EDI & WP Fund Guidance

1. Objectives

This is a central fund that students and/or staff can apply to in order to fund activities related to promoting Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) and/or Widening Participation (WP) initiatives and events.

The fund is split into two: funds supporting general EDI initiatives; and funds supporting WP activity.

Applicants will be asked to demonstrate purpose, intended outputs with subsequent outcomes that support initiatives driving EDI or WP with all members of the Durham University community.

EDI section of the fund:  Is intended to provide support for initiatives aimed at furthering the University’s commitment to building an inclusive and respectful culture and which enable or meaningfully contribute to one or more of the strategic aims and objectives of the Inclusive Durham framework.

The WP section of the fund: Aligns to provide support for initiatives aimed at furthering Durham’s commitment to access and participation, listed in Durham’s Access and Participation Plan (APP). The fund is limited to supporting initiatives focused on progressing access to higher education, with the hope to extend to APP activities across the whole student lifecycle in the future.

We highly recommend adopting an intersectional approach and clearly showcasing the impact on your target audience. Additionally, collaborating across your department to ensure a cohesive strategy is encouraged.

 

2. Eligibility & Criteria of scheme

All staff and students at Durham University will be eligible to apply to the fund to support initiatives and events, on an annual basis.

In the first instance prospective applicants should engage with the appropriate EDI Business Partner to support the preparation for an EDI fund submission.

Please note if you are applying for the WP fund, we strongly encourage speaking to someone from the Schools Outreach & Widening Participation team, if you’d like to set up a meeting, please email edi.fund@durham.ac.uk to ask for a WP fund meeting.

All applications must come under one or more of the following areas to be considered:

EDI Criteria

WP Criteria

Furtherance of one or more of the aims and objectives of the Inclusive Durham framework. Our Inclusive Durham Framework (sharepoint.com) Policy development in individual university departments and divisions; feeding into much larger strategic plans. Research conducted either by students (of all levels of study) or academic (of all levels of career, from postdoc to professor) – distinctive to Grant Seedcorn Fund. Events for the entire university community, to raise awareness of an issue specific to a group within the university [please note, requests for catering will NOT be considered]. Projects for engagement, including within the local/wider community. Projects tackling societal concerns, such as sexual violence, or racial discrimination. Intersectionality, where your application will have a positive impact to multiple groups or will crosscut into wellbeing.

Furtherance of the Widening Participation agenda / Access and Participation Plan.   All activity within the WP side of the fund should be aimed at young people/students not yet at Durham University, for example, school, college or engagement with community groups. Activity or events should seek to address one or more of the risks to equality of opportunity outlined in the Office for Students (OfS) Equality of Opportunity Risk Register (EORR) for potential students (details on this are included within the form). Activity or events should aim to promote equality of opportunity for one or more specific groups of potential students (list of qualifying groups to be assessed against the Access and Participation Plan targets (e.g. Black Heritage Students) and the contextual offer criteria (e.g. POLAR 4 Q1-2).

 

3. How much funding can be requested in a single application?

The EDI section of the fund - We encourage applications to be ambitions, and as such there are no maximum limits to how much one single application can apply for.  We hope this ambition will see larger scale or more long-term focused objectives that will link to the work of the Inclusive Durham Framework.  The core value and ethos of the fund is to create inclusivity and a sense of belonging at Durham.

The WP section of the fund will consider applications up to £1,500, per project. We also have budget for one large-scale project per year, up to a limit of £2,500.

 

4. Restrictions to the scheme.

Please note the following restrictions to the scheme:

• No activity will be funded if it constitutes the usual activities of the department/office/College and falls within the remit of their expected role.
• Activity will not be funded if it needs recurring funding. There may be an exception to recurring funding where the activity forms part of yearly celebration, or engagement event, such as Black History Month.
• Any submission should first have explored departmental/their own internal funding sources before submitting an EDI fund application.
• If funding is available elsewhere, and is currently being considered or has been accepted, an application against the EDI fund will not be considered.
• Requests for catering will not typically be accepted. An exception may be made where a WP fund application shows that the provision of catering is directly addressing barriers to participation, related to specific target groups.
• Funding cannot be provided to pay students or staff to undertake activities, apart from where this is linked to a project, with identified deliverables and for applications to the WP fund, where we may accept the cost of casual staff such as Durham Student Ambassadors to aid with event delivery.
• Costs associated with travel, transport, accommodation, equipment and other costs associated with WP fund events or activity may be considered but this cannot include “work time” spent by university employees. However, applications to the WP fund may include the cost of casual staff such as Durham Student Ambassadors to aid with event delivery.
• The fund cannot be used to allow current students or staff to attend conferences or other external events. For example, by paying for travel or accommodation. Please note we will consider bids that include travel and accommodation costs for speakers attending EDI fund events in Durham University.
• The fund cannot be used for building works to make buildings more accessible.
• Reasonable adjustments for an individual’s study and or work will not be funded through the EDI fund.
• The WP fund will not approve funding for activity where the timeline does not allow for adequate planning, data collection and evaluation.

