Tag Archive for: charity

Community Grants / Cambridge City Council / Deadline 14 January 2025

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The Cambridge City Council 2025-26 Community Grants

Next round starts 26 November 2024

 

What is available?

Voluntary and community groups can apply for up to £5,000 – this can be for a single activity or split between multiple activities with a combined maximum total of £5,000. Activities must reduce social and/or economic inequality for Cambridge residents with the greatest need. They can be open to anyone living within the city or alternatively be focused on a particular area or community within Cambridge.

Please note that if you have already applied to the earlier over £5,000 funding round which closed on 18 September then you are not eligible to apply for a £5,000 and under grant.

 

How to apply

You can choose to apply to either round one or round two but you cannot apply to both rounds.

 

Round one 

  • Launches on 26 November 2024. The deadline to apply is 14 January 2025.
  • Funding will be awarded from April 2025 and must be spent by 31 March 2026.

 

Round two 

Contact them if you are unsuccessful in the first round and would like to apply to the second round.

  • Launches on 23 April 2025. The deadline to apply is 3 June 2025.
  • Funding will be awarded from July 2025 and must be spent by 31 March 2026.

 

The application process is via an online application form, go to www.cambridge.gov.uk/community-grants-of-5000-and-under to view the guidelines and access the application form.

 

They will receive more requests than there is funding available; applications which focus on reducing inequality and can demonstrate clear evidence of need are likely to be more successful.  Please make sure your activity clearly fits their priorities and your group meets their eligibility criteria; if you are not sure, then give them a call to check.  If you are applying for the first time, or for a new activity it is important that you call to discuss your idea before applying.

 

Help and support

The Grants team and Cambridge Council for Voluntary Service (CCVS) are holding the following:

  • a webinar at 7pm, Tuesday 3 December covering the funding, application process and form. The webinar will be recorded and made available to view online afterwards.
  • face-to-face appointments on 4 December 2024 at the Cambridge Council for Voluntary Services offices in Arbury Court, Cambridge.

 

We strongly recommend that you attend one of the above sessions to ensure you are familiar with all the changes. Email grants@cambridge.gov.uk or phone 01223 457875 to book onto the webinar or make a face-to-face appointment or if you would like to check that your organisation or activity is eligible.

Social Value Investment / CPCA/ on-going

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The Social Impact Investment Fund (SIIF) is a £2.375 million fund dedicated to supporting charities and social enterprises in the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough region. Funded by the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority (CPCA) and managed by Allia, this innovative programme provides capital grants and loans to social and third sector organisations.

The SIIF was created to bridge the gap between what social ventures need and what traditional finance offers. We understand that many impactful organisations struggle to access patient and flexible capital that prioritises their mission to deliver social value over financial returns.

The SIIF is here to change that. By offering grants and social loans, the SIIF provides tailored support that empowers social ventures to achieve both their social and financial objectives, while fostering community development and economic growth.

Social Impact: To support organisations that create significant positive social outcomes

Financial Sustainability: To create a model for sustainable future social investment, particularly for those who cannot access traditional financial solutions

Good Growth: To stimulate economic and social development in the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough area.

The SIIF offers three key funding instruments:

  1. Grants: Non-repayable funds of £10,000 – £25,000; Best suited for charities or early-stage social enterprises with high social impact potential.
  2. Social Loans: Affordable loans of £10,000 – £75,000; Best suited for growing social ventures who want to transition to more commercial forms of capital.
  3. Revenue Participation Agreements (RPAs): An innovative funding model where capital of £10,000 – £75,000 is provided in exchange for a share of future revenues over a period; Best suited for revenue-generating organisations looking to grow without the pressure of traditional debt.

Grants are well-suited for non-profits or early-stage social ventures, while loans and RPAs are designed to drive growth and instil financial discipline in early to mid-stage companies, positioning them for larger, more traditional forms of capital, such as debt and equity.

