Big Issue Invest

Grant Funding and Contingency Planning

We kicked off our Investment Support Webinar Series and wanted to provide some resources we think will be helpful to your social business

by: Hekla Goodman

13 May 2020

We kicked off our Investment Support Webinar Series with the Grand Funding and Contingency Planning Webinar. Linda Rutter, one of our consultants joined us and discussed one of the most pressing issues at this time, funding. In particular grant funding to help your business fair the storm. See below some resources we think will be helpful to your social business.

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Sources of funding

We discussed a few sources of funding. But the main resource we’d recommend is the Charity Excellence Framework. It has a searchable database of organisations and funds offering grants to charities affected by COVID-19. It takes two minutes to register and is completely free.

A few other grants you may find fit for purpose are:

Charity Bank has an excellent list of COVID-19 funds broken down by country and region.
Ian McLintock has posted a useful list of over 200 Funders offering grants for projects affected by COVID-19.
Grants Online has published a list of Coronavirus specific funds across the UK.
The Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) has produced a list of specific funds available across the UK and for many different types of organisations.
The Barclays Foundation is offering £100m in funding. It will be giving out half of the fund in the form of direct funding for charities, while the other half is a commitment to match employees’ donations, including senior executives in the bank pledging a third of their salary.
Sport England is making up to £195 million of funding available to help the sport and physical activity sector (including clubs and community organisations) through the ongoing Coronavirus crisis.
Community Foundations around the UK are providing Coronavirus specific funding. Visit the UK Community Foundations website to find out what your local foundation is doing.
The Arts Council has made £160 million of emergency funding available for those organisations and individuals who will need it during this crisis.
The Third Sector Resilience Fund (Scotland). Scotland’s government has created a £20m Third Sector Resilience Fund, with both grants and interest free loans available. The fund is now open for applications.
The Halifax Foundation for Northern Ireland is keeping its small and medium grants programmes open.
The National Lottery Awards for Wales is prioritising applications that are COVID-19 related over the next six months.