Funding & grant news for UK nonprofits
Melanie May | 10 July 2024 | News
A funding news round up including opportunities to win grants for digitisation projects, to support care leavers in Kent, and information on Heart of England’s available grant programmes.
Grants available for digitisation projects
The TownsWeb Archiving digitisation grant 2024 is now live, offering funding for digitisation projects.
Over the past seven years, this grant has benefitted over 120 organisations and awarded almost £150,000. Last year 22 separate projects were successfully funded with over £30,000 awarded in digitisation funding.
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Available this year:
- Three grants of £3,000
- £500 added to a Match Funding Pot per application received
- Up to £1,000 in match funding per applicant on a first come, first served basis
Examples of what the funding covers the digitisation of are bound volume collections, archive collections, and photograph collections. Part of the grant may also be used to fundtranscription of metadata and OCR (optical character recognition) data capture.
More information here.
£60,000 funding for care leavers in Kent
Grants from the new Kent Community Foundation Care Leavers Fund are available for charities and community groups which provide frontline services to care leavers.
The grants of up to £7,500 will focus on supporting care leavers aged between 16.5 and 25, as they move from foster or state care to independent living. The new funding, which will be available for organisations throughout Kent and Medway, will provide practical and holistic support to care leavers. The grants will be awarded for projects supporting young care levers including, mentoring, therapy, counselling and peer support, care leaver sessions, practical advice and training to support care leavers to set up home, gain confidence, experience, life skills and help reach their potential.
The deadline for applications to the Kent Community Foundation Care Leavers Fund is 15 July 2024.
More information here.
In April 2024, Kent Community Foundation adopted a new grant making strategy for the next four years. Their focus will remain on those local groups that know Kent communities the best and the new strategy can be viewed here, with information on how to apply for funding here.
The PA Foundation distributed £2m+ in grants towards STEM and skills education in 2023
The PA Foundation has published its latest annual report, announcing that it distributed over £2 million of grant-based funding in 2023. This is a doubling in funding from its inaugural year in 2022.
The funds targeted initiatives that increase access to opportunities for people in underserved communities or those facing societal, cultural, or financial barriers. The report also shares details of the Foundation’s work with 33 charity partners to bridge accessibility gaps in STEM, digital skills training, and employment.
In 2023, The PA Foundation:
- Distributed over £2 million in funding to 33 charity partners across the UK, US, Nordics, and the Netherlands
- Commenced initiatives to reach more than 9,000 participants directly
- Increased its support for marginalised groups, including refugees and migrants (11% of funding) and women and girls in STEM (53% of funding)
The PA Foundation partners with a diverse range of charities and nonprofit organisations, including: Ada, the National College for Digital Skills, Big Friends, and Coding Pirates.
As well as financial support through The PA Foundation, PA employees gave their time and expertise through volunteering. This includes in areas such as mentoring, digital skills training, career workshops, and pro-bono consulting work, which enabled charity partners to scale their impact.
The PA Foundation offers regular funding opportunities through its Ingenious Investment Fund, which awards grants of up to £20,000 across the UK, US, Netherlands and Nordics to small charities and nonprofits supporting those facing disadvantage. More information here.
Community foundation delivers largest grants programme in its history
Heart of England Community Foundation announced last month that it has distributed 388 grants totalling £11.8 million through its Inclusive Communities Fund, which was established to empower communities to tackle local challenges.
Inspired by the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, the fund (now closed) supported community-based organisations, offering them access to new opportunities and legacy funding from the Games.
The figures mean that Heart of England Community Foundation has completed what would ordinarily be approximately four years’ worth of grant making in just seven months, making this fund the largest programme it has ever delivered. To meet the demand, the Foundation processed more than 1,300 applications.
The Inclusive Communities Fund was part of the West Midlands Combined Authority’s (WMCA)
Commonwealth Games Legacy Enhancement Fund, which is using the underspend from the Games
to ensure the positive legacy is felt right across the region and for many years to come. Heart of England Community Foundation is the administrator of the Inclusive Communities Fund across the region.
Heart of England has a range of other grants available, with regional programmes as well as covering Coventry, Solihull, and Warwickshire; and Birmingham and the Black Country.
More information on the grant programmes here.
More funding opportunities, shared in tweets
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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.