Applications open for Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund

The Fund focus is global and eligibility for grants will extend to all plant, animal and fungi species conservation efforts, without discrimination on the basis of region or selected species. However, it is very competitive indeed with only around 12% of applicants in 2019 receiving a grant.

Funding Information

• The Fund maximum grant size is $25,000, and any application asking for more than this from the Fund will be rejected.
• The total budget of a project can be higher if there are other sources of funding.

Eligibility Criteria

• Anyone directly involved in species conservation can apply to the Fund for a grant.
• The Fund intends to be as flexible and accommodating as possible when reviewing applications, and to take into account as many different factors as is reasonable when assessing the merit of a suggested project. To support this and to try to streamline the application process, the review process is kept comparatively simple.
• However, the Fund does receive many more applications for support than grants could possibly be provided, so please find below some criteria and guidelines which would be useful to bear in mind when submitting an application.
  • Language: Applications must be submitted in English.
  • Currency: Budgets must be submitted in US Dollars.
  • Conservation status: The Fund was established to support species conservation work, and so if your project is not about an endangered species it is probably not worth your while submitting an application.
  • Content: Text provided in an application should be kept concise and clear, with clearly stated quantative goals, aims and methods. When writing an application, please bear in mind that there is only so much text which the Advisory Board and the Fund’s board of directors are capable of reading. Priority will be given to those projects that support the professional development of young conservationists.
  • In situ conservation: Generally, the Fund is primarily interested in providing support to in situ conservation work in the field (such as survey work and data gathering, direct action, recovery management, training and the like), focusing on the species in its natural habitat. However, the importance of ex situ work (genetic analysis, workshops, ex situ populations etc) is also recognised, and so a few grants may be given to projects which focus on ex situ conservation work in certain circumstances.
  • Core costs: The Fund will not contribute to the core running costs of an organisation or administrative overheads, and yet does recognise that sometimes support salaries, stipends, per diems and project related living costs can be a vital part of in situ conservation work.
  • Species: Generally, the Fund would prefer to support projects which focus on a single species, but it also recognises that in some geographic and taxonomic circumstances it makes more sense to group a number of species.
  • Grants for continuation: The Fund is happy to provide continuation support for a project which had previously been supported, which is now completed and for which the Fund has received all required reporting by the time of the respective submission deadline.
  • External review: In some cases, the Advisory Board and/or the Fund’s board of directors may ask for an application to be passed on for additional review, which may add to the response time.
  • Online: Starting from December 1st, 2011 only applications submitted through the Fund’s online, web-based system will be considered. Supporting documents can be sent as email attachments, but the application itself must be online.

For more information, visit Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund.