Call for proposals Carta Magna / Equalities Enabling Fund 2025-26
The British Embassy is now accepting project proposals for Magna Carta Fund and Equalities Enabling Fund for the 2025/2026 financial year.
Magna Carta Fund
The Magna Carta Fund (MCF) is the Human Rights Department’s flagship programme for providing small-scale, agile funding for diplomatic missions to carry out impactful, strategically driven human rights work. Within the thematic/strategic parameters set out below, diplomatic missions have full control over the exact design and scope of project work to best develop an intervention that suits their specific in-country context and priorities and is complementary to any other financing they receive.
Topics:
These are examples of some of the main topics the fund covers, although this is not an exhaustive list, and we are open to other thematic areas if you can demonstrate their close connection to human rights work in your country:
- Promotion of the universality of human rights.
- Support for human rights defenders/activists – protecting human rights defenders, capacity building, training.
- Support to civil society organisations’ (CSOs) human rights activity – capacity building, training, increased CSO engagement with human rights work.
- Strengthening human rights institutions and/or rule of law – improved reporting of human rights violations, improved mechanisms of accountability.
- Access to justice – torture prevention, death penalty, criminal justice/penal reform.
- Modern slavery – human rights in business and supply chains.
- Engagement with the UN and other international/regional human rights institutions.
- Countering influence of malign actors/states through human rights work.
- International justice, including war crimes accountability.
- Conflict minerals and private security standards.
Success criteria:
- Alignment with the above-mentioned priorities and outcome.
- Evidence of urgent or priority need.
- Activities are value for money (VfM) and cost-efficient.
- Clear and achievable deliverables within the funding period.
- Sustainability - project benefits continue after the funding ends.
- Good project design, which includes established monitoring and evaluation procedures
- Project feasibility, including capacity of implementing organisation and ability to deliver under current circumstances.
- Identification of risks and established mitigation strategies.
- The organisation’s safeguarding policies which ensure gender equality and the protection of beneficiaries.
- Administration costs for delivering a project do not exceed 10% of the total project budget.
Equalities Enabling Fund
The Equalities Enabling Fund is part of the Promoting Equalities Programme, which aims to strengthen FCDO’s global work on gender and equalities. This Fund will help to deliver better for women, girls, and marginalised groups, including LGBT+ communities and people with disabilities.
The Fund provides small-scale funds to support new activity around gender and equalities which aims to enable or mobilise work on these topics. It covers equalities in the broad sense and diplomatic mission can decide the specific thematic focus they take, dependent on in-country context.
We expect to fund projects covering a wide range of themes. Expressions of interest will be reviewed by a panel including members of the Gender & Equalities Department, the Women and Girls Department and external programme partners, Plan International, Social Development Direct and Sightsavers. Decisions will be taken by the Programme Board.
Topics:
Examples of some of the main themes the Fund cover are below, though this is not an exhaustive list:
- Promoting LGBT+ rights and inclusion.
- Promoting disability rights and inclusion.
- Ending violence against women and girls (including FGM).
- Building and strengthening inclusive social protection programmes and systems.
- Reducing inequality and exclusion based on race, ethnicity, migrant/refugee status.
- Countering rollback on the rights of women and LGBT+ communities.
- Reducing inequality and exclusion based on economic status.
- Researching and developing a report to inform new inclusion policies at institutions.
- Hosting a series of round tables for business engagement on the economic/growth case for equality.
- Funding training sessions for local institutions, to sensitise them to gender and equalities issues.
- Supporting men and boys to be allies to gender equality.
- Engaging grassroots activists in rural or remote locations.
Success criteria:
- Strategic alignment: the project proposal delivers against FCDO Gender and Equalities priorities.
- Enabling: The project creates capability and capacity to deliver future work promoting equalities.
- Inclusive: the project proactively engages multiple excluded groups throughout design and delivery.
- Accessible: the project proactively supports the involvement of different excluded groups, including through design, delivery, and budgeting.
- Intersectional: the project considers the impact of multiple identities (disability, gender, sexuality, age, ethnicity, religion, nationality, etc.) and how they can intersect to influence different individuals and groups experience of exclusion.
Funding terms
Guatemala
- For Guatemala, proposals must be submitted in Guatemalan Quetzal (GTQ) currency. Implementers will be asked to provide a GTQ bank account
Honduras
- For Honduras, proposals must be submitted in Lempiras (HNL) currency. Implementers will be asked to provide a bank account
Guatemala and Honduras
- Allocations of between £10,000 - £150,000 ODA (Official Development Assistance) can be available for Magna Carta Fund.
- Allocations of between £10,000 - £40,000 ODA can be available for Equalities Enabling Fund.
- Full project spend should ideally be completed by early to mid-January 2026. Proposals with a completion date of 28 February 2026 will be considered as long as 90% of the project spend is completed by 1 January 2026.
- Projects are funded under a quarterly reimbursement scheme (against completed activities) with no expectations of continued funding beyond the agreed period.
- All expenditures must qualify as ODA eligible. ODA is a term created by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This term serves as a measurement of international aid. ODA projects have, as a primary objective, the promotion of economic development and welfare.
- Bids can be made for both new project activity, and/or to extend an existing project.
Important milestones
| 21 October 2024 | Call for proposals opens |
| 15 November 2024 (23:55 PM Guatemala Time) | Call for proposals closes |
| 24 November 2024 | Confirmation to participants |
| January-February 2025 | Grant agreements are signed |
| July 2025 | Projects initiate |
| 1-15 January 2026 | Projects should ideally reach a 100% spend or a minimum of 90% spend if activities will be completed by 28 February 2026. For completed projects, a Project Completion Report (PCR) must be submitted |
| 28 February 2026 | Projects must reach 100% spend, activities must have been completed and Project Completion Report (PCR) submitted |
Process to apply
- Proposals must be received by 23:55 PM (Guatemala time) on 15 November 2025. Proposals submitted after the set date and time will not be considered.
- All documents must be submitted in English. Ensure that the documents have the organisation’s name at the beginning of the file name Example: OrganisationName_Project Proposal or Organisation Name_Activity Based Budget
- Proposals must be submitted to: [email protected] with the subject line “FCDO Programme Funds 2025-2026 – [Name of Organisation] – [Country]
- Due to the high number of bids we receive, we are unable to provide detailed feedback to unsuccessful bids.
- Please direct any queries to: [email protected]
What to expect after?
Both successful and rejected bids will receive notice in due course. Selected proposals will go through a Due Diligence Assessment (DDA). The Embassy will save the right to decide whether it should maintain or reject a proposal depending on DDA outcomes.
Implementing partners will be expected to sign a standard FCDO grant agreement with the Embassy. The terms of agreement are not negotiable. All implementers must also commit to a consistent financial management, regular monitoring and reporting back when requested; including discussing and updating any changes to the Activity Based Budget with the assigned Projects Officer.