Information for grant holders

First of all - congratulations on being awarded a grant for your project! You will receive a conditional grant offer by email and you'll be asked to complete and return to us a new grant holder form. This form gives us essential information to begin the checks which we need to make before we can issue your grant.

You'll then be emailed a Deed of Grant or a grant offer. Once this contract is signed and returned to us (and all the checks needed are completed by us) you will be issued with your grant funds.

We will then publicise news about your grant and the start of your Froebel Trust funded project. We ask that you do not share information about your grant in the public domain until you have confirmation from us of that first grant payment is being made.

During your project, we'll check in with you and offer support. We will help you to monitor progress and can advise you on your plans for your final report. If you experience any problems at any stage of with your funded project or have any questions, please just get in touch with us. Please email office@froebeltrust.org.uk for the attention of Victoria Arneil, Programme Manager (Grants & Events).

This is the legally binding contract which explains the details of your Froebel Trust grant. It includes the plans for your funded project and the budget which you submitted to us.

The deed or the grant offer also includes the payment dates (some grants have agreed instalment payments) and all the detailed terms and conditions for your grant.

It's a formal document which we need you to read carefully and understand. It helps you to know what's involved in being a grant holder and it helps us to make sure that we are honouring our charitable objectives as a grant maker.

This legal document needs to be signed by an authorised signatory at your organisation - this may be a Finance Officer, Treasurer, Head of Department, Chief of Faculty, Contracts Officer, Vice-Chancellor, Headteacher or other designated person at your organisation.

It must be signed and the whole document returned to us before any payments can be made to you.

Charities are required to carry out due diligence checks on grant beneficiaries. Due diligence is a range of practical steps and standard checks that need to be done by the Froebel Trust to ensure that we know our funds are reaching the people and organisations they are intended for. It is a crucial part of good governance and financial management.

We ask all our grant holders to supply a range of evidence to confirm your identity and details about your organisation to check your eligibility for funding. All information you share with us will be kept strictly confidential and will not be shared.

Until these careful checks have been completed successfully, we are unable to release any grant payments to you. You can find out more about this required process from the Charity Commission.

Once you have checked and signed your deed of grant - and the due diligence checks have been completed successfully - you can then submit an invoice to request your grant payment.

Please make sure your invoice includes your grant reference number and the name of your project. You can find your grant reference number on your deed of grant or grant offer document.

If you have any queries about invoices you can contact office@froebeltrust.org.uk and mark your message for the attention of Oksana Lissovets, Finance Manager.

Grant awards that cover the cost of a salary for the duration of the project are for the post rather than the individual in that role. If the individual post holder needs to take maternity/paternity /parental leave during the funding period, the Froebel Trust grant will not cover payments made to that member of staff during their leave.

However, the grant can be used for maternity/paternity/parental leave cover for the funded role, or it may be possible to put the project on hold for the duration of the leave, subject to the project requirements and implications for ethical research practice.You must contact the Froebel Trust Grants Manager in advance to discuss options for upcoming maternity/paternity/parental leave or before the appointment of cover staff for the post.

The HM Revenue and Customs website provides advice on paying or reclaiming statutory maternity/paternity/parental leave pay.

The Froebel Trust grants do not cover sick pay, but you must contact the Grants Manager if sick leave affects your funded project. Please email office@froebeltrust.org.uk for the attention of Victoria Arneil, Programme Manager (Grants & Events).

Once you've started your project, we'll give you a call at the half way point (or 6 months into a project for those lasting several years). This informal conversation will give you the chance to raise any queries you have, discuss anything that's not quite going to plan and to share stories with us about what you're learning and how your project is progressing.

The aim of this progress check-in is to help you shape your plans for your final report and allows us to try and help you to tell the story of your project's outcomes to a wide audience.

For smaller grants, we ask for an account statement (a template will be sent to you) to be filled in at the end of your project and sent back to us. If your grant is being paid to you in two or more instalments (for larger grants), we will send you an account statement template to fill in around 6 months into your project. You will be asked to do this before each instalment is paid, just so we can see how your project is progressing.

We'll also arrange a monitoring visit or call with you - to check that the funds are being spent as planned, to assist you with managing your budget and to allow further instalments of your grant to be released. This is a standard part of good financial practice.

If you have any queries about the monitoring process you can contact office@froebeltrust.org.uk and mark your message for the attention of Oksana Lissovets, Finance Manager.

We understand that sometimes you may need to make changes to your plans once your project has begun. If you need to make a change to your agreed project please let us know as soon as possible. For example - if you want to request an extension; if there has been a delay to your project starting; if your place of work is changing; if you would like to amend your agreed budget. Get in touch with us and explain the changes you would like to make and we'll do our best to support you.

Each change request is dealt with on a case by case basis - but please note, that extensions must be requested at least three months before the agreed end date for your grant.

Email your change requests to office@froebeltrust.org.uk for the attention of Victoria Arneil, Programme Manager (Grants & Events).

We ask you to send us a final report at the end of you project so that we can share learning with others and let more people know about the difference your project has made. You should plan to collect information about the differences you are making (your outcomes) routinely from the very start of your project.

