This Weeks Funders … 15th December 2015
Our weekly Funding Bulletin contains a collection of articles that either feature a funder or is an interesting item associated with the world of fundraising.
The Funding Bulletin is also available to view on our website.
We have now successfully moved to St James Centre, 344 Laird Street, Birkenhead CH41 7AL. Our email and telephone numbers remain the same, however the telephones are down at the moment so you may have difficulty getting hold of us on the telephone.
The Bernard Sunley Charitable Foundation – As a general grant making trust, the trustees are interested in and support a diverse range of charities. The Trustees support capital projects only, not running costs. There is a preference to support projects related to the fabric of a building, rather than small, non-durable items subject to wear and tear such as furniture, appliances, musical instruments and tablets/laptops. Projects with a total budget of under £3,000 should not apply. In cases where grants are made, the projects are expected to be self-financing thereafter. There are three levels of grant: Small – £1,000 to £5,000, Medium – £5,001 to £24,999, Large – £25,000 or more. Applicants may suggest a preference for any level of grant, but this has no influence on the amount awarded. Grants are normally a small proportion of the project costs or funding shortfall and the majority of grants (roughly 80%) are ‘small’. Large grants are exceptional and are typically awarded to major capital projects. The Foundation will very rarely fund the full costs (or even 50%) of a project or shortfall as it expects to be one of many contributors to a project. Grants are usually paid as single payments in a one year period but, if considered particularly beneficial to the project, they may be extended over three years. Applicants must be charities registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales, with their beneficiaries based in these countries. Applications are considered from all areas of England and Wales, particularly where rural and isolated communities are concerned. On receipt of an application a Trustee or staff member may wish to conduct a visit in order to complete their assessment, prior to any decision being made.
Sainsbury’s Food Donation Partnership Programme is making a positive difference to the local communities near our stores by supporting charities helping local people in need and reducing food waste. The main programme is: Back-of- store Food Donations – Sainsbury’s will donate food free of charge which may include fresh food (within their use by date), that is fit for human consumption to charity. The programme has been running successfully in a number of stores and Sainsbury’s now wish to expand the programme to include as many stores as possible over a gradual time frame. In addition to fresh food donations some stores run long-life customer food collections where our customers are encouraged to purchase an extra item in their shopping to be donated to charity. Please note, this is not something that can be run in every store. To become a Sainsbury’s Food Partner you need to be: a registered charity, helping local people in need and be in a position to use donated food to support your beneficiaries
NB: some fresh food maybe donated to animal charities, but only if there are not any suitable people charities in an area.
Funding update from Community Foundation for Merseyside: – Please note, not all of these may be applicable to Wirral.
ACC Liverpool Foundation – Max Grant: £2,000 – Criteria and budget to be confirmed early January 2016.
Comic Relief Local Communities Fund – Max Grant: £5,000 – Funding to increase local services, build skills of local people, increase community cohesion and respond to local economic needs. Launches February 2016.
High Sheriff & Merseyside Police Fund – Max Grant: £2,500 – The fund aims to work with voluntary bodies and community groups in Merseyside to support community safety, crime prevention and security initiatives in their locality. Launches December 2015.
Liverpool ONE Foundation – Max Grant: £5,000 – Priorities include children and young people, education and employability. Launching January 2016. Deadline to be confirmed but likely to be mid February.
Peel Ports 500 Fund – Max Grant: £500 – Projects must build the capacity of the community to help itself, be based on real need, show volunteer involvement and demonstrate value for money. Rolling Fund.
B&Q Social Responsibility – B&Q will donate unsaleable products and waste materials for re-use by local schools, other educational institutions and community groups, for the benefit of the local community and the environment. These items are donated on the understanding that they will be re-used. There is an application form which needs to be printed off, filled in and returned to your local store. Please for a copy of the form.
Impact Readiness Fund – Social investors and commissioners are interested in the social impact ventures achieve, but demonstrating this impact can be difficult. Many social ventures struggle to quantify their achievements without the right systems and expertise. This fund offers grants and support to social ventures to understand and improve their social impact and demonstrate improvements to investors and commissioners. Grants between £25,000 and £100,000 will be available to help ventures build infrastructure and skills required to manage their performance, increase their social impact, and attract social investment / win contracts. Help ventures collect and analyse data in order to drive efficiencies and improvements in service delivery and impact.
