Offer Letter and supporting information

If you've been awarded a grant from Skillset, the first correspondence you will receive from us is the Offer Letter. This will be sent to you within 14 days of the date your application is approved and outlines the project details, how much you have been awarded and the conditions of the grant. Please see below for the Offer Letter template:

Offer Letter - template


With the Offer Letter you will receive:

• A sample project &evaluation plan
• A cash flow template & payment drawdown form
• 3 copies of the Bank Mandate (if your grant is over £50,000)

At this stage you will sign the offer letter, complete a project & evaluation plan for your project, complete a cash flow outline, fill in the bank mandates (if required) and provide confirmation of partnership funding - this should be returned to us within 2 weeks of your receipt of the Offer Letter.

By signing the Offer Letter you automatically accept the Lottery Standard Conditions of Grant as explained in the document below. We suggest you read these conditions before signing the Offer Letter:

Lottery Standard Conditions of Grant


Project & Evaluation Plan

We want to know the key aims and purposes of your project alongside the benchmarks for success. We want to see how you are going to report on the project by setting measures of success to report against throughout the project and once it has completed. This is the Project & Evaluation Plan, see below for an example:

Project and Evaluation Plan


Cash Flow & Payment Drawdown

The grant you are awarded is paid in instalments in advance, based on need. By completing a Cash Flow this will show us how much and when you will need each instalment. In order to claim an instalment you will also need to complete a Payment Drawdown Form.

The document you filled in at the point of application should have been a combination Budget/ Cashflow.  If you have one of these, you will not need to use the excel documents below.  However, if you used the old budget template you will need one of these Cashflow templates, which include the Payment Drawdown form. Please complete the relevant cashflow for the duration of your project:

12 Month Example Cashflow

12 Month cash flow template  24 Month cash flow template 36 Month cash flow template

HE/FE 60 month cash flow template


Seperate Account or Trust Account by Bank Mandate

For grants of £49,000 or less you will be required to open a seperate account to manage the Skillset Film Skills Fund grant. This account will require a 'no set off' letter from your bank.

If your grant is over £50,000 you will need to open a Trust account for Skillset to pay the grant into. This is done by Bank Mandate, please see below for the Bank Mandate template, information and guidelines to completing the form:

Bank Mandate 2008 Bank Mandate Instructions

Audits for Grants over 50K 

Grants over £50,000.00 will need to be externally audited at the end of the project and this cost should be build into your budget. Please read the Audit guidlines before you start your project.

Audit requirements

Funding Agreement

Once you have signed and returned the offer letter we will issue the Funding Agreement. We advise you read through the agreement in advance of us sending it out to you. Please see below for the Funding Agreement:

Funding Agreement - template

Before the funding agreement can be issued and the first payment made, however, you will need to complete all the above information and we must get it approved within the Film Fund and Finance teams here at Skillset. This takes a minimum of 4 weeks.

Once the information you submit is approved, we will issue the funding agreement. A signatory of your organisation will sign the agreement which you will return with your first payment drawdown form to claim your first payment.

Once the project is underway, you will need to report on the progress quarterly by submitting a Quarterly Narrative Report led by the Project & Evaluation plan, an update of the Cash Flow and a Payment Drawdown Form to claim further payment. This process takes a minimum of two weeks so please plan accordingly.

Evaluation

Once your project is complete, you will need to send Skillset a full evaluation, telling us what you did, what worked well, what you would change in the future and overall how successful you were.

To help you write your report, we have prepared Evaluation Guidance Notes available below. You will also need to send us a report on the diversity of the participants on your project using the Diversity of Participants Form available below.

Evaluation Guidance Notes

Diversity of Participants Form

Other useful information

As a recipient of a Film Skills Fund grant you will need to credit Skillset on all print material, your website and any information produced about the project we are supporting. To read our Branding Guidelines please read the document below:

Skillset Film Skills Fund Branding Guidelines

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