To apply for any of the funding options under the Social Impact Investment Fund (SIIF), your organisation must meet the following eligibility criteria:

Location: Your organisation must be based in the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority (CPCA) region, including Peterborough, Fenland, Huntingdonshire, East Cambridgeshire, South Cambridgeshire, and Cambridge.

Social Impact Mission: Your organisation should have a clear social impact mission and a commitment to creating positive social outcomes in the local community, especially in line with CPCA’s aims to reduce inequality, create jobs, boost the economy, affordable housing, and build environmental resilience.

Capital Use: The grant and loan funding must be used for capital projects that contribute to growth, development, or expansion of the organisation, such as new product development, entering new markets, or increasing operational capacity to serve more customers and beneficiaries.

Financial Viability: Applicants must demonstrate financial stability and a realistic plan for sustainability.

Compliance: Organisations must comply with relevant legal, regulatory, and governance requirements, including subsidy control rules, as applicable.

https://futurebusinesscentre.co.uk/programmes/cpca-social-impact-investment-fund/

IT Grants/ Net Solutions Wales/ Ongoing

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Funding for charity’s ICT development.

 

What is available?

Net Solutions Wales can assist with IT Grants of £10,000 to £20,000 for community / charity groups ICT development.

The funds cover PC’s, laptops, smartboards, projectors (most main stream I.T) software and support.

Restriction of one application per year.

Typical projects that have been awarded include community re-generation/enrichment, community activities and those groups which involve their community in learning new skills.

They will assist in providing knowledge of the IT available and guide you in how best to maximise the Grant with IT that suits its purpose.

This does not affect any Core funding and applications are on a first come first served basis with a decision time of around one month.

 

Who can apply?

Charities and community groups.

 

How to apply

To find out more and to apply please visit: NET Solutions Wales: web design, e-commerce, web hosting: Charities and community grants

Brunel University / Innovation / Rolling

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Brunel Innovation Voucher Scheme Supports UK Organisations in Innovation

Brunel University London is offering the Brunel Innovation Voucher Scheme to support collaborative projects aimed at developing new products, processes, or services that foster innovation and growth within organisations.

The scheme provides vouchers valued at between £1,000 and £5,000, which cover specific academic project costs at the university. Participating organisations are required to contribute an equivalent value, either in cash or in kind, such as staff time, materials, or equipment.

The scheme is open to SMEs, social enterprises, and third sector organisations based in the UK, offering them an opportunity to collaborate with academic experts to drive innovation within their operations.

Applications are open on a rolling basis.

https://www.brunel.ac.uk/business/Help-for-SMEs/Innovation-Voucher-Scheme

Young People’s Programme / The Allan Lane Foundation/ Apply anytime

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The Allan Lane Foundation

Funding to Support Disadvantaged Young People (UK – excl Greater London)

 

What is available?

The Allan Lane Foundation is offering grants of between £5,000 and £25,000 to charities and not-for-profit organisations working with young people aged 12-21 who are socially excluded or marginalised, and who may have experienced significant issues within their lives.

The grants can be used to support a range of activities, including core costs, project work, and capital expenditure.

The Foundation is particularly interested in supporting organisations that focus their work on:

• Young people within the criminal justice system or those at risk of offending

• Looked after children or care leavers

• Those with significant mental health concerns or complex needs

• Young people who have been traumatised by challenging family backgrounds, neglect, violence or abuse

• Those that have fallen through the gaps in care and/or education

• Those already affected by, or vulnerable to, exploitation

• Whose experiences could seriously impact their transition into adulthood

 

Who can apply?

To maximise the impact of its grants, the Foundation will only fund smaller organisations. Organisations that work across a local area, such as a village, estate, or town, must have an annual income of less than £100,000 to be eligible. Organisations that work across the entire UK must have an annual income of less than £250,000 to be eligible.

 

A small number of grants have already been awarded to work with young people, including funding for a crisis drop-in for young people who have been sexually abused in Dundee; a young parents project in Bolton; funding for a youth worker to support teenagers with autism in Northern Ireland; a drama and arts project aimed at young people with a history of offending in Jaywick, Essex.

