The Company of Biologists

What they don't fund

• Scientific Meeting Grants only:

  • Attendance at scientific meetings, conferences, or training courses
  • Invitation only meetings/workshops
  • Expenditure on capital equipment and capital building proposal
  • Undergraduate courses
  • Expeditions or field excursions
  • Social/political networking
  • Conference dinners/social events/refreshment breaks
  • Tuition fees
  • Honoraria or payments for the employment of staff
  • Abstract books
  • Publishing expenses (e.g. page charges)
  • Intra-institutional events (e.g. departmental seminars, etc.)
  • Core costs (i.e. overheads)
  • Undergraduate expeditions and courses
  • Field excursion costs for summer post-grad schools/courses
  • Payments for the employment of staff
  • Applications from professional fundraisers and conference agencies are generally not considered
  • We are unable to pay awards to recipients in jurisdictions, countries, or regions of the world subject to sanctions, embargoes or other political trade restrictions put in place by the United Nations, the EU, or the UK
• Small Meeting Grants only:

  • Larger meetings with total budgets of greater than £1,000
  • Any aspects of larger meetings
  • Events discussing topics not covered by our journals
  • Social events including dinners, refreshments and networking
  • Delegation/registration fees
  • Training, tuition or course fees
  • Abstract books, prizes etc
  • The individual who completes the application form must be the organiser of the meeting
  • We are unable to pay awards to recipients in jurisdictions, countries or regions of the world subject to sanctions, embargoes or other political trade restrictions put in place by the United Nations, the EU or the UK
  • Grants cannot be awarded retrospectively
• Fund for Innovations in Sustainable Conferencing only:

  • Plastic-free/reusable badges, recycled posters/banners, composting of discarded materials as these should be standard arrangements for a conference aiming to be sustainable
  • Conference bags or gifts (e.g. mugs, pens etc) as we discourage conference organisers from providing free gifts, even if sustainably sourced
  • Apps unless they contribute to sustainable conferencing practices beyond simply avoiding printing a conference booklet. However we do encourage applications for innovative apps that facilitate remote interactions
  • Registration fee waivers
  • Electric screens for displaying posters or conference information at in-person meetings
  • Costs associated with catering (e.g. sustainably sourced food or re-usable cutlery). We encourage sustainable catering, but do not fund it through this scheme
  • Equipment purchases
  • Offsetting carbon expenditure from flights. Our aim is to encourage and explore changes in behaviour so, while offsetting may be helpful in cases where flying is unavoidable, this is not something we fund through this scheme
  • Subsidised travel to encourage non-stop flights as we cannot monitor validity
  • Duplicated requests (i.e. where the same funding is requested under Scientific Meeting Grants and grants from the Fund for Innovations in Sustainable Conferencing Initiative)
  • Sponsorship (i.e. where we are offered something in exchange for funding)
  • Childcare costs as there are currently insufficient funds within the budget for childcare to be considered for funding
  • Funding will generally be limited to one grant per series of seminars, though an exception may be made for a new, exciting, and more innovative proposal within the same series
  • Applications from professional fundraisers and conference agencies are generally not considered
  • We are unable to pay awards to recipients in jurisdictions, countries, or regions of the world subject to sanctions, embargoes or other political trade restrictions put in place by the United Nations, the EU, or the UK