Moving forward, funding will be approved at the end of the Easter term.  Awarded funds will be available for the start of the Michaelmas term in the following academic year (subject to funding ability), with all spend to be made within that financial year (financial year end 31 July).

5. Application Process

The EDI & WP fund will be issued upon formal application and considered by a panel and assessed against identified criteria. The EDI panel will make recommendations to the PVC EDI about which applications should succeed and the respective distribution of funds. WP fund decisions will occur after the WP panel has convened to discuss bids.

You can apply for the fund using the online form. There is one form to apply for both sections of the fund and the form will ask you whether your application is for the EDI section or the WP section of the fund. Please select the one that seems most appropriate.

Can I appeal a decision?

The decision communicated to applicants is final. Where your application has been unsuccessful, you can ask for feedback outlining where the criteria has not been met. Subject to section 4 above, you may be able to reapply following re-submission of a revised business case.

6. Expectations

EDI Fund:

Each project awarded funding must complete an evaluation, highlighting key outputs and outcomes, within four weeks of the end of the project.  It is a condition of funding.  Within the ‘evaluation’ the project award holder must also provide full details of spending against the fund awarded and will be required to return any underspend to the fund.

The EDI Department will support the administration for the EDI fund and be responsible for implementing and developing the fund.

WP Fund - Support from the Schools Outreach & Widening Participation Team:

If you are successful in your bid, you’ll not only receive funds towards your Your contact can support you to align your project to the University’s strategic objectives, and support you by providing advice and guidance on areas such as  safeguarding and risk assessments.

WP Fund - Evaluation:

Each WP project awarded funding will be asked to complete an evaluation, highlighting the impact of the activity, within four weeks of the end of the project. Depending on the proposed activity, this may include providing activity level data, and potentially collecting student level data for entry into the Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT).  It is worth note that returning any evaluation required is a condition of funding.  Within the ‘evaluation’, the project award holder must also provide full details of spending against the fund awarded and will be required to return any underspend to the fund within 8 weeks of the event taking place.

The Schools Outreach and Widening Participation team use Theories of Change to demonstrate the impact we hope to make through our activities and further information can be found below. You may choose to complete a Theory of Change in support of your application: https://taso.org.uk/evidence/evaluation-guidance-resources/toc/https://taso.org.uk/evidence/evaluation-guidance-resources/toc/.

WP Fund - Safeguarding:

For all activity concerning children and/or vulnerable adults, appropriate safeguarding measures should be taken. This may include but is not limited to having DBS members of staff present for the event, completing incident report forms, training for staff around the safeguarding policy and escalation routes. The Schools Outreach and Widening Participation team can help with some aspects of this, for example with guidance about pre-event safeguarding training but safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility, and it is expected that event leads will ensure the University Safeguarding Policy is followed

WP Fund - What do we expect from you?

In return for the investment of fund and time, we expect a named contact to be the lead for the activity. This lead, and any other stakeholders should commit to meeting with the Schools Outreach & Widening Participation contact to ensure the activity is planned successfully (frequency will depend on the need and prior planning). We all have a duty of care to ensure projects we run are of quality and are suitably risk assessed.

7. Timeline

The completed application form must be submitted to by the deadline relevant to the Academic Year for which you are applying please see below.

EDI & WP Fund Application Timeline 2024/25
	Michaelmas Term – to be spent by end of July 2025		Easter Term – to be spent in AY 25/26*
Closing Date	15 November		16 June 2025
Decision communicated to applicant	w/c 9 December		w/c 11 July 2025
Spend to be completed	End July 2025		End July 2026

 

*WP to review spend allocation and may consider an additional Michaelmas 2025 submission.