FAQ - Who we are

At Nominet Trust, we harness new possibilities presented by the internet to seek out, galvanise and nurture the untapped potential of grass-roots social action that empowers people to change the world and their own lives in beneficial ways.

To find out a little more about our work, watch this short film.

We have no upper or lower funding limit as we like to encourage applicants to be realistic about what they need to achieve their project objectives.  At opposite ends of the spectrum, we have invested in projects lasting 6 months that require £2,500 to deliver, and those seeking in excess of £250,000 over a two-year duration.

If you are looking for funding of over £100,000, your application will be strengthened if you can demonstrate that you have been successful in attracting part match-funding from other organisations.

The majority of projects we invest in are UK-based.  However, we do make a limited amount of investment each year in international projects which align with our areas of focus. If you are a UK-based organisation running an overseas project, we would welcome your application.

We will fund the costs of staff directly involved in delivering a project e.g. project managers, trainers, web developers.  We do not provide funding to cover organisational running costs unconnected to the project.

We will give consideration to funding requests to cover hardware, software or connectivity costs - but only if they are fundamental to successful project delivery.  In this case, any hardware, software or connectivity costs should form only a small percentage of the overall investment, and your applications should provide transparent details on all such costs.  Hardware or infrastructure procurement projects will not be considered.

We don't offer funding for website improvements if no new functional or service delivery innovations are being created.  We will only consider funding website development if the project's objectives are consistent with our areas of focus and the organisation meets our funding guidelines.

Yes. We appreciate that projects vary in length and will consider funding any length of project up to a maximum of three years.

The duration of our investment is agreed on a project-by-project basis.  We place a high value on projects that can demonstrate that they have a sustainability plan that allows them to maintain, or increase, momentum beyond the period of our support.

We hope that all projects will continue to be successful in the years that follow our investment.  Therefore we expect all organisations to identify how their project will become sustainable, if appropriate, beyond the end of our investment period.  We are unlikely to reinvest in a project that we have already supported.

As part of our decision-making process, we will look at whether other funders are already involved in your project, or have been approached.

While match-funding is not a pre-requisite, if you are seeking funding of over £100,000, we recommend that you investigate other sources of revenue funding before submitting your application, as this will strengthen your proposal.

Yes, we will consider an application for a new project, even if you're in receipt of funding for an existing project, as long as it is completely unrelated and looking at a different social challenge.  Please bear in mind that you will need to complete the application process again and we make no guarantee that your application will be successful.

Typically, we do not provide repeat funding for the same project, as we believe in supporting sustainable initiatives.  We expect all our projects to develop a sustainability plan during the period of our investment, so that they can they are able to secure their future.  

Not necessarily.  The level of investment awarded is sometimes different from that requested.  This can be for a number of reasons (beside our own budget constraints).  For example, you may have included items in your budget (e.g. hardware or organisational overheads) that we do not fund, we may think there are opportunities to deliver your project more cost effectively, or we may feel that you could seek match-funding for some of the costs.

Where we feel the amount of investment needs to be reconsidered, one of our team will usually get in touch to discuss your application and review the alternative options available. 

The Intellectual Property (IP) rests AND REMAINS with the applicant for projects supported by Nominet Trust.  THIS INCLUDES IP GENERATED WITH NOMINET TRUST FUNDING. The only restrictions we have around IP are part of our funding agreement and state that projects we support are BOUND not to infringe the copyright or other intellectual property rights of any third party as part of their work.

As a learning organisation, we are not looking for projects that have limited ambitions for the use of digital technology; for example if you are wanting to add digital to existing services in order to make them more efficient or cost-effective, we are not the funder for you.  Instead, we seek social innovation with technology, particularly projects that make imaginative use of technology to re-think a specific social challenge. 

As a result, there are certain types of projects, or project budgetary items that we do not support, such as:

• hardware or software procurement projects; for example a project to equip a school with PCs, buy software licences, or install wi-fi for a community


• website improvements where no new functional or service delivery innovations are created


• website development unless the project and organisation delivers against one of our areas of focus and meets our funding guidelines


• core organisational running costs

We invest in projects which most closely align to our area of focus. In all cases projects must demonstrate how the internet can be used to improve the lives of individuals and communities. Each year we receive many more applications than we are able to fund. So before submitting your application, make sure you refer to the all of the information in our How to Apply section. Please note that in addition to our core programmes, we may introduce specific calls for applications throughout the year.

We can only invest in projects run by a registered organisation; these may include:

• Charities
• Not-for-profits
• Community groups
• Schools, PTAs, universities or other educational establishments
• Statutory bodies e.g. local authorities
• Commercially-run organisations that act as social enterprises
• Other grant-making bodies to make awards on our behalf

There are a number of organisations that we cannot fund.  Please do not apply if you represent one of the following:

• a political party
• political lobbying groups
• individuals (unless the individual runs a registered organisation)

The Intellectual Property (IP) rests AND REMAINS with the applicant for projects supported by Nominet Trust.  THIS INCLUDES IP GENERATED WITH NOMINET TRUST FUNDING. The only restrictions we have around IP are part of our funding agreement and state that projects we support are BOUND not to infringe the copyright or other intellectual property rights of any third party as part of their work.

You can apply at any time, but Stage 2 applications are reviwed three times a year. 

You should consider when you would like your funding to start and use the deadline dates published on our website to work out to when you need to apply by.

