The University of Huddersfield is delighted to be hosting an event on the Global Grant Community and good financial grant practice delivered by Genny Kiff from the Wellcome Trust.
The event will take place in the Boardroom in Student Central, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield, HD1 3DH, on 20th November 2018 11.30am until 2.30pm.
To book a place on this event, please contact: Jo Addie, Research Development Manager, University of Huddersfield, Email: j.addie@hud.ac.uk
Background
The Global Grant Community aims to standardise, simplify and strengthen financial governance of grants. The benefits will be to increase direct funding, reduce administration costs and time for grantors to undertake due diligence and assurance activities and provide an aspirational pathway for organisations to develop their financial governance of grants. It will help to ‘level the playing field’ and ‘democratise’ grant funding as good financial grant practice will be accessible to and utilised by all. This initiative is being developed in Africa by the African Academy of Sciences (AAS) under its Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA) platform and a consortium of grantees and grantors.

At its heart, is the Good Financial Grant Practice Standard – a globally applicable quality financial standard. Grantees will be able to self-assess against this standard via an on-line portal which will store their self-assessment and supporting documentation. This assessment can then be shared to any number of grantors. Independent assessors can undertake a certification process to validate the self-assessment. In the pilot phase, it has been very positively received by grantors and grantees of all sizes, sectors and geographical locations. There is a lot of interest from grantors to extend the due diligence portal questions to be include Grantor’s other due diligence questions, such as ethics, safeguarding etc. This will increase the value of the portal to grantees and grantors alike.

This initiative has been incubating over the past few years with significant consultation and engagement from grantees and grantors alike (including BMG and USAID, Department of Health (UK) and UKRI) and will be going live in the middle of this year. It is now getting a lot of interest from UK HEI’s who see it as a way of saving a lot of time and administration as well as building confidence in financial management and a very useful platform for building relationships and capacity building with their Southern Partners.