The Innocent Foundation — Seed Grants for Sustainable Agriculture in the Developing World
Three-quarters of the world’s poorest people rely on small plots of land to feed their hungry families and provide all income to live. That’s why we direct our money towards sustainable agricultural projects to support these farming families to produce more food and increase their income while preserving the land for future generations.
For these small-scale farmers life can be a daily struggle with unproductive soil, crop disease, pests and drought. Their livestock are often weak or sick and demand their own source of food and water. Markets to sell their products at a fair price can be hard to find and a lack of support puts millions of families at risk of extreme poverty and hunger.
These grants are specifically designed to help our partners get brand new projects off the ground as well as introducing established techniques into new places. In lots of cases, our money also helps partners to access grants from other funders to leverage the impact of their work and to keep projects running.
We Will Fund:
- Where You Work: You work in a country which has serious, alarming or extremely alarming levels of hunger according to the latest Global Hunger Index
- Who You Help: You are helping the poorest and most marginalised in society who are dependent on subsistence agriculture. You focus on those who are hungry or undernourished some or all of the time.
- Your Project: Your project focuses on sustainable agriculture activities (producing food whether plant or animal based, using farming techniques that protect the environment, public health, human communities and animal welfare), helping communities grow enough to feed and support themselves. You are looking for funding to start a project (e.g. testing an idea or working in a new context), not follow-on funding for an existing project. We want to give you the space to test your idea, refine it and prove it works.
- Amount of Funding: You can request up to £30,000 per year for 3 years (although we’ll probably start smaller than that if it’s the first time we’ve worked with you). While we aim to be the first funder for your project to help you get started, we would be delighted if this helps you unlock co-funding from other donors to make our grant go further. You should be able to demonstrate that your project provides a sustainable solution which will eventually work without external financial support.
- Your Organisation: You must be a UK registered charity with three years of accounts available for review. You will have a strong track record of delivering sustainable agriculture projects. We like working with smaller organisations with an annual turnover of less than £5 million, although we won’t automatically rule you out if you’re bigger.
We Don’t Fund:
- Core costs alone, but are happy to include these as overheads pro-rated to the project
- Major capital costs like buildings or machinery
- Applications in the following areas: the promotion of religious or political causes, general appeals or circulars, individual sponsorship, events or conferences
The purpose for which you are applying to us must be legally charitable and your constitution must allow you to carry out the work that you propose.
Think your project ticks all the right boxes? We want to hear from you – submit an application here.
