The Nine Common Criteria for Funding

When the funding criteria prescribe the value of man-hours at US$2.50 per man-hour, the value of your volunteer man-hours will be 1500 x US$2.50 or US$3,750.00.

The equity value of your counterpart therefore will be $500.00 + $3,750.00 or a total of US$4,250.00.

If your proposal is seeking US$10,000.00 funding at 50% commitment on your part, it means you will have to put up at least US$5,000.00. If you already have an equivalent equity value of US$4,250.00, you only need to raise an amount equivalent at least to US$750.00.

Your organization can decide to either get additional hard assets like equipment, tools or appliance, or put in more man-hours. Or you may simply just put in more cash into your program or project.

Most of the time, the valuation is on a project-to-project basis rather than on a program level.

Funding organizations normally avoid funding programs since programs address long term goals and may usually mean underwriting the cost of operations or management.

Projects are usually a cluster of related activities with a specific start and end dates. When you plan projects, you usually have a fix budget in mind, while programs normally involve large revolving funds allocated to different teams or operating units.

Funding organizations may have a certain bias for certain projects. There are those who support only competence or human resource development. Others are biased specifically for ecological or environmental projects. And still others provide funding only for projects for the handicap or the physically impaired.

The above set of criteria may apply to any type or category of projects.

By the way, if you have to come up with figures in your proposal for funding, always use currency in US dollars unless there is a specific requirement for conversion to other currencies. The European Union will prefer reflecting currency in Euros.