£5mn fund for youth organisations opens, plus other funding news
Melanie May | 2 February 2023 | News
UK Youth & Pears Foundation are offering £5mn in funding to help youth organisations through the cost of living crisis. Another big funding announcement: round two of the Co-op Foundation’s £3.5m Carbon Innovation Fund (CIF) partnership with Co-op has opened for applications. News on these and other opportunities below.
UK Youth & Pears Foundation launch £5mn fund for youth organisations
UK Youth and Pears Foundation have launched a new £5mn fund to support youth organisations through the cost of living crisis.
Youth organisations with an annual income of no more than £500,000 will be able to apply for the UK Youth Fund in partnership with Pears Foundation, with the application window opening today, Thursday 2 February at 10am.
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The fund will offer three-year unrestricted grants of approximately 10% of the current turnover of applicant organisations to reflect the current inflation rate and organisations will hear the outcome of their application within 4-6 weeks.
UK Youth and Pears Foundation are both deeply concerned about the impact the crisis is having on youth organisations and young people across the UK. The fund aims to ensure that as many youth services as possible are able to keep the lights on and support young people in their local community.
Full details of the UK Youth Fund in partnership with Pears Foundation, including application criteria and how to apply, can be found on UK Youth’s website. Any further questions about the fund can be answered by the grants team at fu*********@uk*****.org.
Co-op Foundation fights climate crisis through its largest ever partnership with Co-op
Round two of the Co-op Foundation’s £3.5mn Carbon Innovation Fund (CIF) partnership with Co-op has opened for applications.
Grants of £75,000 to £200,000 are available to organisations working to reduce reliance on soy-based animal or fish feed and/or synthetic fertilisers.
This work will build upon the Foundation’s plan to create more sustainable communities, as part of its new strategy ‘Building communities of the future together’.
The funding follows on from £1.4mn of grant-giving in round one that saw the partnership support organisations working to decrease carbon emissions from the food, farming and aquaculture industries.
The Carbon Innovation Fund is the largest partnership of its kind between Co-op and its charity, the Co-op Foundation. It is funded by Co-op donations from the sale of compostable carrier bags in the UK, as well as the Foundation’s own funds.
Find out what organisations are eligible. Between five and 10 grants are expected to be awarded, helping the Foundation to deliver on Co-op’s vision of ‘Co-operating for a Fairer World’.
RSA announces recipients of Catalyst Awards
The RSA has announced the eight projects that will each receive a Catalyst Award, a grant given to support social impact projects.
It awards £100,000 annually to support RSA Fellows to test social change innovations and scale up the impact of their projects. The Catalyst Awards offers £2,000 Seed and £10,000 Scaling grants for RSA Fellows.
The seed and scale grants – one to help projects get off the ground and the other to help projects with a proven social impact to grow, are given based on their potential to serve their local communities by impacting skills and employment, education and learning, health and wellbeing, or community participation and decision-making.
The seed grant winners are: EmpowerED, Primary Pioneers, The Public Haybox, and Influences.
The scale grant winners are: DEBSS+, South London Music Therapy Clinic, Partner Up!, and Money Movers.
The next round opens for applications on 6 March.
£2.5mn for kidney disease research in landmark funding announcement
Kidney Research UK has announced a major funding package of £2.5 million for new research projects that could change the lives of patients across the UK.
A total of fourteen projects are being awarded funding including research into the genetic factors that influence the progression of chronic kidney disease, development of human kidney lab models for disease progression monitoring and drug screening as well as a project to improve dialysis lines for children so that chances of infection are reduced.
The sum of money is a notable increase on the amount usually awarded by the charity in its grants rounds which typically range around £1.5mn. The additional investment into these projects comes as result of collaboration with organisations like Kidney Wales and Kidney Research Yorkshire alongside donations from the Thompson Family Trust. The scale of grant funding highlights the charity’s commitment to expanding the knowledge base of kidney disease as well as looking to transform treatments for all patients.
The funded projects will all commence in 2023 and run continuously over the next three years. More information on Kidney Research UK and the individual projects themselves here.
McCarthy Stone Foundation grants programmes now open
The Winter Warm Spaces programme is offering a total of 40 grants for £750, restricted to covering the increased costs of providing a warm space for older people to connect and engage.
The Spring Community Grants offer funding up to £7500 for programmes or organisations helping older people to be valued, engaged and connected. The McCarthy Stone Foundation would particularly like to hear from organisations in East Anglia/Lincolnshire/East of England and Wales.
To apply for one of the Winter Warm Spaces grants organisations are asked to complete the application form here.
