Tesco Centenary Fund offers £200k in Northern Ireland
Howard Lake | 19 March 2019 | News
The Tesco Centenary Fund, which will provide grants worth £200,000 to communities in Northern Ireland, is now open.
The first of two special funding rounds will concentrate on groups delivering health and wellbeing benefits, with a particular focus on groups tackling cancer, heart disease and diabetes, in line with the supermarket’s National Health Partnership.
Community charity Groundwork NI, which will work with Tesco to shortlist the projects to be funded, is working in partnership with Tesco to deliver the Centenary Fund.
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Three community projects will be voted on by customers in Tesco stores throughout Northern Ireland in July/August and November/December 2019. Following the vote, the project that receives the most votes will receive a grant of up to £50,000, the second place project receives up to £30,000 and third place project gets up to £20,000. Another two-month voting round for three more projects will launch in November, with a total of six projects sharing in the cash over the course of the year.
Brendan Guidera, Tesco’s store director in Northern Ireland, said: “We are celebrating a century of delivering great value for our customers, and there is no better way to mark this occasion than to offer ‘little helps’ to those making a difference across the region, starting with those projects helping to transform our health and wellbeing.”
The types of projects funded will be very broad, Tesco says, and will cover the direct costs needed to deliver the project, this could range from:
- Improvements to a building of regional or national significance that benefits the whole community such as a museum, hospice, specialist hospital ward, art gallery, heritage centre, wildlife centre or an ancient monument.
- Improvements to an outdoor space of regional or national significance such as walking/cycling routes, gardens, nature reserves, wildlife areas, waterways or woodlands.
- Delivering activities or charitable services such as health and wellbeing support activities, foodbanks, community clubs, homelessness support, sporting activities, recycling/upcycling programmes, regional school focused programmes and community festivals or events.
- Providing equipment such as medical equipment, minibuses, mobile libraries and safety equipment.
The Tesco Centenary Fund can fund 100% of project costs so charities do not have to have any match funding.
Grants will be awarded to not for profit organisations including registered charities, community interest companies, health bodies (e.g. Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), NHS Hospital Trusts, Foundation Trusts), local authorities and social housing providers. This list is not exhaustive and there will be many other types of organisations that will be funded, Tesco says.
[Editor’s note 24 March 2026: Tesco Centenary Fund in 2026 is now Tesco Stronger Starts, supporting causes across the UK].
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.