What can Lloyd’s Register Foundation’s funding be used for?
We support carrying out work which helps us deliver our charitable mission and strategic objectives.
Our charitable mission:
- To secure, for the benefit of the community, high technical standards of design, manufacture, construction, maintenance, operation and performance for the purpose of enhancing the safety of life and property, at sea, and on land and in the air
- The advancement of public education including within the transportation industries and any other engineering and technological disciplines
You can find out more about our strategy and the challenges we address here.
We direct most of our grant funding - which means that we search for and select the most appropriate partner and route to impact. In our challenge areas, we invest time developing our ideas and gathering evidence which helps us to prioritise where we wish to focus our funding.
We no longer accept uninvited proposals and instead invite you to discuss your idea through our LinkedIn group.
We will still have open, competitive calls for funding, some to gather evidence, and the text here is relevant to those.
For regular updates subscribe to our monthly newsletter, or follow us on Twitter @LR_Foundation or on LinkedIn.
Demonstrate impact and public benefit
We rely on the institutions we fund to help us demonstrate that we add value to society by showing the impact our funding has. Our drivers are impact and excellence – in the work we fund we want to help build and work with world-class teams and exploit the useful results to achieve maximum public good.
What are objectives?
- Objectives are the aims of the project
- They describe what the project hopes to achieve
What are outputs?
- The individual activities, services or products resulting from the funding
- Measurable e.g. no of patents, total leveraged funding, no of papers published, etc
What are outcomes?
- People referring to ‘evidence of impact’ usually mean the outcomes of research
- Outcomes are the changes that come about as a result of a project
- Described using the ‘language of change’ e.g. reduced, increased, greater, less, etc
- Measured using outcome indicators, such as surveys
What is impact?
- ‘Grand Challenges’ / ’Big Picture’ / ‘End-game’
- Longer-term effect of an outcome
- The ultimate benefit to society in line with the Foundation’s charitable purpose
Fundamental research and application of technology
We fund both fundamental, low-TRL (technology readiness level) research and more applied technology development. The latter is focused on promoting the uptake and application of technology to address targeted needs. For the exploitation of Foundation-funded research and intellectual property we have a revenue and equity sharing policy. Read our IP Policy.
Does the Foundation use a funding model?
The Foundation wants to use its funding to support high quality research and education with excellent impact and in doing this the Foundation works with a wide range of organisations globally. Recognising the diversity of resourcing and funding arrangements used by its global community, to avoid creating barriers to participation the Foundation does not have a prescriptive funding model. Apart from the exclusion of capital items the Foundation is not restrictive in its allowable costs.
However a second driver for the Foundation is the desire to get value from its charitable funding so value for money will always be a consideration. Leverage of other resources is a key assessment factor. Examples of such leverage might include matched funding; in kind contributions; overhead support from others; and leverage against other projects and programmes. Such leveraged costs should be clearly identified in applications to the Foundation for funding.
For UK universities operating under the full economic cost (fEC) model, the UK funding councils have made specific provision to support costs of research supported by charities. Therefore we would normally only fund directly incurred costs i.e. actual costs that are explicitly identifiable as arising from the conduct of a project (e.g. staff salaries, equipment, materials, travel).
Do we fund buildings or equipment?
No. Our funding is not for capital works or infrastructure and we only fund equipment as a small proportion of research programmes. We are happy to work with other collaborators who can provide capital funding support.
Do we support individuals?
We only give grants direct to individuals through our small grants scheme. All applications must be in scope of our charitable mission and there are certain things that we will not fund under this scheme.
Is our support available to organisations outside the UK?
Yes, we support scientific research globally. Some of our funding for the advancement of skills and education also supports disadvantaged and under-represented communities outside the UK.
You will find it helpful to read our latest annual review and other publications.
What happens if your application is successful?
If your application is successful, we will draw up a formal contract. This will set out the full terms and conditions of our funding. Your full application will form part of this contract.
No announcement about our funding should be made until this has been signed by both parties.
Legal and ethical standards
Lloyd’s Register Foundation is committed to maintaining the highest legal and ethical standards and practices in all aspects of its business and affairs. As part of our assessment of your application, we need evidence of your organisation’s policies on safeguarding, anti-bullying and whistleblowing. If your application is successful, you must confirm your and your organisation’s commitment to act at all times in accordance with the highest ethical and legal standards. In particular, we will need confirmation that your organisation has in place policies and practices which are fully compliant with UK Legislation as it applies to Anti-Bribery and Corruption, Health and Safety, the Environment, Whistleblowing and Modern Slavery.
Payment of grant funding and monitoring progress
Any funding agreed is the total funding from the Foundation, including any liability for tax.
