Funding News for June 2024

SPACE Arts and cultural organisations based in England, including museums, libraries, community organisations and local councils with a cultural project, can now apply for a digital commission of up to £15,000 (£8,000 for audio projects). Commissions are for you to develop and deliver a creative digital project. This might be a video or audio project, or an interactive or immersive experience. Deadline 5pm, 13 Jun. Please click here for more details.

Cycling UK – Big Bike Revival Grants Programme Grants are available for voluntary groups, social enterprises, and other not-for-profit organisations to deliver cycling projects and activities across England (outside of London) for people who do not normally cycle.
Application deadline: 25 June 2024. Click here for more details.

Village Hall Small Grants Fund
Grants of between £2,000 and £5,000 to help make improvements to rural community buildings in England. This is the latest release of the £3 million grant fund announced by the government in May 2022 in celebration of the Queen’s Jubilee.

Grants are intended to support smaller capital projects in village halls such as boiler replacements, insulation, toilet upgrades and new kitchens.

Awards can be made to cover 20% of eligible project costs, up to a maximum amount of £5,000. The balance of funding for the works proposed must be in place, or at least confirmed within 6 weeks of making an application to a small grants fund.

Please read the fund criteria and FAQs before submitting your application. We recommend you only submit this once the project is ready to proceed, and you have everything in place.
Village halls small grants fund – ACRE

Deadline: The fund is expected to stay open until December 2024, however, it may be withdrawn before this.

Hubbub and Starbuck’s ‘Eat it Up Fund’

About Us: We’ve launched the Eat It Up Grant Fund 2024 to fuel innovations that reduce edible food waste, ensuring food serves its purpose – to be eaten.
Criteria: To support innovative ideas to tackle food waste in the UK. The grant must be used within a year. The funding is for initiatives that do one or more of the following:
• Address pre-farmgate waste (the food production process, up to the point where the products have been harvested and prepared as produce for sale).
• Prevent food from being wasted at the manufacturing and processing stage.
• Minimise food waste from retailers.
• Find creative ways to use surplus food in communities or at home.
Grant Size: Six grants of £60,000
Deadline for applications: 5pm on 14 June 2024

Wolfson Foundation

About Us: The Foundation gives major grants for capital work across the fields of education, science and medicine, health and disability, heritage and arts and humanities.
Criteria: The project should be for a new building, refurbishment work or equipment that leads to at least one of the following aims:
• Increased access to services for new and existing users.
• Improved quality and range of services.
• Improved financial stability of the organisation.
Grant Size: £15,000 up to £1million. Match funding is required for projects where the total project cost is above £50,000.
Deadline for applications: 23.59 on 1 July 2024

Clarion Futures Digital Grants Programme

About Us: Clarion Futures delivers a range of grant programmes which support those working to improve the lives of our residents, as well as helping them stay more digitally connected.
Criteria: For not-for-profit organisations seeking to deliver innovative, well-designed projects that support Clarion residents and the wider community to address digital exclusion.
The funding is for projects and activities that focus on:
• Supporting Clarion residents to discover the full scope of how the internet can assist them in their everyday lives, and provide them with the skills and confidence to do so.
• Supporting residents to access the digital resources that meet their individual needs and circumstances.
• Building digital skills and confidence for all.
• Encouraging residents to use the internet with confidence so they are safe and avoid risky and/or illegal behaviour.

Grant Size: Between £1,000 and £5,000
Deadline for applications: noon on 12 June 2024

Arnold Clark Community Fund

About Us: As part of our commitment to give back to the communities in which we operate, we believe that by caring for these communities today, we can help them create a better future.
Criteria:
• Cost of Living Support – funding to any registered UK charity or community group whose work directly supports those most affected by the cost-of-living crisis, such as foodbanks, accommodation, poverty relief and where people/communities in the UK are the primary and immediate focus of investment.
• Our Communities Support – funding to projects embedded in the communities in which Arnold Clark operates and is available to organisations who provide services widely accessible to those within Arnold Clark local communities, addressing the needs of those living within them.
• Gear Up for Sport – 150 sports kits given away each month to support youth sports teams across the UK. Any youth team with up to 30 members aged 4 to 15 years can apply.
Applications are expected to be accepted until the e
Grant Size: up to £2,500
Deadline for applications: End of December 2024

Bright Futures Fund
Wokingham Borough Council has awarded Wokingham United Charities funding to
oversee their extracurricular activities initiative. The Bright Futures Fund is dedicated to supporting children from low-income households providing opportunities to engage in a diverse range of extracurricular activities, including school trips, club memberships, purchasing or hiring of equipment and instruments, and covering participation fees for children and young people. Applications are welcomed from schools, alternative educational providers, youth groups, sports clubs, activity clubs, and relevant local charities. To ensure a streamlined process, applications are exclusively accepted from referring agencies. Online applications
can be submitted via our website.

