Funding news

Spotlight

Institute of Fundraising – Help for Small Charities
Advice Services Fund
The Audience Focus fund
Heritage Lottery Fund
UnLtd – Funding for Social Entrepreneurs (England)
Give2Give – revised small grants fund launched
Capital Growth Campaign
Community First - £80 Million Fund
Nominet Trust £250k challenge
Blue Dot

Institute of Fundraising – Help for Small Charities

The Institute of Fundraising recently secured funding from the Office for Civil Society to support small charities to fundraise more effectively. The three year project will support small and localised organisations at grassroots level with an annual income of £1 million or less.
The project will also work with groups supporting marginalised, vulnerable and socially excluded individuals to support them develop their fundraising career. Their programme of activity will include face-to-face training, online learning, mentoring, career coaching, consultancy and a toolkit.

For more information, please go to: www.institute-of-fundraising.org.uk/help_for_small_charities

Advice Services Fund

The Cabinet Office has announced a £16.8m fund for free advice services in England will be delivered by the Big Fund, the non-lottery arm of the Big Lottery Fund.

The fund will open for applications by the end of November and will provide grants to organisations providing debt, welfare benefits, employment and housing advice services.
Applicants will have to provide advice in at least one of the four areas and be able to evidence public funding cuts of at least 10 per cent for those advice service areas from central and local government sources in 2011/12. The fund will provide grants worth between £40,000 and £70,000 to be spent on service delivery.
Please visit the Big Lottery Fund website at the end of November for details on this fund.

The Audience Focus fund

This fund is provided and administered the Arts Council and aims to engage more people in museums, libraries and the arts by supporting organisations to understand retain and develop their audiences.
There are three available strands:
Strand 1: Understanding audiences:
Supporting the development of national approaches to collecting, sharing and applying audience data and intelligence, to enable funded organisations to gain practical insight into current and potential audiences.
Strand 2: Collaborative action:
Supporting collaborative marketing and audience development activity to increase family and cross-generation attendance and participation in the arts.
Strand 3: Best practice:
Supporting the implementation of national approaches, tools, resources and training to raise and maintain standards of best practice in marketing and audience development.
It is anticipated that 10-15 awards will be made over the next three years, at a minimum of £100,000.The deadline is 10am on 9 January 2011. For more information, please click here (opens in new window).
Protecting Playing Fields Funding
Sport England’s funding programme, Protecting Playing Fields ( PPF ) is part of the Places People Play Olympic legacy mass participation programme and is investing £10 million of National Lottery funding in community sports projects over three years from 2011-2014. The programme is being delivered via five funding rounds with up to £2 million being awarded to projects in each round. The closing date for this round is 12.12.2011.

For more information go to Sport England’s website: http://www.sportengland.org/funding/protecting_playing_fields.aspx

Heritage Lottery Fund

Bromley has recently been identified as a borough that has received less HLF funding than others. HLF is very keen to help more groups to apply for projects which investigate Bromley’s diverse heritage. HLF’s Development Team is working in partnership with Community Links Bromley, London Borough of Bromley’s Parks and Greenspace Team and Bromley Museum to offer support and advice to potential applicants.
Norma Pearson is the Heritage Lottery Fund's London Development Officer with responsibility for supporting Bromley. She works closely with community organisations and council officers to promote the grant programmes and supports the development of applications from the borough.
To learn more about HLF and our work in Bromley, please contact Norma on 020 7591 6190 at normap@hlf.org.uk

UnLtd – Funding for Social Entrepreneurs (England)

UnLtd, the national charity that supports social entrepreneurs provide practical and financial support to social entrepreneurs to develop their ideas and projects. UnLtd provides grants of between £500 and £5,000 through its Level 1 Awards to help develop new ideas into real projects. UnLtd gives out 1,000 Level 1 Awards each year across the UK. Level 1 Awards are aimed at individuals or informal groups of people who have an idea and want help getting it off the ground. The money is to help with the running costs of the project.
UnLtd also promotes a Level 2 Award programme. Applications for Level 1 Awards can be submitted at any time. For more information go to: http://www.unltd.org.uk/template.php?ID=1&PageName=whatareunltdawards

Give2Give – revised small grants fund launched

Give2Give has recently launched a revised Small Grants Fund which aims to help local community, groups and charities with small amounts of funding. The Fund is just one strand of give2give's charitable activities, with the funds being raised from the sale of donated goods for re-use in give2give charity shops and furniture stores. There will be one funding round in 2012 and full details of the funding priorities, guidelines and the application process are available on the 'Grants' page of give2give's new website http://www.g2g.org.uk/grants

Capital Growth Campaign

A new funding pot of £35,000 has been launched by the Mayor of London to encourage food growing spaces in London. The Capital Growth campaign which offers groups the chance to apply for up to £750. The money can be used for gardening equipment, soil and compost. For more information go to www.capitalgrowth.org

Community First - £80 Million Fund

A new government fund will provide small grants to community groups and local social action projects up to March 2015. Community First consists of two parts, a thirty million pound Neighbourhood Matched Fund programme for some of the most deprived areas in the country and a national fifty million pound Endowment Match Challenge. Cabinet Office press release http://preview.tinyurl.com/6jgngep or see Community Development Foundation pages at http://www.cdf.org.uk/web/guest/community-first for fund details.
Cray Valley East has been identified as an eligible area allocated £33,910.

Nominet Trust £250k challenge

The Nominet Trust £250k Challenge is designed to support projects that work with older people to use the internet to address specific social problems facing older people; design new and better ways for older people to access and use the internet; and develop and use technologies familiar to older people that may have internet functionality. The minimum grant available is £1,000 and projects seeking up to £250,000 will be considered. The deadline for first stage applications is Wednesday 1 February 2012. For more information go to: http://www.nominettrust.org.uk/nominet-trust-%C2%A3250k-challenge

Blue Dot

This new website will give people dots – a virtual currency – for certain charitable activities (giving money to charity, volunteering and ‘liking’ charities), which they can cash in for rewards. For more information go to: http://bluedotworld.com/