Enable ventures to maximise and demonstrate social impact at the core of business planning
Develop the skills, capacity, and systems to understand and improve their performance.
Social ventures will be required to work with one of the fund’s approved support providers to develop a programme of impact readiness work and submit an application. The deadline for applications to this fund is midday 8 January 2016.
BBC Children in Need – Our Main Grants programme is open to charities and not-for-profit organisations applying for grants over £10,000 per year for up to three years. Please note that the January Main Grants Initial Application deadline is now 13th January 2016. If you are looking for any amount up to £10,000 for one year, see Small Grants. We 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, Projects we fund make differences in children’s lives that help prevent or overcome the effects of the disadvantages they face. Projects achieve these differences by either working directly with children or seeking to improve their social and physical environments.
Marie Curie Funding for research grants – We believe that, by investing in high-quality palliative care research, we can provide immediate and longer-term benefits to people with terminal illnesses. Over the last year we have taken forward a number of funding activities, both independently and in partnership with other organisations, to expand our research portfolio in end of life care. We are awarding research project grants in open competition to the Marie Curie Research Programme and have an ongoing portfolio of projects funded through the Dimbleby Marie Curie Research Fund. All applications are subject to a process of external peer review before the final decision is made at a meeting of an independent funding committee.
Commonwealth Foundation grants – The new call for grants is now open. The deadline for submission of the preliminary application form is 17.00GMT on 5 January 2016. With more than 2.3 billion citizens, the Commonwealth provides a potentially huge pool of ideas for advancing societies. The Commonwealth Foundation’s grants help civil society organisations get their ideas across to policymakers. The Commonwealth Foundation awards grants for sustainable development projects that contribute to effective, responsive and accountable governance with civil society participation. Open to civil society organisations (CSOs), Up to £30,000 per year, Multi-year funding available (up to three years), Delivered in Commonwealth Foundation eligible member countries, What makes our grants so special? Initiatives on participatory governance in Commonwealth Countries from grass roots to national level. Projects range across sectors and themes from creative expression to community empowerment; from health to human rights. Grantees learn from each other and develop the tools to monitor and evaluate their projects through our learning workshops. Grant projects must focus on one or more of the following: Creative expression, Capacity development, Constructive engagement, Learning and sharing, The SAMOA Pathway , Cross-cutting themes. Applicants are encouraged to integrate the cross cutting theme of gender into the project design.
The Urban Community Energy Fund (UCEF) is a £10m fund to kick-start renewable energy generation projects in urban communities across England. Community groups will be able to access grants and loans to support the development stages of a renewable energy project that will bring significant benefits to the local community. Grants of up to £20,000 are available for the more speculative, early stages of your project’s development, such as initial public consultation and preliminary viability studies to determine suitable technologies, and to secure basic land rights. These grants will get groups to the stage where they know whether detailed project development is worthwhile. UCEF can also provide contingent loans of up to £130,000 towards the detailed project development costs. This could include the costs of developing and submitting a full planning application, carrying out community consultation, securing all necessary permits and grid connections, arranging power purchase agreements and costing contracts for supply and installation. This will allow groups to develop a robust business case to attract further funding for the construction phase, which we call ‘investment readiness’. The loans are called contingent loans because they are only repayable if your project is successful. You will then be able to pay back the loan from the income you generate from sales of energy. The loans are repayable with a one-off 45% premium, which will help us recycle the funds to other groups – this premium will be reviewed as the scheme progresses. You are under no obligation to take a UCEF loan if you have had a UCEF grant if you feel you can secure funding for the detailed development work elsewhere.
Update from the Greater Merseyside Funding Advisors Group
A European funding update from James Sharples – Liverpool City Region Brussels Office
Focused on the EU transnational funding: Citizenship, Education, Training, Volunteering, Anti discrimination, Culture, Environment and Multi Sector.
The budget is for 2014 – 2020.
Some of the funds are geographical, some sectorial, cross border issue or local but shared issue.
Budgets vary enormously, bids are generally in consortia with European partners, most applications to Brussels direct.
Europe for Citizens
- Engaging around European issues, eg. Rememberance, town twinning (including volunteering element) or civil society lead.