Regenerative Soil Funding
Applications close on Thurs 27th June.
UK soils currently store about 10 billion tonnes of carbon, roughly equal to 80 years of annual UK greenhouse gas emissions. The priority must be to stop further soil degradation and
keep that carbon in the soil. But intensive agriculture has caused arable soils to lose about 40 to 60% of their organic carbon to the atmosphere. Investing in regenerative soil initiatives is one way to help combat this. We are looking for grant applications from charities, community groups, and organisations that are working to promote a more sustainable approach to soil and land management.

Architectural Heritage Fund Project Development Grants
Applications close on Weds 31st July.
Grants are available for UK not-for-profit organisations to cover some of the costs of developing and coordinating a building project and taking it towards the start of work on site. As the Architectural Heritage Fund, there has to be a historic building involved in whatever we support. We generally look to support projects where there is a change of use or change of ownership involved with the building, such as bringing something disused back into use.

Arts & Culture Project Grants
Applications accepted on a rolling basis.
This is our open access programme for arts, libraries and museums projects. The fund supports thousands of individual practitioners, and community and cultural organisations. Applications are for grants between £1,000 and £100,000, should engage people in England with arts and culture. You can learn whether this is the right fund
for you by taking our quiz.

Matthew Good Foundation
Applications close on Saturday 15th June.
Our Grants for Good are designed to direct funding only to small and growing local charities, voluntary groups or social enterprises that are making a big impact on local communities or the environment. To be eligible, applicants must have an average income of less than £50,000 in the last 12 months. Every three months, five organisations will receive grants between £5,000 to £2,000.

AB Charitable Trust

About Us: The A B Charitable Trust is an independent grant-making organisation, founded in 1990 by Yves and Anne Bonavero to champion human dignity and support the most marginalised and excluded groups in the UK. The Trust has no endowment and is funded annually by the Bonavero family.
Criteria: This programme aims to support and strengthen small to medium-sized charities, and the wider ‘eco-system’, in our priority areas. We usually fund single-focus organisations working solely in our priority areas. For these organisations, we generally give unrestricted grants.
Grant Size: up to £30,000
Deadline for applications: 26 July 2024

The Adamson Trust

About Us: The Adamson Trust is a long-established Perthshire charity based in Crieff.
We can give financial help with the cost of holidays or respite breaks for disabled children aged between 3 and 17 with physical, mental or emotional impairments. We can only give help for this purpose.
Criteria: We can give financial help with the cost of holidays or respite breaks for disabled children aged between 3 and 17 with physical, mental or emotional impairments. Individual families can apply but we also accept applications on behalf of voluntary and community groups working on behalf of groups of children and families.
Grant Size: Not stated
Deadline for applications: 30 June 2024

The Ford Britain Trust

About Us: Working with our local communities to sow the seeds of change. We are committed to supporting the communities that we work and live in. That is why we created the Ford Britain Trust. Since April 1975 we have been able to help fund the education and advancement of our neighbours.
Criteria: We pay special attention to projects focusing on education, environment, children, the disabled, youth activities and projects that provide clear benefits to the local communities close to our UK locations.
Grant Size: Small grants up to £250 or larger grants up to £3000
Deadline for applications: 30 June 2024 (small grants); 31 July 2024 (larger grants)

Motability Community Transport Grants

We launched this grant programme in April 2022, which aims to help charities and organisations to make an immediate impact for disabled people, by awarding funding to develop, expand and improve community transport options. We are focussing our grantmaking for this programme on:
• Funding support for staff or volunteer training and costs.
• Funding to increase the number of vehicles available in the community to help organisations support disabled people.
• Funding local, regional, or national initiatives to increase awareness of community transport and influence its inclusion in transport strategy and policy.
• Funding to schemes, programmes and initiatives that already exist, and which provide best practice solutions, but need further support to remain operational or scale up the service they can provide to help more disabled people.
If any of the above are relevant to your charity or organisation, please take some time to read this information and review the documents included within our guidance for applicants.

