Motivation/Matt Grayson

Practice area

Fund management

Governments and donors trust MannionDaniels to manage their money and support civil society to tackle a range of international development issues around the world, from girls’ education to plastic pollution and the illegal wildlife trade. Whatever the priorities, we support organisations and projects of all types and sizes through a variety of funding mechanisms.

We mobilise high-performing consortia with partners from diverse backgrounds to respond to donor needs.

We invite proposals for critical initiatives and, following a rigorous and transparent selection process, we award grants for the strongest projects.

Our services cover the full funding round cycle from fund design and strategy to project closure.

We provide personal, tailored capacity building support for grantees along the way and are well known for our collaborative approach.

Using our global experience, we share what works (and what doesn’t) on development projects.

We learn, adapt and continually improve to deliver outstanding results and value for money.

Main points

  • Design, promotion and management of funding rounds
  • Rigorous analysis of proposals and selection of projects to receive funding
  • Financial due diligence
  • Improvements to the design, management and sustainability of projects
  • Management of performance and risk
  • Measurement and reporting of results
  • Fund level communications.

Case study: UK Aid Direct

A £150 million programme currently changing the lives of over 3 million of the world’s poorest people with UK aid from the UK Government.

We are the Fund Manager for UK Aid Direct –  FCDO’s central funding mechanism for awarding grants to small- and medium-sized UK and international civil society organisations working to reduce poverty overseas and achieve the Global Goals. MannionDaniels took over the existing Global Poverty Action Funds grants in January 2016.

We work closely with our consortium partners – Oxford Policy and Management (OPM), the Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC) at Loughborough University, the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) and the Education Development Trust – and have developed strong and coherent approaches to manage this fund, based on our guiding principles of knowledge sharing and transparency.

Project map

See where we’re currently ensuring that funds are managed effectively to bring improvements to as many people as possible