 

How to apply

Applications can be submitted at any time.

The next meeting an application could be considered at is in October 2024.

To find out more and apply please visit: Young People’s Programme – The Allen Lane Foundation

GSK Community Health / Small charities / 12 August

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About:

The new GSK Community Health programme is funded by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in partnership with The King’s Fund, a leading independent health charity working to improve health and social care. The programme is designed to run alongside the GSK Impact Awards.

Charities will need to demonstrate how their organisation is supporting communities that experience health disadvantage and how their work helps tackle this issue.

Examples include but are not limited to:

  • Working to make health services more accessible, appropriate or welcoming to the communities they serve.
  • Supporting communities to access health services.
  • Providing specific services to communities to support their health and wellbeing, increase uptake of screening services, improve healthy lifestyles or other similar activity.
  • Using focused interventions to ensure parts of the community that have traditionally been under-served or have experienced marginalisation have access to appropriate services.

 

Link Here

The deadline for applications is 12 August 2024 (5pm).

Link :

What is available?

The new programme will support up to 15 charities with £10,000 in unrestricted funding plus access to free training and development valued at £3,500.

Eligibility

Small charities that are working, located and registered in the UK can apply as long as they:

  • Are a registered charity by the application deadline of 12 August 2024.
  • Have existed for a minimum of one year by 12 August 2024.
  • Have a total annual income of between £20,000 and £150,000 as shown in their most recent accounts.
  • Are independently constituted from any national umbrella organisation.

Organisations led by and supporting people from under-represented backgrounds, people from ethnic minority communities, people with disabilities and people from the LGBTQ+ community are encouraged to apply.

Rural Prosperity Fund / Hunts Rural Business/ Now open

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About:

The Rural England Prosperity Fund (REPF) is an addendum to the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. It aims to support activities that specifically address the particular challenges rural areas face.

It succeeds EU funding from LEADER and the Growth Programme which were part of the Rural Development Programme for England. Nationally, a total of up to £110 million is available for financial years 2023 to 2024 and 2024 to 2025.

Huntingdonshire District Council (HDC) has been allocated a total of £957,788, of which £350,000 has been allocated to support the growth of rural businesses.

Link : For more information

What is available?

HDC has made £350,000 available to micro and small businesses that meet the rural eligibility areas as defined in the Defra Magic Map. Please ensure you have checked your project postcode for eligibility before starting your application.

You can apply for capital grants of a project value of up to £150,000. We reserve the right to award greater or lower amounts based on your application, the project outcomes and the quality of evidence provided.

The minimum project value is £10,000 with a grant award of £5,000.

The maximum project value is £150,000 with a grant award of £75,000.

Eligibility

Eligible businesses:

  • Are located in the central government-defined Huntingdonshire Rural England Prosperity Fund area. Before you start an application, please ensure you check your eligibility on the Defra Magic Map. View the guide on how to use the map.
  • Are a small or micro enterprise employing between 1 and 249 staff
  • Trading as a business or organisation whose company type is either: limited liability, limited liability partnership, partnership, sole trader, franchise, social enterprise, or charitable company limited by guarantee
  • Must be able to spend the funds by 28 February 2025
  • Can fund 50% of the project cost with match-funding from elsewhere
  • Are trading and operating within Huntingdonshire and paying business rates or Council Tax.

Peacocks Meadow Secures Funding as it Provides a Safe Space for Local Residents

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Some downtime during lockdown – plus Support Cambridgeshire’s Funding Alert emails – gave this community garden the impetus to go on a fundraising blitz.

Family Learning at Peacocks Meadow community garden

A local family in the Peacocks Pop-up Library

We recently received a lovely email from Deborah Curtis, in which she wrote, “I thought you might like to know that here in the Peacocks Meadow community garden in Littleport, we have achieved £18,000 in grant funding in three months, using your wonderful monthly funding lead newsletter! The funds will enable us to create a sensory garden and woodland play area for our diverse residents.” We were delighted and intrigued, so we got in touch with Deborah to find out more.

