Project Giving Back funding extended, plus more opportunities for good causes
Melanie May | 21 September 2023 | News
Another in our series of funding news round ups, with opportunities including an extension of Project Giving Back’s funding for gardens for good causes, funding for libraries and their communities, Big Issue Invest funding for growing social impact, and more.
Project Giving Back funding for gardens for good causes extended until 2026
Project Giving Back (PGB) intends to continue its support of gardens for good causes at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in 2025 and 2026. Expressions of interest for 2025 funding can be submitted via the Project Giving Back website from Friday 22 September to Friday 3 November 2023. All gardens supported by PGB are repurposed in permanent locations around the UK after the show as ongoing legacies for the causes that inspired them.
Established in 2021 to provide financial support for UK charities to share their stories on a global platform, the grant-making charity originally pledged to fund 42 gardens at the Royal Horticultural Society’s world-famous event in 2022, 2023 and 2024, with an investment of around £12mn.
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The success of the scheme has inspired its anonymous Founders to commit to a further two years of funding, with an extended target of supporting 60 gardens.
Expressions of interest for 2025 funding can be submitted on the PGB website from 22 September until 3 November 2023. Only applications from established charity/designer partnerships will be considered. A long-list will be drawn up and reviewed by the PGB panel in early November with successful long-list applicants invited to submit a written brief and moodboards by 18 December 2023.
More information and to submit an expression of interest for 2025 funding here.
Big Issue Invest launches Social Impact Investment Fund
Big Issue Invest (BII), the investment arm of the Big Issue Group (BIG), is calling for applications to its Social Impact Debt Fund IV (Fund IV): a private debt fund, which will lend to organisations across the UK looking to grow their social impact.
The fund will focus on three core sectors – health and social care, affordable housing and social infrastructure (for example co-working spaces, education & training, nurseries and arts organisations). The fund seeks national exposure with an emphasis on areas of poverty and deprivation within the three core sectors.
Fund IV aims to support organisations that can provide affordable housing solutions and help alleviate homelessness.
The fund also recognises the importance of social infrastructure in addressing poverty and inequality and seeks to lend to organisations improving this, such as through community centres, shared workspaces, arts performance venues, nursery provision and educational institutes.
The fund offers loans of £1mn – £4mn, typically backed by property assets and where BII will be the sole lender. The loans will be fixed rate and repayable over 3 to 5 years. Borrowers must be established, socially impactful organisations, with a history of profitable revenue generation.
Europe Challenge 2024 opens to libraries & communities
Libraries and their community of choice are invited to apply for the third edition of the Europe Challenge 2024: Libraries, Communities and Democracy.
The Europe Challenge is an annual programme that brings together teams from libraries and communities across Europe to address social isolation, inequality, disinformation, climate crises and other local challenges by developing, sharing and implementing creative solutions with support from the European Cultural Foundation and its partners. This edition runs from January to September 2024.
The Europe Challenge equips participants with the tools to develop and implement creative solutions through:
- a series of online and in-person workshop and mentoring sessions
- funding of up to EUR 10.000 (optional)
- additional peer-to-peer exchange opportunities and travel
The call is open to 9.00 CEST 16 October.
The Europe Challenge was launched in 2020 and has since supported 39 library initiatives across Europe.
Grants still available from HS2 Community & Environment Fund
With HS2’s construction still underway, construction of HS2 gets underway, applications for grants from its Community & Environment Fund are still being welcomed.
The Funds for Phase One, independently administered by the charity Groundwork UK, are designed to support urban and rural, community, environmental and business projects.
Coleshill Cricket Club in Warwickshire, one recipient, has opened a new pavilion after receiving a £74k grant from the fund. The project has led to improvements to facilities across the site. The main room has been extended and bar moved, kitchen facilities have been upgraded, a bi-fold entrance has been installed and an area at the front of the pavilion has been fenced off for safer access to the building.
Motability Foundation grants
Motability Foundation has awarded a grant of £1.86 million to the charity Back Up, which will be awarded over three years.
The new funding will be focused on activities that ensure people with spinal cord injury have more positive experience of the transport system and feel more confident in making journeys.
Motability Foundation’s grants are designed to help disabled people access transport and make the journeys they want to. As such, it supports individuals, families and communities through its Motability Scheme-Related Grants, Access to Mobility Grants and Grants to Charities and Organisations.
The foundation offers six grant programmes for charities and organisations:
- Community Transport
- Wheelchair Sector
- Research
- Active Travel
- Travelling with Confidence
- Reducing Barriers to Driving
Charities and organisations can apply for grants from £50,000 up to £4 million.
Each application will be assessed consistently against our criteria to ensure fair and transparent awarding of funding and to deliver the greatest impact to as many disabled people as possible.
North West charities receive £60,000 in funding
The first winners of the Equilibrium Foundation Grant Awards have been announced. The six winning charitable organisations, based in the North West, will receive a share of £60,000.
The awards, launched in April of this year, provide annual funding to smaller, lesser-known charities in this area of England. Introduced by The Equilibrium Foundation, the charitable giving arm of Cheshire-based Equilibrium Financial Planning, the awards centre around a different theme each year.
With 34% of children in the North West living in poverty, an increase of 5% since 2015, the inaugural awards invited applications from not-for-profit organisations working to alleviate child poverty in the region.
The six winning organisations are: Norbook Youth Club, Home-Start, Bare Necessities The Bolton Toy Library, Prevent 2 Protect, and Swinton Lions Community Sports Foundation.
UK child exploitation charity first SME to receive British Safety Council funding to support staff wellbeing
Derbyshire-based charity Safe and Sound has become the first organisation to win funding from British Safety Council to improve and support its staff’s wellbeing.
The funding of up to £10,000 was awarded to Safe and Sound through British Safety Council’s Keep Thriving campaign to improve workplace wellbeing.
Tracy Harrison, CEO of Safe and Sound, attended the first 3-hour workshop in November 2022 to help her and other small and medium organisations (SMEs) develop a wellbeing strategy, delivered by experts from British Safety Council’s Being Well Together programme.
Workshop attendees are invited to apply for funding six months after attending workshops with only the most effective and innovative proposals receiving approval.
Further awards will be made to other organisations taking part in workshops between November 2022 and March 2023. The money will help the SMEs to implement their wellbeing strategy and plans.
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.