When you apply for funds for a project, you can ask for any amount you like, but you pay an application fee of 1% of whatever you ask; with no limit.
If your application is successful, you won’t mind the 1%, and if unsuccessful, you will get back 50% of the fee.
Fees
Those fees help us to keep the Foundation running, and in fact, contribute about 10% of our annual budget. (We think that they also make frivolous or badly thought out applications less likely, since each application costs you something.)
The above is OK for small and medium projects, say up to $100,000. Your risk is limited to losing half of 1%, or a maximum of $500; which is still big for some nations, but probably not the end of the world.
However, we now realise that some much bigger projects may be possible, in the $100,000; $1,000,000 or even $2,000,000 range. That makes the risk of losing even half of 1% a bit more serious.
1% Fee Explained
The 1% fee will still applies to all projects up to $100,000 so the fee will be a maximum of $1,000.
For projects above that figure no upper limit send only $1,000 as the initial fee. If you are unsuccessful, you will still get half of that back.
If you are successful, however, at that point we will take our 1% and we suspect, once again, that you won’t mind. If we find a million dollars for your project, you will still get $991,000!