Please take a look at our simple reporting guidance which explains how we expect you to tell the story of your project and share this with us at the end of your grant. Find out more.

We also ask you to provide a final account statement. If you have any queries about your final account statement you can contact office@froebeltrust.org.uk and mark your message for the attention of Oksana Lissovets, Finance Manager.

Our vision at the Froebel Trust is of an inclusive organisation which is accessible to all. Equality, equity, diversity and inclusion (EEDI) principles and expectations underpin all our policies and processes.

We routinely collect equalities monitoring data from our grant applicants and bursary holders on a voluntary basis. We do this in accordance with our Privacy Policy and we only collect information that is necessary to help us monitor and improve our EEDI.

Measuring the impact of our grants and the analysis of equalities monitoring data helps us to understand who our funding is reaching and who we are failing to reach and engage. The findings help us to make our funding systems more inclusive and equitable.

Download our short guide for grant-holders all about communications.

Make sure you also sign up for our grant-holders' newsletter where we share media contacts and opportunities for you to publish or promote your project.

As a condition of our grants we require an acknowledgement of our funding - it helps to show what the Froebel Trust does and where the charity’s budget is spent.

We ask that all the public facing activities connected to your project, clearly features our “Funded by Froebel Trust“ logo and where appropriate a link to our website is included.

Download the Froebel Trust logo for grant holders. Different formats are available on request.

We expect you to respect and honour the rights of children, individuals and communities involved in your project. This means ensuring that that you have informed consent for their involvement and you have gained explicit permission from them before they engage in your project.

Watch a 20minute presentation by Dr Nikki Fairchild and Dr Kate Hoskins all about good practice in ethics and research. This presentation will guide you through:

- thinking about why ethics are important
- building ethics into research design
- the ethics of working with children
- practical steps to ensuring ethical research
- completing ethics paperwork and ethical guidelines.

We ask that you always keep a record of written consent before taking and using a person’s image (this includes consent from a child's their parents or carers). We ask that you explain what images will be used for (by you and by the Froebel Trust), how they will be stored and what potential risks are associated with sharing images. We never publish personal information about individual children and ask you to disguise any identifying information (for example, the name of their school or a uniform with a logo). For more details please refer to our full photography and film policy statement.

Please also take a look at our Froebel Trust Statement on Expectations of Ethical Practice in Research - this explains the principles which help to ensure that our funded research projects are conducted to a high standard - with the wellbeing, dignity and rights of participants always in mind. Data management is an important part of ethical practice. Please read our Guidance on Data Management for Froebel Trust funded projects.

It is important (morally and legally) to acknowledge someone else’s ideas or words or images which you use in your research or mention in your project reports. If you use someone else’s words or work and fail to acknowledge them, you may be accused of plagiarism and infringing copyright.

If you would like to learn more about how to accurately reference other people's work in your project report, you can download a free guide to our preferred referencing style.

The government also produce useful guidance on the use of photos, images and the internet (copyright laws).

Do get in touch with us if you would like any further advice in referencing or copyright. We're happy to help.

Watch a short presentation (created in 2023) for anyone involved in or planning a Froebel Trust funded research project.

This Froebel Trust presentation by Dr Kate Hoskins and Dr Nikki Fairchild considers good practice in ethics and research.

The presenters guide you through:

- thinking about why ethics are important

- building ethics into research design

- the ethics of working with children

- practical steps to ensuring ethical research

- completing ethics paperwork and ethical guidelines.

Dr Kate Hoskins is a Froebel Trust Trustee and Chair of the Froebel Trust Research Sub-Committee. Kate Hoskins is Professor of Education at Brunel University, London. Her research focuses on education policy, identity, inequalities in relation to early years, further and higher education. She regularly reviews for early years journals.


Dr Nikki Fairchild is a member of the Froebel Trust Research Sub-Committee. She is an Associate Professor in Creative Methodologies and Education in the School of Education, Languages and Lingusitics at the University of Portsmouth. She reviews for a range of ECEC and gender focussed journals and grant funding bodies and is on the Editorial Board of Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood.

At the end of your project you will submit your final report to us. We share this with Froebelian colleagues and experienced leaders from the field of early childhood education. They will look at the outcomes of your funded project to check the validity, quality and originality of your work. We will give you feedback on your final report.

The peer review process also helps learning from your project be shared with a wider network of researchers and educators.

The Froebel Trust is known for its applicant focused, supportive and flexible approach to its grant-making. Our aim is to ensure that the funding and grants we offer are distributed and managed fairly.

If we've got something wrong, or if you have any concerns about how a funded project has been managed by the Froebel Trust, please contact Dr Sacha Powell, Chief Executive Officer in the first instance. You can also contact Mark Neale, Chair of Trustees at office@froebeltrust.org.uk.

We are here to help and support you. If you experience any problems with your funded project or have any questions, please just get in touch with us. Please email office@froebeltrust.org.uk for the attention of Victoria Arneil, Programme Manager (Grants & Events).