Peacocks Meadow is a community garden, tucked away beyond the car park on Limes Close in the centre of Littleport, East Cambridgeshire. It was originally farmland owned by the Peacock family, which was donated as allotments in the 1930s. It is currently owned by Sanctuary Housing, leased to Littleport Parish Council and managed by a community group called Friends of The Woodland Garden (Peacocks Meadow).

In 2017 they received a Facilities Improvement Grant from East Cambs District Council to turn it from a neglected space into a community garden. It’s been well used and looked after since then, but when COVID-19 hit, everything stopped. Funding opportunities dried up as funders raced to support pandemic relief projects.

That left committee member Deborah Curtis with some time on her hands to think about the garden’s future. She is on the mailing list to receive Support Cambridgeshire’s Funding Alert emails, which provide a round-up of the latest funding news plus on-going funders arranged by theme such as Education, Environment and Small Grants.

A weekend of inter-generational nature-based learning, thanks to a Family Learning Grant from Cambridgeshire Skills

This inspired Deb to fire off some funding applications in early 2021, hoping that some of them might be successful. The timing turned out to be fortunate. At the beginning of the pandemic, funders had focused on responding to people’s basic needs, but by 2021, there was much more of a focus on recovery.

“We’ve been astounded at how successful we’ve been,” said Deb, “because the target for many funders now is children – getting them outside, getting them active – and our garden is ideal for that.”

In just three months, she has had seven successful applications. They received £3,000 from the Police and Crime Commissioner’s Youth and Community Fund to engage young people in the creation of a sensory garden area for the benefit of adults and children with learning disabilities. There was £500 from East Cambs District Council’s Covid Recovery Fund for ground clearance and rubbish removal, £500 from Littleport Rotary for skip hire and ground clearance, £9,975 from Awards for All for the creation of a woodland play area, £1,000 from Persimmon Homes Community Champions fund for timber play equipment, £400 from Warburtons Family Grants for balance stones and a mini picnic table, and £900 from Sanctuary Housing for a living willow den. The latter included a certified landscape tutor, incorporating community learning in willow construction. Most recently, Deb secured £1,800 from Cambridgeshire Skills for nature-themed family learning workshops.

Funding has been secured for a sensory garden area, which should be ready to open in September

This impressive list is a testament to Deb’s hard work, but it also goes to show that funders often like to see an organisation or project that has a healthy amount of co-funding, along with a clear vision for how the funding will benefit local people.

Their socially distanced community event at Easter was a great success. Organised by The Port, a local youth club, it welcomed 250 people to the garden in a single day.

Deb sees the pandemic as a time when Peacocks Meadow really found its purpose. “In those months of lockdown, the visitors and volunteer engagement improved astronomically and people really took it to their hearts. We’ve created a safe space for people – people with disabilities, people with young children, older people. That discovery of the garden and the pleasure in it has continued as lockdown has eased.”

Deb has just been awarded Citizen of the Year by Littleport Parish Council – a fitting way to thank her for bringing so much happiness to the residents in her village.

Find out more about Peacock Meadow via the Facebook page.

Sign up for Funding Alert emails here.

Listening to Community Organisations

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By Victoria Hopkins

The Support Fenland project continues at pace this week as we met with members of a wide range of community organisations across the district. A key part of our project is to understand the specific needs of Fenland, so we wanted to talk directly to the groups who are already active in the community.

There are a huge number and wide variety of groups supporting Fenland communities, ranging from large organisations supporting the whole county and beyond, to small voluntary based organisations supporting a very specific area within a town or village. Often these groups have been set up in response to a need that is emerging in the community, and so these groups are vital for support organisations such as CCVS and Hunts Form to listen to when we’re planning how we can better support their work.

At this week’s session we had 19 representatives from 17 different organisations of different sizes, and over a fast paced one hour Zoom call we learnt an awful lot!

