UK Government reduces its funding to Elrha

One of Elrha’s donors, the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, has reduced its UK Aid budget for 2021/22. This follows its decision to reduce the foreign aid budget from 0.7% to 0.5% of total national income.As a direct result, their contribution to Elrha for this period, and specifically for our Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF), has been reduced by approximately 65%.We appreciate this is unsettling news for many of our key stakeholders and we are working as quickly as possible to understand what this reduction will mean for Elrha and the fantastic community of researchers and innovators we support. In preparation for these cuts, we have already:

• Undertaken a savings exercise, exploring where and how we could find savings and tested the feasibility of these proposals
• Delayed funding calls and spending where possible
• Set up a subcommittee of our Board of Trustees, to support us with decision making.

Now we have our new budget, we are creating an action plan for Elrha and its programmes, guided by our savings exercise. We will keep you updated on this and have and will continue to be in direct contact with all key stakeholders who are potentially affected by our budget reduction.Alongside many of our colleagues across the sector who have also experienced severe cuts, we are deeply concerned about the implications on the lives of the world’s most vulnerable. Please direct any queries to your point of contact within Elrha.