Tag Archive for: grants

Community Grants / Cambridge City Council / Deadline 14 January 2025

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.

GSK Community Health / Small charities / 12 August

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

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

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.