Grants

ETG is proud to support direct funding to teachers and technicians developing new and novel teaching techniques, particularly in practical Chemistry.

2026 grant scheme: Sustainable Practical Teaching

We are pleased to announce that thanks to the excellent community response to the 2025 call for bids, ETG will again offer a small grant scheme on this theme in 2026. RSC ETG members are advised to look out for member e-alerts containing bid information in early 2026. This website section will be updated to match.

2025 grant scheme: Sustainable Practical Teaching

This small grant scheme is designed to facilitate work by teachers, technicians or academics in improving the sustainability of practical teaching and dissemination of best practice to the wider community. ‘Sustainability’ in practical chemistry could include, but is not limited to:

Waste reduction and management; Improved atom economy; Energy efficiency; Re-use and/or recycling of feedstock chemicals; Water conservation; Minimising or replacing hazardous solvents; Minimising or replacing fossil-fuel-derived chemicals.

ETG is committing around £2000 to fund projects in this area, for which we encourage bids of around £250-500 per project. Indicative examples of such projects could include, but are not limited to:

Making widely-used demonstrations and lab practicals more sustainable; Design of new demonstrations and lab practicals on sustainability concepts; Support to complete already-ongoing sustainable teaching development work of interest to the community; Original research into aspects of sustainable practical teaching in chemistry.

Exceptionally ambitious but well-costed projects exceeding a £500 budget, or smaller projects requiring less funding will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Grants will be awarded following a bidding process based on a short proposal. Grant holders are expected to write a report (1000 words) summarising their findings for the wider community at the close of the scheme. 80% of the agreed funding will be provided at the start of the project, with the remaining 20% upon submission of the final report. One or more investigators must be RSC members, with priority given to those who are also ETG members.

A timeline of the grant scheme events is shown below:  Bidding opens: 9th May 2025   Bidding closes: 9th July 2025  Bid decisions confirmed: Mid-July 2025  Work begins: August 2025  All spending & work complete by: 30th June 2026  Report submitted to ETG committee: 31st July 2026  Grant holder report publication for RSC members: Mid-August 2026.
Please don’t hesitate to contact ETG with any questions at rscetg@gmail.com.

Representative projects funded in 2025 (with thanks to grant holders for agreeing to share):

“Microscale Chemistry – where less is more!”	Neil McIntyre, Angus Schools
“Natural Indicators for Sustainable Chemistry: From Droplet Charts to Artistic Expression”	Shreesha Bhat, IIT Gandhinagar