The grant schemes are funded from the Society’s resources received from its endowments, investments and publishing activities and are one of the primary mechanisms through which the Society achieves its central purpose, namely to promote and extend mathematical knowledge. The principles governing its grant-giving are:
- As a charity, the Society is able and wishes to take advantage of different opportunities and to work within a different regulatory framework from other funding bodies, such as the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Its grant schemes are focused accordingly.
- The Society’s funds are under pressure, and it is not able to make awards as often or as fully as it would like.
- The Society does not normally meet the full cost of an activity. Rather it will aim to give added value to an event largely funded by other means, or to bridge the gap between cost and the resources that might reasonably be made available by a university department.
- The Society does not pay Full Economic Costs. In particular: The Society does not make grants to cover departmental overheads, secretarial costs, etc., which could be seen as part of normal departmental provision.
- The Society does not normally make grants to cover room hire, although consideration will be given to cover room hire charges at De Morgan House.
- Applicants are expected to make economical and sustainable travel arrangements where possible.
- The Society expects that organisers of conferences and activities who are seeking grants from the Society will represent Equity, Diversity and Inclusion principles and give consideration to the provision of mechanisms to enable participation by people with children or family responsibilities, in line with the Society’s policy on Women in Mathematics.
- The Society will not allow its limits for individual grant schemes to be exceeded by artificially sub-dividing an application into a number of separate requests under different headings.
- The Society considers it to be the responsibility of the institution to which the grant is paid to check receipts in accordance with its own financial procedures.
The Society’s committees that assess applications for grants are made up of mathematicians with a wide spread of research interests. Under most schemes, proposals are judged by the committees themselves, although they may seek advice. Each committee judges each application on its merits.
Any mathematician working in the UK is eligible to apply for a grant but, for some schemes, if they are not a member of the Society, then the application must be countersigned by a member who is prepared to support the application.