The Improving Lives funding priorities are part of our wider grant making strategy launched in October 2017.
In our Improving Lives programme, we have six priority areas. These priorities describe what we want to fund and how we want to bring about change for the most disadvantaged people in greatest need.
Help at a Critical Moment Helping people to rebuild their lives following a crisis, critical moment, trauma or abuse
Positive Choices Helping people, whose actions or behaviours have led to negative consequences for themselves and others, to make positive choices
Accommodation / Housing Support Enabling people to work towards or maintain accommodation
Employment and Training Supporting people to move towards or gain employment
Financial Inclusion, Rights & Entitlements Supporting people to overcome their financial problems and ensure that they are able to claim their rights and entitlements
Support Networks & Family Working with people to develop improved support networks and family relationships
Our application form asks you to identify which priority (or priorities) your work meets. All the grants we make must meet one of our priorities. Some organisations may fit within several priority areas, but you don’t need to address more than one. Applications will be assessed on the quality of their work rather than the number of priority areas they are working towards.
We provide grant funding for charitable activities; we do not provide loans or social finance.
– The amount requested must be between £20,000 and £60,000 per year.
– The maximum length of funding that can be requested is three years.
Within this range, we encourage organisations to apply for the amount and length of funding that they need, and that makes sense in the context of the application.
– We will not consider making a grant that is equivalent to more than 50% of the annual running costs of an organisation.
– We can provide funding for either running costs or for specific projects or areas of work.
– Where all of an organisation’s activities fit within our priority areas, we can make grants towards unrestricted running costs, which may include salaries, overheads and day to day
running costs. Where an organisation delivers some activities that are outside of our priority areas we will only consider applications towards a specific project that fits with our priorities.
– Our grants are for revenue costs and direct service delivery. We do not fund capital costs
