Criteria
Public outreach and schools’ education
A range of public outreach activities are funded, such as development of public events, training workshops, broadcasting or podcasting, and development of educational material. Bids for funds for general equipment such as telescopes, laptop computers, scanners, digital projectors and the like have met with little success to date, even where the basis for the application to the E&O Fund was for promoting public understanding or other purposes relevant to the aims of the Society. The Society is willing to consider applications to get schemes going but will not provide a subsidy to ongoing educational projects.
The maximum E&O grant that can be applied for is £5,000 and at most one award per year will be made to any one person/ organisation. A budgetary breakdown of the whole project (not just the amount asked for) must be included.
Successful applications will meet some, or all, of the following criteria:
- Projects that promote greater interest in and understanding of astronomy or geophysics
- Activities proven to interest the wider community and, in particular, young people in astronomy or geophysics
- Projects that can be demonstrated to have a wide reach, impact and/or lasting legacy
- Projects that are cost-effective
- Projects that are innovative
- Projects demonstrating matched funding, or support in kind, to cover some costs of the whole
The following will not normally be funded:
- Staff costs and capital expenditure: unless it can be demonstrated that these are critical to the success of the project and do not normally constitute more than 50% of the grant awarded
To apply
Applications are assessed twice a year; the deadlines for these grants rounds are 20 February and 20 August. Applications will be reviewed shortly afterwards, and awards announced within three months. You can access the application form here .
Evaluation
On completion of a funded project, applicants are required to submit an evaluation of no more than one side of A4. Should the project not be completed within 12 months of the award a short intermediate update is also required to report on the project's status.
The evaluation report is a condition for further funding and the quality of the evaluation will be considered when judging future applications.
Your evaluation should aim to:
- Establish whether the objectives of your project have been met
- Determine the impact your project has had (size of audience reached, age range and diversity of groups etc.)
- Identify how the project could have been more effective
- Identify whether there have been unintended outcomes and what these were
Conditions of the Awards
Successful applicants should promptly acknowledge receipt of their award and must agree to adhere to the conditions of the awards:
(i) Payment will be made on submission of receipts or invoices from audited bodies. Invoices from the applicant's institute are the preferred method of payment.
(ii) Payment will not be paid until a short summary (not exceeding 1 A4 page) of the outcome of the grant has been received. This should be submitted to the Awards Officer ( awards@ras.ac.uk ) on completion of expenditure.
(iii) Any publications arising from the award, whether wholly or in part, should acknowledge RAS support (this includes online publications, such as conference websites).