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Claiming and payment for the matched funding scheme

The first and second year of the Matched Funding Scheme for Voluntary Giving have concluded and we have paid participating institutions.

Third-year claims

We have now sent letters to participating institutions to explain in full the claiming process for the third year of the scheme.

To claim participating institutions should complete the return form which is available via the HEFCE extranet.

This will inform us of institutions' eligible philanthropic fundraising totals for the 2010-11 financial year. For institutions that are submitting claims:

  • the institution's Finance Director must certify the completed return form, which should be submitted electronically via the HEFCE extranet by no later than 1700 on 21 October 2011.
  • a copy of the certified completed return form, signed by the institution's Finance Director, should then be sent to HEFCE to arrive by 1700 on 11 November 2011.

Institutions who do not meet the above deadlines will not receive their matched funding for year 3 of the scheme.

Matched funding scheme for voluntary giving 2008 to 2011: data return for 2010-11

[ Download Matched funding scheme for voluntary giving 2008 to 2011: data return for 2010-11 as Adobe PDF 90K ]

Note on end of the scheme and final claims

In its December grant letter to HEFCE the Government confirmed that it would extend the period of payment for the voluntary giving scheme to July 2012. This does not mean that the claims period for the scheme will extend beyond 31 July 2011. Instead, the final tranche of funding will be split between February 2012 and July or August 2012, rather than paid in full in February 2012.

Second-year payments

We have sent letters notifying institutions of their second-year payments.

Matched funding scheme for voluntary giving 2008 to 2011: second year payments

[ Download Matched funding scheme for voluntary giving 2008 to 2011: second year payments as Adobe PDF 46K | Download Matched funding scheme for voluntary giving 2008 to 2011: second year payments as MS Word 126K ]

The following letter to Finance Directors at institutions set out the claiming process for the second year of the scheme.

Letter to Finance Directors: data return for 2009-10

[ Download Letter to Finance Directors: data return for 2009-10 as Adobe PDF 88K ]

First-year payments

In February 2010, we sent letters to heads of institutions confirming the amount of match paid out under year 1 of the scheme.

The February payment to each eligible institution amounts to 37.6 per cent of the total match for their first year's claim, based on tier. We originally expected to pay out only 11.5 per cent of eligible match against the first year of the scheme. This was based on the amount of funding available for the first year compared with the scheme total of £200 million. The higher percentage reflects the funding available as a proportion of the actual eligible funding raised in the first year. Further payments will be made across the next two years up to the maximum for each tier, which will take account of the first year's payment.

Level of match

The level of match for which each institution is eligible is dependent on the tier they chose to enter at the beginning of the scheme. The levels of giving and match are as follows:

  • Tier 1 institutions will receive £1 of matched funding for every £1 of eligible donations claimed, up to a cap of £200,000.
  • Tier 2 institutions will receive £1 of matched funding for every £2 of eligible donations claimed, up to a cap of £1,350,000.
  • Tier 3 institutions will receive £1 of matched funding for every £3 of eligible donations claimed, up to a cap of £2,750,000.

Audit and good practice

We will audit a sample of all returns submitted across all three years of the scheme. PricewaterhouseCoopers have now carried out an audit of the first year of the scheme.

This identified the following examples of good practice:

  • Larger institutions with devolved financial processing allowed faculty-level representatives to receive donations and then pass them on to the central processing teams who assessed their eligibility.
  • For larger donations, some institutions developed a review process involving more senior members of management to ensure the donation met the eligibility conditions.
  • Some institutions accounted for philanthropic donations using separate coding on general ledger accounting systems to make them easier to identify and administer.
  • Good communication between the finance department and those teams that received and processed the donations made it easier to resolve transaction issues or questions around eligibility.

Further information

If you have any further questions regarding the claims process, please e-mail matchedfunding@hefce.ac.uk, or contact Fiona MacMillan on 0117 931 7039.

Last updated 24 August 2011