely that they will fund projects with budgets that are dominated by capital costs. They would not expect to fund the costs of purchasing a vehicle, but we would pay for mileage costs on vehicles used by your staff and volunteers.

Your project might include the following costs;

• Staff time for this fixed-term project.
• Additional consultancy or professional support where this delivers clear value to your research project.
• Sessional staff or freelancers that you may need to run your project and activity.
• Reasonable travel costs including fares or mileage for project staff, volunteers or beneficiaries to enable participation in the research project.
• Purchasing items that will help you to deliver your project, such as additional telephones or laptops.
• Reasonable costs for storing and transporting items, including wear and tear on private vehicles.
• Reasonable overheads, which reflect the cost to your organisation of delivering this project, taking account of recent cost increases.

There is more information in the programme guidance document here.