Using a wide range of research including insight from Motability Foundation grantees, other disabled people and representative organisations, community transport has been identified as a priority area for support.

Disabled people make 38% fewer journeys than non-disabled people every year – a figure that has not changed in a decade.

To help address this problem now, charities and organisations working in the Community Transport sector can apply for grants from £100,000 to £4 million at any point before March 2025 to improve the impact of community transport for disabled people.

The Britford Bridge Trust

The Trust was established by Adrian and Jane Frost in 2014 to formalise their long-standing charitable support. It is intended to be a permanent endowment to enable giving beyond the current generation. To date, the Trust has made more than 200 grants to a wide range of beneficiaries.
The primary charitable purposes of the Trust are the prevention or relief of poverty; the advancement of education; the advancement of health or the saving of lives; and the advancement of the arts, culture, heritage, or science however any applicant must have national relevance.
The trustees have already fully committed to supporting the fields of medicine and related professions connected to the causes, diagnosis, treatment and care of cancer and other malignant diseases and will not be accepting applications for funding in that regard. Similarly, the family donates to African causes through established NGOs. As a result, the Trustees regret that they will not consider applications from these areas of need.

In addition, the Trustees will give due consideration to the amount of any donation that reaches the intended beneficiary and to the existing reserves and resources of the applicant.
The Trustees typically make grants of between £10,000 to £50,000. Larger amounts may be available in exceptional circumstances. Applications are invited from UK registered charities for national or international projects.

One Stop – Community Partnerships Programme

We are extremely proud to be part of the local communities we serve, and that’s why we are even more excited to welcome applications for the One Stop Community Partnership programme.
Local Community Groups can apply for funding to support the group and to develop a new or ongoing project in partnership with their local store. Successful applicants will receive an initial grant of up to £1,000, and begin a partnership with their local One Stop store.
This programme is designed to support community groups or organisations operating within two miles of a One Stop store which are;

  • Tackling food poverty
  • Supporting the vulnerable
  • Supporting the elderly
  • Supporting low-income families
  • Supporting local sports teams
  • Improving the local environment
  • Reducing Waste in the community

The programme provides partnership as well as financial assistance. Alongside a grant of up to £1,000, and the opportunity to create a long-term tailored programme of support for successful applicants with their local One Stop Store Team. Grant recipients then work in partnership with the One Stop Store Team at their local shop to deliver support to the community.
The tailored support from the store teams will help community causes to increase or improve their service by assisting in areas such as but not limited to; volunteering support, fundraising and awareness-raising.

National Lottery Heritage Grants

Applications are accepted on a rolling basis.
Heritage can be anything from the past that you value and want to pass on to future generations. We fund projects that connect people and communities to the national, regional and local heritage of the UK. Grants between £10,000 to £250,000 are available for non-profit organisations looking to care for and sustain heritage with projects which will run for no more than five years. Our priorities are promoting inclusion, boosting local economies, encouraging
skills development/job creation, supporting wellbeing, creating better places to live, work and visit, and/or improving heritage organisation’s resilience/sustainability.

Pets Assisting People Grants

Applications close on Friday 28th June.
Funding is available to charities that help children and adults through the provision of specially trained assistance animals, or through the provision of structured animal-assisted learning and therapy. We provide one-off grants or up to three years of funding, to a maximum of £80,000 per year. These funds can contribute towards the costs of animal care, building work, salaries, activities, equipment, vehicles, etc.

Helens Farm Goodness Grants

Applications close on Sunday 30th June.
A small number of grants, up to £5,000 are available for not-for-profit organisations and registered charities to support projects which are doing good in their local communities. These projects might be based around sports, schools, clubs, wellness or tackle social issues. We are offering grants specifically to local organisations which improve the health, places or skills of families in their communities.

Electricals Recycling Fund

Applications are accepted on a rolling basis.
This fund aims to grow existing methods or test new creative and practical ones for recycling small household electricals. We fund two types of projects; those seeking to grow or develop existing household collection services for small household electricals (up to £100,000), and those seeking to innovate new collection methods (up to £50,000). If you have a project that would make it easier for the public to repair, reuse or recycle their electricals, apply for funding.

Thank you to Berkshire CVS organisation for the information contained in the article, namely; Wokingham & Bracknell InVOLve, Slough CVS and West Berkshire Volunteer Centre.


Green Spaces Fund for Rural Communities

Our network body ACRE is aware of a future government grant fund that may be of interest to rural community groups

In March, the Minister for Rural Affairs Robbie Moore MP announced the government’s intention to establish a new grant fund, “creating and enhancing […] green spaces at the very heart of rural communities to preserve and protect their essential character”.

