I need YOU to help ME, so DFID can help YOU.
The UK government has stated its intention to leave the European Union on 31 October. It remains possible that the UK could exit without a deal.
Nobody has a clear view on what this would mean for UK NGOs with EU contracts. One possibility is that the contracts will be cancelled – putting the people who benefit from these services at risk of immediately losing support.
The Department for International Development (DFID) has agreed on an assurance policy for UK NGOs to prevent this happening. The policy is open to UK NGOs and their downstream partners enabling them to continue to deliver programmes until they come to their planned end.
CARE and DFID
Working in collaboration with the sector, CARE has designed a fund for DFID to operationalise their assurance policy. Ahead of 31 October we are again preparing for the fund to go live.
Our contract with DFID requires us to:
- Provide DFID with policy advice on match funding, serious incident management and audit, considering the increased scale of the fund.
- Work across the UK INGO sector to ensure DFID knows how many NGOs will need access to funding, how much and when.
- Set up the Fund Management Unit at CARE.
What can you do?
- Keep up to date with what is happening. CARE will be sharing all information via the Bond EU Funding and Policy Group. Make sure you sign up to automatically get information on the fund.
- Let us know what funding you need. All projects first need DFID approval, then we can work with you on your cashflow needs. If you have not been involved in fund previously and do not have a letter of approval from DFID, please do contact them on DFIDContingencyPlanning@dfid.gov.uk.
- If you already have DFID’s approval – most of you have – please return your data to us using this spreadsheet writing to brexit@careinternational.org.
CARE and Humentum will be hosting a finance directors meeting at CARE’s offices in London on 3 October to discuss implementation and facilitate fast payments. Invites to follow through the BOND group.
Get your questions answered. I’ll be at Bond’s Funding for Development Conference on 7 October with DFID to help clarify DFID’s underwriting.
Come join us. CARE is in the process of recruiting contract and finance staff to help us onboard all these projects. We would love to have staff from our sector seconded into the fund management unit. The job description is now live. Please send us an email if you’d like to discuss this opportunity.
For any questions, please contact Brexit@careinternational.org. We are here to make sure nobody from the sector with EC funding gets caught out if we are faced with a no-deal Brexit.
About the author
Victoria is Director of Programmes and Safeguarding at CARE UK. She is responsible for a portfolio of development and humanitarian programmes globally. Prior to this she worked for DFID and the Foreign Office, including setting up a UK AID office in Jordan and heading up aid to Libya. She is currently the Chief of Party for the Fund operationalising the DFID assurance policy.