Five tips for a strong World Meningitis Day 2025 Advocacy Fund application

CoMO
May 16
3 min read

In 2024, we launched our World Meningitis Day Advocacy Fund pilot scheme for CoMO members. The fund received 21 applications and our review panel had the difficult task of selecting just six of these as funding recipients. We were delighted to support these projects with a total of £20,000 in grants – to read more about their impact, check out the case studies.

Thanks to the success of this pilot scheme, we are delighted to be awarding grants again through the World Meningitis Day Advocacy Fund in 2025. As we approach the opening of the fund this year, we wanted to share some insights into what set apart the six applications that we chose last year.

1. A clear plan

A good Advocacy Fund application provides unambiguous answers to the following questions:

What? What precise activities will the project involve? Details are helpful here – for example, the 2024 application from Care and Development Centre (Nigeria) specified what topics would be covered in their proposed health worker training. Often, doing a smaller number of activities well is better than trying to do more with limited time and money.
Who? It is crucial for us to understand both who will benefit from the project and who will carry it out – or what steps the applicant will take to recruit volunteers or other collaborators.
When? We want to know when the activities will take place, whether they have already started, and whether they will be ongoing after World Meningitis Day. For example, the application from Dr. Spensa’r Fulgence (Tanzania) gave precise dates for the planned events – and he stuck to those dates when delivering the project. Realistic planning and scheduling are essential.
Where? Which locations have been selected for the activities and why? Will the campaign be taking place online or using media such as radio, and if so, why were those media chosen?
How? What will the organisers need to prepare in order for the activities to be successful? If the project will raise awareness of meningitis symptoms, how will that information be communicated and using what materials?
Why? What local need is the project responding to, why is it important and how will it make a difference to the beneficiaries? For example, the application from Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques en Côte d'Ivoire clearly laid out the problems of lack of knowledge among both the public and healthcare practitioners, and lack of follow-up for survivors.

Group of people pose in front of flags and a building, holding a banner for their World Meningitis Day 2024 event.

2. Focus on World Meningitis Day

The Advocacy Fund is designed to support impactful activities around World Meningitis Day (5th October). This creates a mutual strengthening effect: the projects benefit from the increased attention on meningitis around 5th October; and the global World Meningitis Day campaign gets a boost to its profile through diverse advocacy initiatives.

The successful 2024 applicants all demonstrated an understanding of this effect and explained how their projects fit within the context of the World Meningitis Day campaign. Some of the unsuccessful applications described potentially impactful activities but didn’t set out a clear link to World Meningitis Day.

3. Communications

Organising impactful events is only half the battle: communicating about them is just as important. The best applications plan to use the most appropriate communication tools for their local context, be that social media, newspapers, press conferences, radio or television. They also plan to capture their activities through high-quality photography and/or video. This allows the projects’ key messages to reach a much wider audience, both within the projects’ countries and internationally.

A man speaks into a mic at a World Meningitis Day event in Mbeya, Tanzania. A banner and people in bright shirts are visible in the background.

4. Evaluation and outcomes

A good project must have a clear plan for evaluation. Applicants should know what aspects of the project will be tracked and measured to evaluate the project’s success. Targets (preferably numerical) are helpful for this. For example, the application from Concern Health Education Project (Ghana) gave a measure for each aspect of the project, such as the number of people reached through in-person awareness-raising conversations.

A good application will also spell out what the outcomes will be if those targets are reached, and why this will provide benefit to people.

5. Ambitious but realistic

The Advocacy Fund supports ambitious yet realistic projects with clear estimates of their potential impact. We value thoughtful projections – explaining how reach is calculated – and consider both quality and quantity. For example, deeply engaging 200 people may be more effective than briefly reaching 1,000.

Applicants should provide context for their impact goals, such as past work or relationships with key stakeholders.

We offer grants of up to £3,000 per project. While this is smaller than some global health grants, we want to see that our funding will meaningfully advance your goals. In 2024, advocates around the world achieved strong results with fully funded, well-defined projects.