£5 Million Loneliness COVID-19 Grant Fund

The Government (Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, Office for Civil Society and Baroness Barran MBE) has launched a £5m fund today to tackle loneliness resulting from the coronavirus outbreak and period of social distancing. National organisations working to tackle loneliness and build social connections are invited to apply for a share of the £5m funding to continue and adapt their critical work. Grants of between £500,000 and £1m will be awarded to successful applicants whose services:

  • can reach people in ‘cold spots’ where informal neighbourly support and small local charities are not able to fully meet needs around social connection;
  • serve the needs of groups particularly at risk of loneliness, including those noted in ONS analysis and Community Life Survey and Active Lives Survey data;
  • continue, adapt or expand existing provision where there is a track record of successful delivery; AND
  • cannot be provided without this additional funding.

Services must meet all of these aims to be eligible for this funding. The application form and further guidance is available here. The deadline for applications is 12pm on Friday, 29 May 2020 and completed applications should be returned by email to the Loneliness Fund team at loneliness@culture.gov.uk.

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National Lottery Awards for All England

The National Lottery has adapted their Awards for All programme to focus on funding projects by organisations that support their communities during the Covid-19 pandemic. This programme is now only funding activities that support people affected by the crisis and it is anticipated that this will be the case for 6 months.

Voluntary and community organisations can apply for grants of between £300 and £10,000 to fund their work supporting people at high risk from Covid-19, or people who have faced an increase in challenges as a result of Coronavirus. Projects must involve the local community to be eligible for the funding. Applicants can apply to the fund online through the National Lotter Awards for All website, the application process is ongoing.

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Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs: Food Charities Grant Fund

Front-line food charities are now eligible to apply for a grant of up to £100,000 to help them continue to provide food to vulnerable people during the Coronavirus crisis as part of Defra’s new Food Charities Grant Fund. The fund is operating on a first come first served basis with Defra assessing applications in the order that they come in.

Charities are eligible for the grant if they are unable to meet the increased demand for food from vulnerable individuals and supporting charities and have the capacity to distribute all the food purchased with this grant by 9 August 2020. The grant can be used to purchase food for people who are unable to afford food or have moved into contemporary accommodation due to Covid-19, such as domestic abuse victims, those recently released from prison, or newly homeless people. The fund cannot be used to provide food for the extremely clinically vulnerable, as they are being supported by the government.

To apply, charities have to have registered with the eSourcing portal and apply through that.

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Domestic Abuse Safe Accommodation: COVID-19 Emergency Support Fund Update

At the end of last Thursday, the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) issued a call for applications for charities providing domestic abuse safe accommodation services in England (see our funding update below).

Social needs don’t get any more urgent than this, but after waiting a month for any news after this was identified as a funding priority in the Chancellor’s statement, charities were initially given just three working days to bid for emergency funds to help women and girls in serious danger (including a preference for consortia bids!).

The application guidance claims the department will give ‘special consideration to services that provide support to particular groups such as…BAME, LGBT and victims with disabilities’. But the absurdly short application window risks excluding charities supporting those very groups, because they’re likely to have less capacity to rapidly put together applications.

Thankfully the Women’s Resource Centre and the Small Charities Coalition organised a rapid letter to politicians over the weekend which DSC supported, and the deadline has subsequently been moved forward to Thursday 21 May – better but still very tight.

Domestic abuse safe accommodation: COVID-19 emergency support fund

 

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The Baring Foundation

The Baring Foundation’s Strengthening Civil Society programme has today launched three new funding schemes to support its grantees and broader civil society through the Covid-19 crisis. The fund will run throughout 2020 and will amount to £1m in grant money.

The first new stream of funding is for Supporting Legal Action Related To Covid-19 and is open to applications from all registered charities, including current grant holders, with an annual income of less than £5m. Grants are available of up to £40,000 for organisations with a demonstrable legal expertise in the area in which they work.

Deadlines for this fund are staggered throughout 2020, with the first one being midday on Thursday 28 May. Further guidance for applying to the fund can be found on their website, as well as later deadlines, and an application form.

There are two additional new grants, an Operational Impacts Grant and an Increase In Demand For Advice From Frontline Organisations grant. Both of these are open to current grant holders and other organisations who have received funding from the Strengthening Civil Society programme since 2016.

The Operational Impacts Grant is offering small-scale grants of up to £5,000 to organisations who have been severely impacted by Covid-19. The Increase In Demand From Frontline Organisations strand is offering grants of up to £30,000 for hub organisations which provide legal advice to other organisations, helping them to drive social change.

The Implementing successful litigation fund, a previously established fund, is still operating with the next deadline being on May 20th at 9am.

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Resourcing Racial Justice Fund

Resourcing Racial Justice has announced a fund to support BAME charities through crises, be it Covid-19 or otherwise. Applicants can apply for grants between £5,000 to £50,000 to support their projects that respond to the immediate needs brought about by this crisis, and other crises that may occur after the current pandemic, such as an environmental crisis brought on by global warming.

This comes after the racial justice charity #CharitySoWhite has published an open letter asking for the ringfencing of 20% of Covid-19 related funding for BAME charities citing the recently published report by Ubele stating that 9 out of 10 BAME micro and small organisations are set to close following the lockdown.

The first round of funding opens 18th May and closes 15th June. A launch event webinar will be help on 20th May that will provide more information on the Resourcing Racial Justice Fund and how to apply.

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Charities Eligible for Coronavirus Bounce Back Loan scheme (CBBL)

Similar to the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme, the government has confirmed that charities are also eligible for smaller ‘bounce back’ loans of between £2000-£50,000, which the Chancellor announced in April. The requirement for businesses to generate ‘50% income from trading’ does not apply to charities. Find out more.

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Have you Accessed Government Support?

Government announced £750m in funding for charities nearly a month ago. We finally heard some more over the weekend when Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick MP announced that £76m of this funding will be allocated to support vulnerable children and survivors of domestic abuse and sexual violence, but nothing about which charities will receive this support.

Details for distribution of most of the rest of the funding remain unclear. As part of the #NeverMoreNeeded campaign to increase the support available to charities, we want you to tell us how helpful and accessible the support that’s currently available has been – including the support provided to business which charities can access.

Just answer some quick questions in our short survey, and tell us about how your organisation is being affected by the current crisis.

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The Edward Gostling Foundation

The Edward Gostling Foundation supports charitable organisations that work with people living with a mental and/ or physical disability or long term illness. The Foundation has suspended its usual criteria for grant-making during the COVID-19 crisis, to concentrate on helping smaller charities providing frontline community services. It will be awarding grants of up to £10,000 to eligible charities with less than 6 months’ worth of free reserves, to support core operating costs. Click here for further details, guidelines and how to apply.

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Funding to Support Charities and Communities Affected by Coronavirus (UK)

The Yorkshire Building Society’s Charitable Foundation has launched a Coronavirus Response Fund to support registered charities that ate helping local communities affected by the coronavirus. Funding will support groups and activities that help vulnerable people who are self-isolating, co-ordinate community response, provide emergency support such as food banks, help with loss of income and ensure health and wellbeing is maintained. The £100,000 fund will make donations of between £250 and £2,000 to help with costs such as running costs, staff and travel costs, and volunteer expenses. Applications can be made at any time and will be reviewed on a fortnightly basis. Click here

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