Nature of the programme

This programme consists of two main types of fundraising: responsive and pro-active.

Responsive fundraising refers to requests coming from ICAs in Africa to work in partnership with them to access funds from UK donors who require a UK organisation to be involved.

The three main examples of such donors are The Big Lottery Fund (formerly the Community Fund), Comic Relief and DFID, but they would also include the Baring Foundation, the Island States, etc. ICA:UK works with partners to develop and submit the proposal and then acts as project holder should the application be successful. ICA:UK has already established protocols for working with partners in this way, and has established systems for grant management.

Recent examples of such grants include from the Baring Foundation , the Community Fund (now part of the Big Lottery Fund ), and Comic Relief.

Proactive fundraising refers to the situation where ICA:UK actively seeks funding for itself and others to take a particular initiative forward. A recent example of this is the funding from the Elton John AIDS Foundation for the piloting of the Living Well programme in Kenya.

The Village Volunteers (VV) sponsorship scheme also falls within the category of proactive funding.

Established in 1985, the scheme was set up primarily to provide support to the many volunteers who, at that time, were taking the ICA approach the villages of Kenya. The scheme has continued, over the past twenty years, to provide approximately £5,000 undesignated funding to ICA Kenya each year.

Although ICA Kenya no longer has volunteers, the funding continues to be seen as being for the benefit of the staff. The scheme has also brought a legitimacy to ICA:UK (and the ICA Development Trust beforehand) which has enabled us to access further funding from (e.g.) Comic Relief.

The scheme is now being re-launched to focus on developing the capacity of all the ICAs in Africa and to deepen their impact on the people they are working with.

> Find out More