Applications open for Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s India Fund Program 2024

Deadline: Ongoing Opportunity

Applications are now open for the Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s India Fund Program.

The work in India centres around funding small NGOs working with the most vulnerable communities in priority geographical areas.
They believe that communities must be central to the work partners undertake and should place people facing disadvantage in India at the heart of leading change and designing solutions to overcome inequality.
The strategic aims of the fund are to:
- encourage NGOs to take on community-centric development programmes;
- enable communities to take charge of their own development and improve their lives;
- encourage development funding to address systemic change; and
- enhance the capacity of organisations and people who facilitate the above aims.
Vulnerable communities
- They fund organisations working with vulnerable communities. This includes but is not limited the following groups:
  - Communities with little or no access to education
  - Communities with little or no access to health services
  - Dalit communities, particularly those in dangerous or harmful work
  - Disabled people, particularly children
  - Families living in extreme poverty
  - Tribal communities fighting for or dispossessed of their land and resources
  - Women

This focuses on central parts of India which are among the poorest parts of the country, stretching between the eastern part of Gujarat in the west-to-West Bengal and Assam in the east.
They support work in the following states:
- Madhya Pradesh
- Chhattisgarh
- Odisha
- Jharkhand
- Bihar
- West Bengal
- Assam
In addition to these states, they also support work in certain culturally identifiable regions in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan which face more extreme poverty than other parts in those states:
- Mewar and Hadoti (southern and south-eastern Rajasthan)
- Bundelkhand (Northern Madhya Pradesh and southern districts of Uttar Pradesh bordering Madhya Pradesh)
- The Dangs (south-eastern Gujarat)
- Telangana (northern Andhra Pradesh)
- Vidharbha (eastern and northern Maharashtra)

Eligibility Criteria

Organisations supported within the Fund have to be local Indian NGOs with Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) registration.
They are looking to fund organisations who are:
- working with communities to develop their ideas;
- improving the overall wellbeing of communities in the long-term – not just short-term improvements;
- developing links between their own work and those of the panchayats (in rural areas) and the municipalities (in urban areas);
- aware of and mitigating their environmental impact and seeking to improve the ecology of the area they’re based; and
- working to promote gender equality and support people of all genders to make change.

Ineligibility Criteria

In addition to the general exclusions, they do not support the following:
- Non-Indian organisations or locally registered branches of non-Indian organisations
- Organisations without FCRA registration (please note that they do not work on prior permission)
- Political or religious institutions
- Applications received through consultants or fundraisers. Please apply to Paul Hamlyn Foundation directly

For more information, visit PHF.