Eligibility Criteria for NGOs

The focus of the HSBC Skills for Life programme in partnership with Swades is to enable at least 30,000 disadvantaged youth to become employable and enter and sustain employment opportunities in India in the next 5 years through skill development.

For 2019, the programme has ear-marked INR 12 crore to be disbursed as grants to NGOs for projects that skill youth and link them employment.

The programme will support skill development in 9 sectors that have incremental human resource requirements. These are - Automotive, Banking & Financial Services, Electronics & IT hardware industry, Healthcare Services, IT & ITes, Transportation and Logistics, Retail, Telecommunications and Tourism & Hospitality.

Please ensue that the projects submitted for grant caters to sectors from the list above. Inclusion of other sectors (not mentioned above) will be a clear ground for rejection of your application.

2019 funding cycle

To be eligible to apply for this grant, the organisation

• Must be a registered not for profit entity in India (Society, Trust or a Section-25/ Section-8 company)
• Must not be a corporate foundation/ trust
• Have a valid FCRA registration
• Must have a valid 12A/12AA registration
• Have a valid 80G tax exemption certificate
• Have annual reports for the last 3 years and audited financial statements for the last 3 years
• Have filed Income Tax Returns for the last 3 years
• Does not have any pending criminal/ FCRA cases against it in court
• Must have at least a three year track record of implementing skills building projects or have been working with disadvantaged youth

And the proposal submitted

• Must benefit disadvantaged youth, defined as,
  • Age and gender: Young men and women between 18 - 30 years (this outer limit will be relaxed by 5 years for youth with disabilities)
  • Economic profile: Is classified as (a) BPL (below poverty line) by government of India and/ or (b) belongs to a household with an annual household income of less than INR 2,00,000 per annum
  • Location: situated in urban or rural areas
  • Education/ experience profile: is either in school or out of school, but currently neither in formal employment (excluding self-employment) or training. Young men and women who are self- employed will be eligible provided they fall in the socio-economic profile defined above.
• Should be of a duration of 12 to 18 months.
• Must request for grant between INR 25 lakhs and INR 75 lakhs. The total budget requested should not exceed 20% of the organisation’s income/ turnover in the previous year (ie; year 2016 -17). This implies; for example, an organization with a turnover of INR 2 Crore in 2017-18 can request upto a maximum of INR 40 lakhs.
• Expenses budgeted from the grant towards capital/ infrastructure costs should not exceed 15% of the grant requested and must not be towards the construction/renovation of buildings/existing training centres and the purchase of land or property.
• Administration costs budgeted from the grant should not exceed 10% of the grant requested.
• Proposal should focus on linkages with industry for training and placement. At least 70% formal job placement is expected from the projects.

[Kindly note, 10% of the approved grant will be retained by Swades Foundation towards third party Monitoring & Evaluation costs. Please do include this in your budget.]

The grant application for 2019 is now closed.