Judges' Code of Conduct & Governance Charter
Formal operating guidelines, independence standards, conflict-of-interest rules, blind evaluation protocols, and tie-breaking procedures for Secular Micro Grants.
“Judges decide merit. Verification confirms facts. Finance controls money. Administration controls process. No single person should control the full path from application to grant disbursement.”
By separating duties strictly across independent judges, compliance officers, finance makers, and independent finance checkers, Secular Financial Services SFS Ltd ensures that every grant of UGX 3,000,000 is awarded strictly on verifiable merit without favoritism or external interference.
The 7 Principles of Judicial Conduct (Policy Section 3)
Every active judge and alternate reserve judge must formally subscribe to these binding ethical principles:
Act honestly, fairly, and objectively. Never manipulate scores to favor or disadvantage any applicant under any circumstance.
Do not consider friendship, family relationships, politics, religion, ethnicity, personal influence, or payments beyond the published fee.
Do not request, accept, or offer money, gifts, favors, employment, promises, or other benefits connected to an application.
Protect applicant identities, documents, financial statements, and scores. Applicant data must never be shared, leaked, or sold.
Do not privately contact applicants to influence an application or selection outcome. All communication must flow through official channels.
Do not coordinate scores with fellow judges before scoring closes. Each judge must formulate an independent, unbiased assessment.
Complete assignments within weekly escalation deadlines, adhere strictly to the approved 100-point rubric, document material concerns, and treat all applicants with equal dignity.
Conflict of Interest & Recusal Protocol (Policy Section 4)
Before accessing an application, every judge must complete a conflict-of-interest declaration. A judge must immediately recuse themselves if they have a material connection to an applicant (family relationship, close friendship, business partnership, debt relationship, or personal dispute).
Blind & Controlled Judging Protocols (Policy Section 5)
- Identifier Concealment: Where practical, unnecessary personal identifiers are redacted during scoring so evaluation focuses solely on business viability and budget realism.
- Fee Concealment: Judges do not see the administration fee amount; the system displays only "Payment Verified" to prevent bias.
- Score Masking: Judges cannot see fellow judges' scores until the entire scoring window closes.
- Score Locking: Once submitted, a score is locked. Any correction requires a controlled request, written reason, authorized signoff, and permanent audit entry. Admin users cannot unilaterally alter scores.
Judging Escalation Timetable (Section 6)
Score Variance & Quality Review (Section 7)
The platform automatically flags unusually large differences between judges' scores for the same applicant (for example, a pattern of 95, 94 and 60).
Appeals & Procedural Corrections (Policy Section 10)
The program provides a limited correction mechanism for genuine technical or procedural errors (for example, an uploaded document incorrectly marked missing or a verified system outage).