International Development Fund: grant awards and management stages

Conditional grant award letters

If an application is successful, the lead organisation will receive a letter of intention to fund the whole project, and an indication of each year's funding, subject to the completion by them of satisfactory reports within each reporting year.

Grant letters are then issued – these are conditional grants, based on a set of Scottish Government terms and conditions for international development grants, which must be adhered to. The grant offer letter will: 

• stipulate the initial year’s funding, with funding for each year being indicative, as it is subject to the annual enactment of the Budget (Scotland) Bill by the Scottish Parliament. Ongoing funding also depends on continued adherence by the lead organisation to the Scottish Government's Grant Terms and Conditions for International Development, and separately any decisions taken as part of Ministerial Spending Reviews which may arise in later years
• detail the programme itself, and the logical frameworks and budget which were contained in the application are incorporated in the conditional offer of grant, to ensure that the grant must be used for these purposes only

The standard Scottish Government (SG) terms and conditions currently in use for all SG grants include, as examples, that:

• the grant shall only be used for the purposes of the Project and for no other purpose whatsoever
• the grantee shall provide both a full breakdown of expenditure detailing what has been spent, in accordance with the Agreement, along with expected expenditure for any applicable coming financial year. This should include details of any underspend that Project have been permitted to reprofile. Any change to the profile or to the overall costs of the Project must be notified to the Scottish ministers at the earliest opportunity
• no part of the grant shall be used to fund any activity or material which is party political in intention, use, or presentation or appears to be designed to affect support for a political party
• grantees shall return funds not used for the approved purposes to the Scottish Government
• grantees must provide regular reports according to guidelines issued by the Scottish Government; and payments will be released only once these are approved. The grantee must also, on completion of the Project, submit a report to the Scottish ministers summarising the outcomes and performance of the Project, according to Scottish Government requirements
• the Scottish Government will only pay for what grantees actually spend in a given financial year – the Scottish Government will ask grantees to return any funds not spent by 31 March
• unspent funding in any one year may not be carried over to the subsequent year 
• in the event of the grantee becoming aware of, or suspecting, any irregular or fraudulent activity that may have any impact on the project or on the use of the grant, or any part of it, the grantee must immediately notify the Scottish Government of such activity and provide such other information as required by Scottish Government in that regard
• the grantee shall, on completion of the Project, submit a report to the Scottish ministers summarising the outcomes and performance of the Project

We then apply additional and/or modified conditions for any international development funding beyond the standard Scottish Government terms and conditions. These additional grant conditions for international development funding have continued to be revised in line with best practice as this develops in key areas such as safeguarding.