Hello
This is your weekly funding update, a mix of grant information and general funding news. If you would like a 1:1 funding support visit and funding searches specifically for your organisation please drop me a line.
Grants
First Utility Foundation
First Utility’s Foundation awards grants to registered charities which:
· Change the lives of the UK’s most vulnerable families and children for the better
· Improve the quality of life of older people
· Make life better for people with disabilities
Deadline: 29th February
Inman Charity
Amount: £3,000 – £5,000
Peter Cruddas Foundation
The Foundation gives priority to programmes designed to help disadvantaged and disengaged young people in the age range of 14 to 30, to pursue pathways to education, training and employment helping them to become financially independent.
Deadline: 1st March
Mark Fitch Fund
The Marc Fitch Fund makes grants towards the costs of publishing scholarly work in the fields of British and Irish national, regional and local history (pre 1945), archaeology, antiquarian studies, historical geography, the history of art and architecture, heraldry, genealogy and surname studies, archival research, artefact conservation and the broad fields of the heritage, conservation and the historic environment.
Amount: £500 – £3,000
Deadline: 1st March
Children in Need small grants
The Small Grants programme is open to charities and not-for-profit organisations applying for up to £10,000 for one year only. They give grants for children and young people of 18 years and under experiencing disadvantage through:
- illness, distress, abuse or neglect any kind of disability
- behavioural or psychological difficulties
- living in poverty or situations of deprivation
Deadline: 1st March
Environment grants from Greggs
Greggs Foundation is piloting an environmental fund to improve people’s lives by improving their environments. They will prefer applications from groups with an income below £300,000, and will also fund schools. Preference will be given to projects that support disadvantaged people.
Amount: Small grants of up to £2,500 and Large grants up to £10,000.
Deadline: 4th March, (may be earlier if they have a lot of applications)
A B Charitable Trust
Funding is available for charities that defend human rights and promote respect for vulnerable individuals in the UK.
Amount: £ 10,000
Deadline: 4th March
Football Foundation – Grow the Game
The Football Foundation’s Grow the Game Scheme aims to increase participation by both players and volunteers by providing grants for the creation of new football teams. The following are eligible:
- male teams from the Under-14 age bracket and above
- female teams
- disability teams
Amount: £1,500
Deadline: 10th March
Ulverscroft Foundation
The Ulverscroft Foundation supports projects which will have a positive effect on the quality of life of visually impaired people (blind and partially sighted) or people with a print disability.
Amount: £1,000 – £5,000
Deadline: 15th March
Healthy Heart grants
Heart Research UK gives Healthy Heart grants for new, original and innovative projects that actively promote Heart Health and help to prevent, or reduce, the risk of heart disease in specific groups or communities.
Amount: £5,000 to £10,000
Hilden Trust – playschemes
The Trust funds summer play schemes for disadvantaged communities. Some priority will be given to projects which show they are inclusive of children from refugee families, and show BME involvement. They are looking for schemes run by organisations with an income below £150,000, lasting 2-6 weeks, be for children aged 5 – 18 years, with strong volunteer support.
Paul Hamlyn – arts based learning
The arts-based Learning ‘explore and test’ grants fare to help test new approaches or gather evidence for the first time about approaches that have been used before.Grants will support arts organisations working with schools to improve the evidence base for their work, so that they can do more to enhance the lives, development and achievements of children and young people.
Awards
Yorkshire and Clydesdale Bank Awards
The Foundation’s ‘Spirit of the Community Awards’ are now open for applications.
The awards will support projects that help people have a healthy relationship with money, help people into employment and help people improve their local environment.
Four awards are made in each category, one of £10,000 and three of £5,000. The closing date is 8th April 2016. Click here for more details.
News
Mad March Match Challenge
To celebrate their 30th birthday MK Community Foundation is giving away £30,000 in the Mad March Match challenge, where community groups could have up to £1,000 of their donations matched! Groups with 20 or more individual donations will be entered in to a prize draw. Click here for more information
Making a strong case for public sector grants to charities
A ‘Grants for Good Campaign‘ has been launched by Directory of Social Change, Charity Finance Group, Children England, NAVCA and the Lloyds Bank Foundation. The campaign to promote government grants for charities and voluntary groups is inviting others to get involved too.
Over the last decade …. this vital resource has been rapidly disappearing, replaced by more restrictive and inflexible contracts. Grants from the public sector now make up only 5.5% of charity sector income, a decline of over 60% since 2004. At the current rate of decline, grants could all but disappear by 2020.
The campaign founders are using their networks to gather examples of effective grant-making and build a case for commissioners to choose grants instead of contracts where a responsive local service is needed. They are also holding a grants forum on 4th March (12pm to 2pm) in central London to find out about organisations experiences with grants.
Local charity services lost most in government cuts
New research reveals that small and medium-sized charities have been hardest hit by cuts in public funding to the sector since 2008, with the damage most felt by vulnerable people in the local communities they serve.
The evidence is compiled from two independent reports by NCVO and IPPR North funded by Lloyds Bank Foundation, covering England and Wales. Funding from local and central government for small and medium sized charities reduced by up to 44% between 2008/09 and 2012/13, a higher proportion of their income than for larger organisations.
Small and medium organisations are defined as having an income between £25,000 and £1 million.
See IPPR North’s ‘Too small to fail: How small and medium-sized charities are adapting to change and challenges’ or NCVO’s article ‘The squeezed middle: small and medium-sized charities in a changing financial landscape’.
How exciting are your accounts?
To help people understand financial information better, Ocean, part of the Think Money Group, has offered to produce free tailor-made infographics for small and medium sized charities that to show the charity’s financial, as well as non-financial information.
Events
Community Action MK Funding Fair
Wednesday 30th March 10:00am 2:00pm at The Irish Centre Fenny Stratford