Van Houten Fund

Bids are invited once a year for grants to be used to support projects that can be shown to offer a broad strategic benefit to the University, but that do not form part of the normal day-to-day operations of a department and would not easily be funded from other regular sources. 

Grants to applicants from within the University are usually in the region of £2,000 - £12,000, either given as a one-off award, or spread over two or three years.  Grants are also available to organisations external to the University; in such cases, the amount awarded are usually lower and there is a cap on the total amount of funding made available to external organisations in any given bidding round. The cap is currently £25,000. Certain such projects, which would more appropriately be supported from the University's Community Grants Scheme, will be advised to apply to that fund.

The most recent invitation to bid, in February 2025, attracted eighteen applications.  Grants awarded recently have included support for:

• OxAbility: The Oxford Disability Careers Development Programme - a project focused on empowering disabled and neuro-divergent students to gain meaningful work experience, develop confidence in discussing adjustments needed in a work environment, and build skills for future success;
• Supporting Social Anxiety in Young People: A Wellbeing Toolkit to Strengthen School Engagement - the project aims to develop a research-based wellbeing toolkit to help sixth form teachers identify and respond to social anxiety, alongside adapted self-help materials for university students to provide concise, evidence-based strategies for supporting social confidence in the classroom;
• Development of a dedicated STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) Classroom - a grant was awarded to the Ss Philip & James CE Primary School to support the design, development and build of a bespoke STEM teaching space at the School.

The guidelines by which bids are assessed as follows:

1. Bids for grants will be assessed by focusing on outcomes according to the breadth of the benefit to the University offered by the project in question, the strategic importance of the project to the University and the availability of funds. For internal applications, priority will be given to initiatives that are closely aligned to the University's strategic plan. Only in exceptional circumstances will a grant be awarded in respect of a project which benefits a single department.

2. Grants will not ordinarily be awarded for purposes for which other trust fund (or similar) support exists within the University, for example, the funding of academic scholarships, regardless of whether or not the alternative fund(s) in question are in a position to fund the expenditure proposed.

3. Grants will not ordinarily be awarded in respect of costs for which a department might reasonably be expected to hold a budget, or to replace service funding.

4. Grants will not ordinarily be agreed in respect of recurrent activities except to provide:

• seed funding to support an activity in its first one to three years; or
• bridging support for one year only where a source of funding is lost and the department/faculty in question is confident that an alternative can be found for the following year.

5. Grants will not ordinarily cover the full cost of a project.  Departments will be expected to make some contribution, or to use the grant secured by the Van Houten Fund to assist in securing other funding (including external funding).

6. The extent to which funds may be awarded to external organisations each financial year will be subject to an upper limit, to be set by the General Purposes Committee and reviewed on an annual basis.

Payment of Grants

Grants are payable on a reimbursement basis in response to claims demonstrating the actual costs incurred. It is expected that costs will initially be incurred by your Department/College/organisation. Claims must be for the activities as described in the initial application, claims for costs incurred that do not fit with the description detailed in the application, will not be approved. It is important that you establish how your Department/College/organisation will pay the costs initially before you submit your bid.

Bids are considered annually in a gathered field exercise, in each case primarily looking ahead to the following financial year.

The 2025 bidding round has now closed. The 2026 bidding round will open in early February 2026 (date TBC) and close in April 2026 (date TBC).