When asked about the challenges that their groups are facing, there were some common themes emerging. The ability of each group to reach and communicate with their communities has become limited, either due to social distancing or a reduction in funding. Digital services offered within Fenland do not have a high take-up rate. Volunteers have a lack of confidence; whether that is dealing with new Covid measures or just coming back to volunteering after a significant break, the groups are finding that those volunteers need an increased level of support. Finally, there is a lack of awareness of the variety and scale of the issues within Fenland outside of the district.

We then talked about the opportunities that were coming in the future. There was a lot to celebrate and look forward to, and the focus was on ensuring that all of the positive ways of working that have come out of the emergency Covid response, such as new partnerships, closer relationships and new services, continue.

Finally, the conversation turned to how the groups wanted to raise their collective voice. It was acknowledged that networking and bringing people together will be key, and that there will be many benefits of this; knowing which groups are already delivering services to residents and being able to point people in the right direction, enabling increased partnership working on common issues, giving communities a place to celebrate all that is happening and acting as an advocate for all that is great about living in Fenland.

A huge thanks to everyone who joined us for such an open, honest and lively meeting. We’re looking forward to continuing the conversation with even more members of the community at next week’s open event.

Our notes from the meeting are captured on the graphics below – click them to view full-screen.

Cambridgeshire Local Lottery

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The County Council would like to hear your views on a Cambridgeshire Local Lottery.

In March, Cambridgeshire County Council councillors approved the proposal for an online local lottery to benefit good causes across Cambridgeshire. This model is one that a number of other local authorities have adopted to create new funding streams for their local voluntary sector. The next five months offer fantastic opportunity to engage with the community and voluntary sector to understand how this lottery can best work for Cambridgeshire. The success of this lottery is dependent on this working for you – the local charities – and therefore your opinion matters.

What is it?

The Cambridgeshire Local Lottery will be administered via an External Lottery Manager, Gatherwell Ltd, an organisation that specialises in Local Authority Lotteries. The ticket draws will be weekly and all tickets will be sold online.

60p from every £1 ticket of Cambridgeshire Local Lottery will go direct to charities, voluntary organisations and other good causes like you, a much higher percentage than other well-known lottery models.

There are two parts to the local lottery scheme – good causes, like yourself, will have your own webpage created, and 50p in every pound spent by players using your webpage will be retained by you. Good causes are paid their income automatically on a monthly basis. A further 10p in every pound will go into a general Cambridgeshire Community Good Causes Fund. It is proposed that this additional funding will be allocated to good causes chosen by a selected panel of county representatives. Note this is additional funding and will not offset any existing council spending. The remaining 40p in the £1 funds prizes, operating costs and VAT (see below).

There are no costs to the good causes and the ELM will provide tailored marketing materials to help attract people to your cause. Unlike other grants, the money is not ring-fenced and can be spent on what is most needed for your charity to flourish.

Players of the lottery can win a £25,000 jackpot, plus smaller prizes.

More details of how you can raise money with the lottery are demonstrated in this video.

How can you be involved?

Although lotteries have long been a way to raise money, this is a relatively new way for local authorities to work with the voluntary sector. The County Council wants to collaborate with the community to understand how this could work for your charity and what support you may need. This is only the beginning of the journey, with a launch not anticipated until autumn 2018, so we would really like to hear your views on the following:

  • Would you be interested in being part of a focus group to discuss how to make the lottery work well in Cambridgeshire?
  • How would you like us to conduct future engagement with you and your charity?
  • Is there any further information you would want as this stage to help your understanding of the local lottery? We will be creating further communication channels and updates.

We now have a dedicated email set up at cambslottery@cambridgeshire.gov.uk so we would welcome answers to the above, plus any other questions you may have.

What’s next?

The County Council is currently applying for a Gambling Committee Licence. We will then be developing policies, procedures and governance for the lottery and we are keen to ensure that the community voice is represented during this part of the journey.

We will also be engaging with the community at a number of upcoming events and will ensure that these dates are circulated to encourage as many people to attend as possible.

Thank you.

Emily Gutteridge
Senior Transformation Advisor
Cambridgeshire County Council