- Tie in with European Agenda
- Deadline 1 March / 1 September
- Unlikely that the budget will cover total project costs
Erasmus +
- Wider collaborative projects and exchanges, trips for all ages.
- Exchanges – lump sum and flat rates
- Mostly UK applications to Ecorys/British Council
- Deadline Feb, March except for Youth Feb, Apr and Oct. (Youth is up to 30yrs)
Rights, Equality and Citizen programme
- Gender equality, anti-discrimination, anti-racism
- Violence against women (Daphne Fund)
- Victims rights, Agency cooperation, Victim support, Sexual violence
- 80% co financing
- 70th Euros minimum grant
Creative Europe
- Culture and media fund, various instruments
- Cooperation projects
- Creative art projects with social dimension
- Small with 3 member states
- Large with 6 member states
- Deadline Oct?
Life
- Environment (general), Nature and biodiversity (protected site/species), Climate Action
- Follow EU environmental policy e.g. Air quality, waste management
- Calls 1/6 to 1/10
- Must have impact monitoring from the start
- NB: If you want support from UK NCP than you must submit concept note a year before.
- Don’t need partners
Interreg NW Europe
- Capital and revenue
- Innovation and R&D, Low carbon economy, Resource efficiency
- Deadlines: 30/11/15 and 31/5/16
Interreg Atlantic Area
- First call in first quarter of 2016
- Innovation and competiveness, Resource efficiency, Climate protection, Natural and cultural assets
Horizon 2020
- Budget of 70 Billion Euros
- Covering from Research to Market uptake
- Multiple e.g. health, agriculture, energy, transport, environment, social inclusion, security. Also SME’s, Adaptive Technology and Smart cities.
- There is a 2 year work programme out, and it is very prescriptive.
- Ambitious
- Associated calls now and later.
- Excellent science, Industrial leadership and social challenges.
- Sources of help include: The Brussels office www.lcrbrussels.eu, National contact points, fund secretariat and the European networks.
- The funding engagement plan for LCR will be Transport infrastructure, Sustainable urban mob and smart cities, Marine/Maritime, E-Health bus and Eco Innovation, green growth.
- Event coming up include EU Horozen, Funding Engagement, Interreg and Creative Europe.
Feedback from the North West Funders Forum
Funders are sympathetic to the difficulties group face due to the cuts in the public sector and acknowledge that infrastructure capacity building is important to the sector.
- HLF are prioritising BME and LGBT and are closing Young Roots.
- HLF success rates: Our heritage 47%, £100 000+ grants 41%, stressed that Heritage is NOT just about buildings.
- Comic Relief will announce new funds in the Spring 16
- Big Lottery are piloting a programme in Blackpool around capacity building working with small group to build capacity.
- Lloyds Enable programme is not very competitive at the moment.
- Arts Council 40% success rates.
The potential Merseyside Funding Information Portal
There is work afoot to renew and update the existing MFIP website
Other items of Interest …
Small Grants Masterclass – Peter Riley has once again given us some of his valuable time, and will be running a masterclass on the 22nd January 2016. Time is running out … Click here for the 22nd January 2016 course.
The Charity Awards 2016 opens for entries today, and charities are encouraged to submit applications for their most effective and impactful projects. The application window for the 17th annual Charity Awards, again sponsored by Charities Aid Foundation, will last for just over three months, with entries closing on Friday 4 March.
The Tech Surgery provides charities with FREE independent advice that can help you make better use of technology. Following the consultation you will have a report with a clear set of recommendations for your specific needs. Our offer is optimised for organisations turning over between £50K and £5M, and we are only able to assist UK charities registered with the Charity Commission. Please note there is a waiting list.
New Acas disability discrimination guide released. Last year we had nearly 12,000 calls to the Acas helpline related to disability issues and received almost 3,000 disability discrimination employment tribunal cases. Getting disability related issues wrong can be costly. Acas has a new free guide to help employers understand what disability is, and isn’t, and how to manage related issues.
Update from Andy Churchill – Network for Europe – Skills Funding Agency has now started to announce their first ESF Calls for the 2014-20 Programme.
Fundsurfer help you create, manage and promote engaging crowdfunding campaigns.
