World Development

TWF aims to provide funding to organisations to build the basis of sustainable prosperity in low-income countries. TWF is committed to providing support that will be used in a sustainable way with lasting impact, and which avoids promoting a culture of aid-dependency. All grant applicants should be able to demonstrate the effectiveness of their approach, and show how they align with the Foundation’s priorities.

The Waterloo Foundation supports four principal themes of work to achieve this goal:

Sexual and Reproductive Health

Improving sexual and reproductive health services

Nutrition

Addressing micronutrient deficiencies

Education

Improving access to high-quality education

WASH

Providing sustained access to safe water and sanitation services and promoting good hygiene practices

Students in Mpika ZAMBIA photo by Cat Cardwell

TWF’s World Development Fund has two grant programmes:

Main Grants

are given to large, established organisations working at a regional or national scale that can demonstrate the sustained impact of their programmes. We are currently accepting applications to our Main Grants Programme only within the fields of SRH and Nutrition. Access to Main grants within the WASH and Education programmes is limited to invited applicants, reflecting already established partnerships and a targeted approach to our funding.

Small Grants

are given to smaller organisations who are delivering projects on a more localised scale. We are accepting applications for Small Grants in the fields of SRH, Nutrition, Education, and WASH.

Examples of Organisations Funded

Some of the organisations that TWF’s World Development programme has funded can be found here:

Main Grants for Education

Main Grants for Water and Sanitation

Main Grants for Nutrition

Main Grants for SRH

Small Grants for Water and Sanitation

Small Grants for Nutrition

Eligibility

Please do read the relevant pages to determine your eligibility, prior to looking at our Application Guidelines section. We receive many more strong applications than we are able to support, and are only able to consider applications that fit with one of our four principle themes and that meet our eligibility criteria.

What we will not Fund

It is not our intention to provide financial support to organisations seeking to alleviate the suffering resulting from high-profile natural or man-made disasters, including the delivery of food aid or shelter. The focus of TWF’s World Development Fund remains on long-term social and economic development.
We will not consider applications for grants in the following areas:

the promotion of religious or political causes
general appeals or circulars.

APPLICATION GUIDELINES

Geographical Priorities

The principal focus of the World Development programme is to provide support for the least economically developed countries in the world. We therefore prioritise support towards these countries, for example as determined by the UNDP’s Human Development Index ranking. It is unlikely that TWF will provide support to for work in a country that is not ranked as either ‘low human development’ or towards the bottom of the ‘medium human development’ list. The majority of our grants have been provided to support programmes in sub-Saharan Africa and occasionally in South Asia.

We are committed to the principle that development work should have long-term impact, and believe that stable national and local government plays an important role in achieving this. We will therefore prioritise support towards organisations which operate in countries that are secure and politically stable, and we are unlikely to provide support to conflict-affected regions. We are highly unlikely to consider applications from countries in the top 10 of the Fragile States Index Rankings.