Up to £7 million will be available to rural community groups to fund projects that aim to create, restore, and enhance green spaces.

It is envisaged that funds will be available for capital expenditure such as landscaping, planting, installation of natural play facilities, paths and seating.

Richard Quallington, ACRE’s Executive Director said, “We welcome the government’s commitment to supporting rural communities so they can make the most of green spaces. The fund has the potential to support a wide range of initiatives that contribute to Net Zero and biodiversity net gain, as well as improving the health and wellbeing of local residents.

We know from our experience of administering recent grants to village halls that the availability of capital funding can catalyse new projects, many of which have had an environmental focus. We stand ready to support this new scheme.”

Rural community groups interested in the fund are encouraged to register their details with ACRE so they can receive more information about the fund when this becomes available. Click here.


May Funding Opportunities

Barchester Charitable Trust

Barchester’s Charitable Foundation is a registered charity that helps older people and adults with a disability across England, Scotland & Wales. Our focus is on connecting or re-connecting people with others in their local community, and we support applications that combat loneliness and enable people to be active and engaged.

We help small community groups and local charities with activities, outings, equipment and materials for members/service users. Our grants range from £100 up to £2,500. Before starting the application, make sure to have a cost breakdown/budget and your latest annual accounts ready to upload.

We do not have a formal definition for a small charity, but if a charity has financial reserves in the hundreds of thousands or millions, it is very unlikely that we would be able to help.

We help groups with:

  • Activity projects
  • Equipment and materials for use by members
  • Member transport
  • Day trips, outings and group holidays in the UK

Our grants for groups range from £100 up to £2,500. It takes us up to 10 weeks to process an application.

Cycling UK – Big Bike Revival Grants Programme

Grants are available for voluntary groups, social enterprises, and other not-for-profit organisations to deliver cycling projects and activities across England (outside of London) for people who do not normally cycle.
Application deadline: 25 June 2024

Creating A Fairer Society & Healthier Planet

Applications are accepted on a rolling basis.
The Treebeard Trust is a charitable foundation supporting transformational initiatives that have the potential to create a healthier planet and fairer society. We try to invest time as well as money. We advocate on behalf of causes we are passionate about and try to support our partners, by amplifying their work, or by providing advice, connections or simply a general sounding board. If you think your organisation might be a good fit for the trust, visit our website for more info.

Veolia Environmental Trust

Applications re-open in May 2024.
We award grants towards projects that make improvements to community facilities and the natural environment. Grants are for projects by constituted, not-for-profit organisations and local authorities that are located near a qualifying Veolia site in England.

The Chestnut Fund

Applications accepted on a rolling basis.
The TCV Chestnut Fund grant scheme has been designed to support grassroots community groups and initiatives wanting to deliver practical volunteering that improves the natural physical environment and better connections between people and green spaces. Groups must be members of the TCV Community Network prior to applying. Start-Up grants are for groups who have little or no money when they are first set up and are available to groups in their first year of existence. The grant will enable them to begin practical work and will cover administrative expenses, e.g. insurance fees, postage, publicity or hire of meeting rooms. Maximum grant is £200. Support grants are for existing groups who have little or no money for tools, equipment and training. Maximum grant is £500.

SPAR £100k Community Cashback

About Us: SPAR is launching its third £100,000 Community Cashback scheme.Our grant scheme is aimed at supporting and giving back to the communities that we serve.
Criteria: Local voluntary or community organisations and charities.
Grant Size: up to £10,000
Deadline for applications: 22 May 2024

Find out more about the SPAR £100k Community Cashback

The University of Reading’s Community Engagement Fund

About Us: The University of Reading’s Community Engagement Fund (CEF) sets aside a total of £30,000 every year to support local charities and community groups’ projects across the Thames Valley region.
Criteria: Local charities and community groups’ projects
Grant Size: The Community Engagement Fund provides one-off, small awards (usually around £1,000 per year), as well as larger awards (up to a maximum of £10,000 per year) on a one-off or multi-year basis, depending on the project.
Deadline for applications: 30 June 2024

About Us: Eden Projects is inviting communities to tell them how the act of sharing supports their community including their plans for sharing food on The Big Lunch weekend on 1-2 June.
Award: The community receiving the award will receive a specially designed The Big Lunch Sharing Table made by the people at City & Guilds, plus funds towards their community projects and ideas, and a hamper of food and resources for a Big Lunch that are together worth £5,000.
Three finalists will each receive a hamper of goodies to support them to have a Big Lunch, and £500 towards their project or idea to support the local community.
Deadline for applications: 9am, Monday 20 May 2024.

