LIF FAQs

1. How will I find out if I have been successful in my application?

Once all applications have been reviewed, you will hear from your usual contact at RIBA (Regional Director/Director RSAW/International team member) by email, to confirm whether or not you have been successful in your application (in whole or in part). This process will be completed by mid-March 2025.

If you have not been successful, your team member will talk you through the reasons and how you can improve an application for next time.

2. When will I receive the funds?

If you are successful, you will receive a grant letter that will confirm the offer being made and also the conditions that are related to the grant. These include confirmation that the purpose of the grant is to fund the activities which you specified in your application.

The letter will need to be signed by the LIF applicant to confirm acceptance of the conditions and returned to RIBA within the required timeline. You may be required to complete some additional documentation to ensure we can administer the funding appropriately, whether through your requested bank account or through the local RIBA team.

You will also be required to submit a risk analysis and discuss with your local RIBA team the relevant Public Liability and other insurances are in place for the project.

The award of the LIF grant monies will then be made via the next available payment run from RIBA, depending on the date of receipt of documentation. Your local RIBA team will be able to monitor this for you and confirm the details.

3. Why are you asking for copies of risk assessments?

We need to have copies of your risk assessments for insurance and audit purposes. We hope that this won’t add much to your workload, as most venues for hire will produce a copy of their risk assessment if you ask for it. It’s good practice to have a think about the risks of any event you may be running and how you will mitigate them. We have included a link to a template risk assessment on our LIF web page.

4. What do I do if I’m not sure what insurance cover we have?

If you are not sure whether the activities we are funding will be covered by insurance, please discuss with your local RIBA team member. We can then check with our insurance broker whether this is something that RIBA can cover or whether they can make some recommendations on suitable cover for you.

5. What conditions will be in the Grant Offer Letter?

The Grant Offer Letter will set out the full conditions attached to funding. We have kept the conditions to the minimum possible to safeguard the charitable funds we are giving to you as a result of your successful application. These will include:

a) Financial Records

• Please keep a record of the receipt of the funding and budget spend for your project.

• The grant will need to be identified as a restricted fund in your accounts. If you are not sure what this means, or you usually submit your accounts to the RIBA, then please talk to your team member.

b) Acknowledging RIBA’s support

• Please acknowledge and credit RIBA as a funder in any communications relating to the funded activities, applying RIBA branding and referencing support where applicable.

• Please share any images from the project delivery.

c) Governance

• You will be reminded that the funding is only to be used for the purposes for which it has been given and that the funding has been given to you by RIBA, so you must do all you can to promote RIBA and protect its reputation.

• In the unlikely event that we find out that the funding has been used for a different purpose, we will have the right to ask you to pay the money back.

• Also, if we fund that you have not spent the funding by the time that two years have passed, we will also have the right to ask for the money back.

6. How do I sign the Grant Offer Letter?

The Grant Offer Letter will be sent to you via our digital signing platform, DocuSign. You will be able to keep a copy for yourself as a PDF for reference. And we will store a copy in our contract database.

7. What happens if we wish to spend the funding on an alternative project?

The funding has been granted to you for a specific purpose, but we appreciate that things can change over the course of the year. Again, talk this through with your local RIBA team member to ensure the grant is still being used for activity that meets the criteria for funding. It may be we can vary the purpose for which the funding is given, but this remains in our sole discretion.