About us · SECULAR Grants

We give non-repayable grants to people and businesses in Uganda, and we choose recipients the same way every week: on published criteria, by people who have no stake in the outcome.

Applications close every Friday at 4:00 PM East Africa Time. Eligible applications are frozen into a judging pool that evening, and on Saturday morning three judges score them without seeing one another's marks. The highest-ranked applicant is verified, the payment is approved, and the recipient is announced at 4:00 PM.

After the award, we follow up at 30 and 90 days to see how the grant was used and what it changed. Grants are not loans and carry no interest, unless they were obtained through fraud.

The same platform runs SchoolPay, a lifetime membership that lets families apply for school-fee financing.

Who does what

No single person controls the path from application to payment.

Judges Decide merit: Three active judges score each eligible application independently on a 100-point rubric. A trained reserve judge steps in if one is recused or unavailable.
Verification officer Confirms facts: Checks identity, documents and claims for the top-ranked applicant before anything is announced.
Finance Controls money: One officer prepares the payment and a separate checker approves it. Neither can do both.
Administration Controls process: Runs the weekly timetable, handles appeals for procedural errors and keeps the audit trail.

Rules judges sign up to

Every judge declares any conflict of interest before opening an application, and steps aside if there is one.
Judges see only what they need to score. They do not see the fee you paid, or other judges' scores before judging closes.
A submitted score is locked. Corrections need a written reason and leave a permanent record of the original.
Gifts, private contact with applicants and coordinating scores are prohibited.

The full rules are in our published policies.

Applications for this week close on Friday at 4:00 PM.

Start an application