Find out more at www.edenprojectcommunities.com/sharing-tables-award#apply

Persimmon Community Champions

This scheme supports local charities, sports clubs and good causes across the country.
They have 30 offices across the UK that will each make a donation of up to 6,000 every quarter to those local organisations who are the lifeblood of our communities. Smaller donations are also available.

Deadline: ongoing

Women’s Health Community Fund

The Women’s Health Community Fund is designed to support small, grassroots organisations and community groups to deliver health information and support to women, girls and people from underrepresented groups.

Deadline: 19-05-2024

Thank you to Berkshire CVS’s for the information contained in this article – Slough CVS, Wokingham & Bracknell InVOLve and West Berkshire Volunteer Centre.




Village Halls Week 2024 set to ‘go green!’

Phillip Vincent, Public Affairs and Communications Manager from out national body Action with Communities in Rural England (ACRE), blogs ahead of Village Halls Week which is set to return for the seventh year running and challenge community buildings to consider how they can save energy and support environmental initiatives that help with Net Zero.

With scientific warnings of the climate crisis mounting and governments and international institutions scrabbling in search of grand solutions, it’s easy to feel powerless to act in the face of great threats to our way of life, and that of future generations.

But as much as bold decisions are needed regarding the global management of the Earth’s resources and the carbon emitted into the atmosphere, little will happen unless there is action on the ground.

Rural communities have great potential to be pioneers in the local battle for Net Zero. This is likely to include adopting more sustainable agricultural practices, welcoming renewable energy generation, improving the energy efficiency of older buildings and reducing the need for people to travel by utilising digital technology. Mitigation too is needed to blunt the consequences of climate change such as flooding and wildfires.

Village halls, like parish councils, are one of very few institutions embedded in nearly every corner of rural England. Hosting a wide range of activities, events, groups, and services, they have great reach into communities. Many have been used as a place of refuge during extreme weather events. And as the Post Office Horizon scandal has recently brought to light, they are sometimes venues where radical community activism begins!

The humble village hall is therefore surprisingly well placed to be a catalyst for environmental action. Village Halls Week 2024 will consider how this can happen. It will look at what some halls are already doing to serve as inspiration, and it will provide an opportunity for others to hold events and reach out to residents to see what might work locally for them.

A highlight of this year’s campaign will be the publication of a Net Zero Design Guide for Village & Community Halls produced by stagg architects on behalf of ACRE.

Typically, village halls are older buildings which can be off the gas grid. Some date back over 100 years. Many have been vulnerable to energy price shocks over the past couple of years with some groups spending over half of their income keeping the building warm at the peak of the crisis.

On this basis, a logical, and much needed starting point for village hall groups interested in ‘going green’ is making improvements to their building to reduce the amount of energy they consume as well as their bills.

The guidance set to be launched via a livestream features several halls in Cumbria, Lancashire, Buckinghamshire, Dorset and Somerset which have done just that. Work undertaken by these halls include improving insulation, upgrading heating systems and even generating their own energy. They demonstrate that whilst there’s no one size fits all solution, there are many take home lessons from their experiences with regards to project planning, involving the wider community, fundraising, and working with technical experts and contractors.

For more information about Village Halls Week, please visit: https://acre.org.uk/village-halls-week-2024/


Ready to plan a summer to look forward to? The Big Lunch

The days are finally getting longer and the first signs of spring have appeared. What have you got in the diary to look forward to?

If you fancy planning a get together with your neighbours and community, then be the first to get your hands on the free, digital Big Lunch pack! With editable invitations, posters, fun activity ideas and practical tips, it’s got everything you need to plan a fabulous event this summer

Since 2009, The Eden Project Communities Big Lunch has brought millions of people together to share friendship, food, and fun in their communities. This year they’re dishing up ideas to help make it the greenest Big Lunch yet, and they’ve launched brand new resources to help get the party started.

The Big Lunch also kicks off the Month of Community when good causes come together to celebrate community, encourage action and fundraise annually throughout June.

The Big Lunch brings millions of people together to share friendship, food and fun on 1 and 2 June and everyone’s invited. So, pick your date and get ready to dish up some neighbourly cheer this year! Get your free pack