Are we eligible to apply to the Students’ Green Fund?
The SGF can only fund students’ unions in England whose parent institutions are in receipt of HEFCE funding. This includes students’ unions in colleges delivering HE provision in receipt of HEFCE funding. Non-NUS affiliate students’ unions are welcome to apply and will receive equal treatment to affiliates. Applications must be from students’ unions, rather than student groups or societies within a students’ union, although these groups can be supporting partners in applications.
Can FE students’ unions whose parent institutions are not receipt of HEFCE funding apply?
No, but you can partner with a local HE students’ unions, and they could fund you as a delivery partner through their project, so long as it adds value to the project.
We are not sure if our college has a students’ union, we only have a Student Voice Group, so are we eligible?
The most important thing is that there are elected student leaders in place (officers or governors) who can lead the project locally. So long as you have these, you can apply. We will accept applications from institutions where no formal students’ union structure exists, but the projects must have clear student leadership and governance. NUS may be able to support you on developing your student representation structures through any successful applications.
Who should lead on our application – us or the institution?
Students’ unions are encouraged to approach various stakeholders in their institutions (academic and administrative) to develop partnership applications to the Fund, although all projects should be led by students’ unions in partnership with their institutions, rather than vice-versa.
What are the key themes of the fund?
The four key themes are student participation, partnership, impact and legacy.
What are the objectives of the SGF?
- Initiate a step change in student engagement in sustainability issues;
- Enable students to become meaningful agents for change on sustainability issues in higher education;
- Ensure sustainability remains an institutional priority within the sector;
- Put English higher education on the map for its sustainability efforts.
What sort of projects are you looking to fund?
All projects must primarily be about environmental sustainability and have an impact that can be quantified through the project, together with strong legacy potential post-funding.
All projects should help us meet a good number of our Fund-wide statements on reach, outcomes and impact.
To encourage innovation, we are not being prescriptive about the type of sustainability projects we will fund. However, we are defining sustainability in the broadest sense, including ethical issues like Fairtrade.
Projects that support the following will be deemed to demonstrate added value, and are therefore more likely to be successful: Enhancing academic achievement; enhancing student employability; supporting social enterprise and student entrepreneurship; building community bridges and strategic community partnerships; engaging hard-to-reach students (such as student parents, mature students, BME groups, etc.); helping to widen participation.
We encourage collaborative projects that span more than one institution, have a regional focus, potential for national reach, or an international dimension.
We discourage proposals that set out to reinvent or duplicate established successful projects, although we encourage applicants to scale-up and roll-out existing successful projects, including delivery into new types of organisation.
We anticipate that most successful projects will, in some way, support our own ethical and environmental strategy.
How much funding is available?
This is a single competitive bidding round through which we will distribute all £5m funding. The minimum amount per application is £50,000 per year, and the maximum £150,000 per year. Although we will accept applications for just one academic year, we anticipate most applications being for two-year projects (so between £100k and £300k in total). These amounts are all per application, and students’ unions can make multiple applications. Students’ unions can also apply in partnership with other students’ unions, although joint applications can only apply for up to the maximum per-application amount (£150,000 per year).
What can the money be spent on?
As one of the key themes of the fund is student participation, we expect most funding will be spent on engagement activities (such as employing staff, developing engagement tools, etc.) rather than large infrastructural and capital items (such as building improvements, eco-vehicles, etc.) However, we will consider projects that require large capital expenditure on the merit of the project idea, and the time to do this is through the early discussions with you through the formative feedback process.
Students’ unions can spend some of their funding through partners and via sub-contractors, however we will not fund established posts in institutions, as we would hope that institutions may give existing staff time as an in-kind contribution.
When should projects start?
All applicants will be notified either way in early August 2013, and contracts issued soon after. We anticipate most projects starting in September 2013.
What is the application process?
Unlike conventional bid processes, we will help students’ unions to develop applications through a process of formative feedback. As soon as you have a good idea a fundable project, please contact us to discuss it.
Once we have discussed it with you, and assuming we think it is a fundable idea, we will encourage you to put down in writing some more details through the expression of interest process. After we have received that, we will allocate a member of staff from our ethical and environmental department to help you develop your ideas into a full application.
The full application process will be released soon. To ensure the application process is not a barrier, we intend to keep this as straightforward and applicant-friendly as possible, whilst ensuring we obtain everything we need to adequately assess applications. So you have an idea of what is coming, we will need project objectives, reach, outcomes and impacts, a delivery plan, information on project management, key milestones, monitoring and evaluation, a communications plan, legacy, accountability, governance, and budget, including value for money. We will ask for evidence of institutional support, including the involvement and/or endorsement of academics and/or higher management. We will ask how equality is relevant to the project. We will also ask about the union’s previous activity on sustainability agenda as evidence of your pre-existing commitment.
When are the deadlines?
05 June 2013, 12 noon
Deadline for expression of interest information
26 June 2013, 12 noon
Final deadline, full applications
What is formative feedback?
Formative feedback means we help you develop your application. We were introduced to formative feedback when we applied for the funding for the SGF from HEFCE’s Catalyst Fund, and were really impressed by it. By working with you to develop an application, we are ensuring that we maximise your chances of being successful, and avoid lots of time being wasted by both parties.
Can we apply for more than one project?
There is no limit to the number of applications a students’ union can submit. Having said that, we would rather you submitted one excellent application rather than three mediocre ones.
What if we just can’t think of any good ideas?
Ask your students, consult your institutions energy or environment team, or discuss with higher management or academics. Have a look at the business plan for ideas (especially page 6), browse www.nus.org.uk/greener for inspiration, or just drop us a line and we might be able to sow the seeds of some good ideas!