£1m fund opened to protect outdoor recreational space
Howard Lake | 3 July 2011 | News
SITA Trust opened the first funding round for its new £1 million grantmaking programme, the Queen Elizabeth II Fields Fund. SITA Trust will be making grants of up to £25,000 to support volunteers and in some cases bring in contractors to physically improve a selected space.
The programme is part of the Queen Elizabeth II Fields Challenge, a campaign to protect outdoor recreational spaces in communities all across the country as a permanent legacy of Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012, led by the Fields in Trust and HRH the Duke of Cambridge.
Recreation spaces need first to be designated a Queen Elizabeth II Field. Then an application can be made to SITA Trust’s fund to help volunteers make improvements to the recreation area.
Jools Granville of SITA Trust said: “We anticipate that our grants will support volunteers to improve site clearance, planting, fencing to make the field more healthy and sustainable or improvements to existing community buildings on the site such as refurbishing or creating better access”.
SITA Trust has been providing funding through the Landfill Communities Fund since 1997, and has granted more than £80 million towards projects that enhance communities and enrich nature.
The trust’s delivery partner for the Queen Elizabeth II Fields Fund is environmental charity BTCV, which is available to offer support including planning and risk management, volunteer engagement and management, and training.
The first deadline for applications is 25 July 2011 with other funding deadlines scheduled until late 2012.
www.sitatrust.org.uk/qe2-fields
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.