It usually takes about four months from when we receive your initial Stage 1 form until a final decision is reached.  Please take this into account when planning your project.

Our Board of Trustees meet three times a year to review and approve the Stage 2 applications received.

The deadlines for receiving Stage 1 applications are advisory and are generally set to be one month before the Stage 2 submission deadline (which is fixed).  You can submit your Stage 1 application at any time, but the advisory deadline helps to ensure that you have adequate time to complete the Stage 2 application, should you be invited to do so.  We aim to respond to Stage 1 applications within two weeks of receipt, so the later you apply, the less time you will have to complete and submit the Stage 2 form before the deadline.

If you are invited to complete the Stage 2 application form, but miss the deadline, your application will be carried over to the next funding round three months' later - there is no need to start again at Stage 1.

If you think you have a project that Nominet Trust would be interested in funding, then you can apply using our online application process.  We have a two-stage application process.  Stage 1 allows you to describe the key features of your project and what you hope to achieve via a relatively short and straightforward online form.

We aim to review all Stage 1 forms within two weeks' of receipt.  The projects we feel align closely with our aims and objectives will be shortlisted and invited to complete the Stage 2 form - also online.

All application forms received are acknowledged by an automated email.  We aim to respond by email to Stage 1 applications with an accept or decline decision within two weeks.  If your Stage 1 application is accepted, we will invite you to submit a detailed and costed Stage 2 application.

You will be notified of the outcome of your Stage 2 application, again via email, shortly after our Board of Trustees' Meeting, which takes place each quarter.

If you have any queries about the progress of your application, you can contact us on 01865 334000 or e-mail: enquiries@nominettrust.org.uk

Before your application is presented to our Board of Trustees for consideration, it will have been reviewed by our team.  If there are aspects of your application that are unclear, or lacking in detail, we may suggest a meeting or phone call to discuss these.  It is also more likely that we will contact you if you are applying for a sizeable investment.

Our Board of Trustees will consider all of the responses you have supplied in your application form and make an informed decision based on this.

We encourage applicants to upload relevant, supporting information as this can often help us answer specific questions about your project.

We will also undertake various due diligence checks to establish the authenticity of your organisation and application, including references.  If we need more information from you before making a decision on your request, we will ask you.

Due to the large number of applications we receive each year, we don't have the resources to feedback on each of the unsuccessful projects.

When we refer to monitoring, we mean how you collect information about what is happening in your project and report to us on progress.

There are two main reasons we monitor progress:

Firstly, we strongly believe that every project is a learning process, both for the project organisation and for Nominet Trust. Reflecting on how the project is progressing is a crucial part of effective project delivery. This means asking honest questions about what is and isn’t working, and most importantly, why.

Secondly, Nominet Trust has a responsibility to account for the investments we make. This means having a way of articulating and evidencing the activities and impact that our investments make in the world.

We have a standard Monitoring Form, which you will be asked to complete online at regular intervals during your project (e.g. quarterly).  It asks how the project is progressing against your project plan and whether you are achieving the objectives you have set. We also ask for updated budgets so we can keep track of the investment.

We always encourage honesty in monitoring and evaluation. We recognise any project is a learning process and will undergo changes and adaptations as it progresses.

Evaluation is about learning about what works from your project and the model of change you are using.  It focuses on understanding what change has happened for the beneficiaries and why.  Nominet Trust focuses on measuring ‘outcomes’, the changes that your project has effected, rather than just what the project has produced.

Outputs are the products of the project. For example it might be the resources produced or workshops run.

Outcomes are the specific changes that result from your project.  This could include something participants learnt, a change in the participants’ behaviour, a change in the environment, or a change in society.  Outcomes could be intended or unintended.

It can be helpful to try to step away from the specifics of project delivery for a moment and ask yourself: what changes do I want this project to make? How will be the participants (or wider community) be changed by this project? Outcomes should relate to the original need your project is trying to satisfy.

There are lots of free useful resources online to help you identify outcomes. The Charities Evaluation Services has some great free downloadable resources. View their online guidance to outcomes

If you are at risk of not meeting your objectives, we need to be informed as soon as possible.  We will ask you to identify the project risks and how you intend to mitigate these.  We will offer support and advice where possibled.  We believe all projects are a learning process and innovation carries risk. 

If appropriate, there are sanctions for non delivery in our Funding Agreement, which we could invoke.

A Theory of Change is a way of creating a step-by-step map of the changes your project will make. It identifies the overall goal of your project, and breaks down all the changes that need to happen to achieve it.

Creating a Theory of Change means you end up with a chain of cause and effect linking your short term outcomes to your overall goal.  It's like saying "if this happens, then that will happen." A Theory of Change also helps you to identify the assumptions in your project about how one change will lead to another.  These assumptions often form a crucial part of a project evaluation.

A logic model is a way of mapping out the different components of a project.  It generally has 4 parts:

• Inputs - the resources that go into a project (e.g. money or people's time)
• Activities - the activities that the project undertakes (e.g. running a training session)
• Outputs - the tangible results of the project (e.g. number of people trained)
• Outcomes - the changes the outputs has resulted in (e.g. more people using the internet)

The Intellectual Property (IP) rests AND REMAINS with the applicant for projects supported by Nominet Trust.  THIS INCLUDES IP GENERATED WITH NOMINET TRUST FUNDING. The only restrictions we have around IP are part of our funding agreement and state that projects we support are BOUND not to infringe the copyright or other intellectual property rights of any third party as part of their work.