To complete an Expression of Interest for one of the Spring Community Grants please complete the form here. Organisations can apply for both programmes, but will only be awarded for one.
Winter Warm Spaces will run to the end of February, while the Spring Community Grants Expressions of Interest will close on 15 February.
Leeds Building Society Foundation awards £156,000 to Yorkshire charities
The Leeds Building Society Foundation has awarded £156,000 worth of grants to five Yorkshire charities with the aim of supporting people in need of a safe and secure home. The support from the Foundation has been made possible thanks to generous donations from the Society and its members and comes at a time when charities are under more pressure than ever as people struggle with the cost of living.
Zarach in Leeds has been awarded £54,667, Nomad Sheffield has been awarded £89,900, and Bradford Night Stop £49,900 while Shiloh in Rotherham received £36,000 and Leeds Asylum Seekers Support Network (LASSN) £60,590.
The Leeds Building Society Foundation has also awarded small grants to 102 charities across the UK taking the total awarded in 2022 to just under £230,000. These can be applied for (up to £1,000) on its site. Large grants can also be applied for via its site with the foundation only accepting grants from organisations based in or delivering work in Yorkshire and/or the North East of England.
Benefact Trust awards funding to frontline charities in response to cost of living crisis
The charitable owner of Benefact Group has awarded £225,000 to frontline charities in response to the cost of living crisis.
In December, Benefact Trust announced a £500,000 funding package to support charities working to keep people safe and warm this winter.
In the first wave of funding, a total of £275,000 was awarded to the Trussell Trust, Depaul UK and Depaul Ireland, and the Warm Welcome Campaign.
The second wave of funding has been granted to:
- The Salvation Army. £100,000 funding from the Trust will be shared across 38 Salvation Army Centres in the most disadvantaged areas of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England, helping to provide warm spaces, food, and baby supplies to low-income families.
- TLG (Transforming Lives for Good). £50,000 funding from Benefact Trust will help to provide emergency support packages to families across 80 Make Lunch Clubs, as well as supporting the churches with micro-grants to subsidise increased costs for heating and food provision.
- Warm Welcome Campaign – In the first round of the emergency funding, the Trust awarded £25,000 to help kick-start the Warm Welcome Campaign, which supports churches to offer warm spaces. A further £75,000 grant will enable the campaign to deliver micro-grants to churches in the most disadvantaged areas of the UK, helping them with heating, promoting their spaces, and food and drink provision.
Benefact Trust offers grants through its website. Benefact Group has also kicked off the Movement for Good awards ahead of the next round of giving in April 2023. Charities and their supporters can nominate here. There is also a fundraising hub, useful for planning ahead for funding windows and support with applications.
London Sport distributes £530,000 in grants
More than half a million pounds is being distributed to grassroots clubs, sporting organisations, local authorities, and charities in London to help address deep-rooted health inequalities worsened by the pandemic and the cost of living crisis.
London Sport is distributing £530,000 of grants through Sport England’s Together Fund. This funding will help more than 50 community organisations step up their efforts to encourage Londoners to be more active, with grants focusing on the most deprived areas of the capital. The fund also targets communities and people most adversely impacted by COVID and, more recently, the cost of living crisis.
As well as looking to improve activity levels amongst adults, the fund will also enable community groups to help tackle inactivity among children in London.
The latest funding from London Sport follows £640,000 previously distributed in the capital through Sport England’s Tackling Inequalities Fund, which acted as an immediate critical response to the impact COVID-19 had on physical activity and sport at a community level. The Together Fund builds on that initial support and focuses on recovery, the longer term impact of COVID, the health inequality crisis, and supporting Londoners to remain active during the cost of living crisis.
All funding has now been allocated.
Plunkett Foundation awarded Royal Warrant Holders Association Charitable funding grant
Plunkett Foundation has been awarded a Royal Warrant Holders Association (RHWA) Charitable funding grant, to support its dedicated training hub for community businesses.
Following a nomination from McFarlane Telfer Ltd, warrant holders who maintain and service commercial kitchens, the charity received a £3,000 donation which will be used to make its training activity accessible to a wider range of people.
McFarlane Telfer Ltd has been working with the Plunkett Foundation since 2020 and has an on-going relationship with the charity to help support community projects across the country.
The grant will help support the continued running of a training hub that provides a blend of free and subsidised training for community businesses that help their communities address issues of isolation, loneliness, work, training, volunteering and general wellbeing.
An estimated 325,000 people benefitted from the community businesses that Plunkett supported last year; including 18,000 vulnerable people. Collectively, they employ approximately 4,000 FTE staff and 21,000 volunteers.
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.