Funds will be released according to an agreed payment schedule which forms part of our contract with you. This usually relates to a reporting schedule, also set out in our contract. If each progress report is satisfactory, we will make the next payment. If reports are submitted late, then payments will be delayed.
You will be expected to manage expenditure according to the budget you set out. You must keep accurate accounts and records of the receipts and expenditure of the grant and, if requested, provide the Foundation with copies.
Intellectual property
We recognise that funding may produce foreground intellectual property and occasionally technological developments and patents. This will be addressed in our contract with you, according to our Intellectual Property Policy.
How we monitor progress of your grant
Policy for Grants Monitoring Reports.
Progress reports
Your contract will say how often we need you to report on progress and use of our funds. As well as formal reports, we require informal reports on impacts and successes.
All reporting is through the online grants application portal and in a standard format.
Financial reporting
You should report according to the schedule agreed in your contract on expenditure of the grant, giving a breakdown over the funded period, and comparing it to the budget breakdown in your original application.
Please give reasons for any irregularities, and for underspends against budget. If there are any issues to be addressed, please say how you plan to do this. If there is significant variation, we would expect you to have told us already.
You must tell us if there are any changes to how funds are spent
You should tell us immediately any issue arises. For instance, you should tell us if:
- there are delays to work starting for any reason
- people assigned to do work funded by us leave your organisation
- progress of someone or something we are funding is not in line with what we have agreed
- you expect to have an underspend at the end of the funded period
- you foresee an overspend
This list is not comprehensive and there may be other issues that arise. The best thing to do is talk to us as soon as you can and not wait until your next progress report.
There is no automatic right to carry over funds to a new period. Our agreement with you will set out the payment schedule and any anticipated variation to this will need to be discussed with us as soon as the matter arises.
Reporting on activity, impact and benefit
The Foundation has an obligation as a Charity registered in the UK with the Charity Commission to demonstrate that it is funding activity of public benefit. We rely on our grants holders to help us to do this through their regular reports on what they have achieved through our funding.
Your reports should focus not only on what our funding has enabled you to do during the funded period, but what these activities have achieved and what is their impact and public benefit.
Tell us about specific achievements and successes and what they mean for those directly affected and for society as a whole. We would like to know what difference our funding makes to the general public, not just to your organisation. We publicise success stories in our newsletter and Twitter.
What if something goes wrong while you’re being funded by us?
If any problems arise connected with the activity we are funding, you should contact us as soon as possible. These might be changes in personnel, unforeseen obstacles or delays to progress, anticipated changes to spend against budget. We will try to understand the issue and agree a resolution with you.
In cases of spend going over budget, we will not increase our funding and you will be expected either to manage within your original budget or to seek funding from other sources.
Explain the reasons for any significant financial variations and suggest the steps you will take to resolve them.
If progress is not satisfactory, please tell us how you plan to redress this and get your activity back on track.
We understand that people change jobs and that there can be delays in recruitment. Let us know if a key person involved in work we are funding leaves or is planning to leave your organisation and your plans for replacing them or ensuring that the work they do continues.
If the lead contact leaves, their replacement must register and let us know, so that we can connect them with the grant. They should not use the log in of their predecessor.
As our contracts are quite specific, you must tell us if something happens that means any of the information within the contract has become inaccurate or no longer applies. We will review the circumstances and discuss with you. If necessary, we may be able to issue a variation to the contract.
We need to be assured that the activity we have agreed to fund is carried out, and funds spent, as stated in our agreement. Our reporting process helps us monitor progress and our form helps you give us the right information to do this.
Withdrawal of funding
In exceptional circumstances we may withdraw funding. We reserve the right to terminate the whole or part of an agreement and recover all or any part of the amount paid in the event of
- any proven breach or non-observance by a grants holder of any relevant law, or
- if any of the terms of grant are breached, or
- on the occurrence of a Serious Incident. A serious incident is one that causes harm to people who come into contact with your organisation through its work; loss of your organisation’s money or assets; damage to your property; and/or harm to your organisation’s reputation.
Publicity and publications
We would like you to publicise the work you are carrying out with our support, including through social media, and to use our logo and description.
In particular, we wish to maximise the value and impact of our grant funding by making outputs publicly available. We encourage open access publication.
Acknowledging our support
We will not make an announcement about grant funding (press releases, social media statements, etc) until a grant contract is signed and request that our grant holders do the same.
Our logo is our branding and our identity. Please do not use our logo without our permission.
We can supply variants of our logo and guidance on how it should be used. Anyone who wishes to use our logo should contact us.
We encourage you to promote your activity on social media channels and connect with us so that we can share this information on our own website and social media channels. We intend to connect with all our grants holders through social media and hope you will choose to connect with us for regular updates, networking and other opportunities.
Within the application form there will be additional information to help you.