Red Nose Day - Evening Standard Dispossessed Fund Grant Guidelines 2015

Red Nose Day – Evening Standard Dispossessed
Fund

Grant Guidelines 2015
About the Fund
Comic Relief is supporting The Evening Standard Dispossessed Fund with a grant of
£1million. Grants of between £5,000 and £20,000 are available to small community and
voluntary organisations and social enterprises in London that are doing great work to
help local people living tough lives.

The following gives details of the Fund criteria and tells you how to apply. The Fund is
managed by The London Community Foundation and is open across all London
boroughs.

Please note, the deadline for applications is 5pm Friday 8th May 2015

Aims of the Programme
We believe that local people know what is needed in their community and are best
placed to make any changes. Having lots of activities happening in area brings vibrancy
to a local community which can make it a better place to live. We are also aware that
many people are undertaking great work in their area but often struggle to get the
support they need. We therefore want to support community groups undertaking work
that helps people of all ages feel more included in their community, builds their skills
and increases their sense of achievement.

Criteria
Grants of between £5,000 and £20,000 are available to support work where there is
clear evidence of benefit to people who are excluded or disadvantaged through low
income, social isolation, age, disability, race, sexuality or gender.
This fund will cover the full costs of the project. Please include all costs in your budget
that are required to run your project.

Priority will be given to:

    Small, locally based groups or organisations working in areas of disadvantage
    Organisations demonstrating a clear understanding of the needs of their
     community

Organisations can apply for funding towards work that addresses one or more of the
following themes:

      Tackling educational disadvantage;
      Getting people into work;
      Fighting gangs, knife and gun crime;
      Improving physical and mental health;
      Addressing other manifestations of poverty such as homelessness, pensioner
       poverty or the working poor.

Applications are welcome from groups who have never applied for Comic Relief funding
before.

Organisations with current ESDF Sport Relief Funding are also eligible to
apply, however, recipients of all other Comic Relief grants, either direct from Comic
Relief or through Community Foundations must have completed the grant and
submitted a satisfactory monitoring report.

Who can apply?
To be eligible your organisation must fulfil the following criteria:

    Have been active in your local community for at least 12 months
    Have an evidenced income of less than £250,000 per annum, either in your last
     complete financial year, or taken as an average income for the last three financial
     years (or over the life of the group if it is less than 3 years old)
    Be working in a disadvantaged or deprived area
    Be run by local people
    Have limited access to other sources of funding – i.e., smaller local organisations
    Be a not-for profit, voluntary organisation including:

   Constituted Voluntary and Community Groups
             Registered Charities
             Co-operatives
             Social Enterprises and Community Interest Companies
             Charitable Incorporated Organisations
             Faith Organisations
             Companies Ltd by Guarantee without share capital

Examples of the types of project which might be funded

Please note this is not an exhaustive list of activities but purely examples of the types
of projects that might be funded:

    Activities and respite support for carers including gardening projects, cooking
     projects and telephone befriending services
    Support for older people including Good Neighbour Schemes, intergenerational
     projects involving younger people, home and garden services and financial
     advocacy
    Skills training to support people into work including accredited training
     programmes, back to work skills for parents, training in ITC and leadership skills.
    Running costs for self-help groups

Please not this is not an exclusive list of projects but purely examples of projects that
have been previously funded:

    An education, training and employability programme for homeless people
    A gardening and cooking project for carers and the people they care for
    A programme of workshops to address the issue of teenage pregnancies and
     encourage young women back into education
    A project supporting girls who have been involved in gangs, providing a safe
     environment to explore issues and develop exit strategies
    Health and art based activities for vulnerably housed or homeless people
    Residential respite breaks for adults with learning disabilities
    Befriending/good neighbour services for vulnerable, isolated older people
    Development of a food bank to provide free/subsidised meals and teach cooking
     skills
    Various training and employment focussed initiatives providing work placements
     and employment support.

What are we unable to support?
We are unable to consider supporting the following:

 Individuals;
 Statutory organisations, including schools (though we can fund PTA’s and Friends of
  Schools groups);
 Trips abroad;
 Buses, mini buses or other community transport schemes (not including transport
  costs forming part of a project)
 Building costs, including access adaptations to buildings
 Organisations which are currently in receipt of a grant from Comic Relief grant
  directly, or who have Local Communities Grant or a Large Grant through Community
  Foundations.
 Activities that promote religious or political beliefs;
 Spending that has already taken place;
 Organisations with overdue or incomplete monitoring/reporting for any of The
  London Community Foundation’s grant programmes.

Application Deadline
The deadline for completed applications, including all supporting documents is:

Friday 8th May 2015 at 5pm

How do you apply for a grant?
To apply for a grant please visit:
Application Portal

Please read the instructions carefully, tick to say you agree and have understood, enter
your e-mail address and click on the “Send e-mail and continue”

Once you have done this you will be sent an e-mail with a link to your unique online
application form. You should receive the email within a couple of minutes (if you do not
please check your spam folder).

If you have any queries re your application please do contact us well in advance of the
deadline – our contact details are on the last page.

The application
To begin your application, please click on the link within the email that you have
received from us. Please also read the online application form guidance as it will help

you understand what we expect. There are help notes available as you go through the
online application form and you can save your application at any point and come back to
complete it at any time before the closing date.
You also need to submit all of your supporting documents by uploading them at the
end of your application form. We regret we are unable to consider incomplete or late
applications.

Supporting documents you need to submit are:

    A copy of your signed governing document e.g. Memorandum and Articles of
     Association or Constitution.
    A copy of your most recent signed annual accounts
    A copy of your safeguarding policy if you will be working with children or
     vulnerable adults
    Names and addresses of your management committee members
    A completed cashflow projection for your organisation for 12 months from April
     2015 to April 2016 on the template available for download on our website.
     (Please indicate secured income and non-secured income as well as all projected
     expenditure, showing when income will be received and monthly balances.)

If you have received funding from The London Community Foundation within the last
two years, you need only submit your most recent signed annual accounts and cashflow
projection unless other documentation has changed since.

We regret we are unable to consider incomplete or late applications so please ensure
                     you submit everything by the deadline.

What happens after you have applied?
We may contact you to discuss your ideas. You should hear the outcome of your
application within 10 weeks of the deadline; therefore we recommend your project
does not start before 27th July 2015. If you are awarded a grant you will have 12 months
to spend it.

Monitoring
Grantees will be required to complete a short online form outlining how the grant was
spent and highlighting the benefits for residents.

Monitoring and evaluating our grants enables us to better understand the impact of our
grantmaking. It helps us to understand community need, enables us to learn from our

grantmaking and inform future strategies, and also enables us to show donors the
impact of their funding and hopefully encourage them to give more!

It should also help organisations to collect valuable information on how service users
benefit from your work, what works and what doesn’t, how you can make your services
more effective, and also demonstrate to funders (and donors) the value of your work.

If your application is successful, you will be required to:

    Credit support from Comic Relief and The London Community Foundation on all
     materials related to the funded work (logos will be provided);
    Complete your spending within 12 months;
    Complete a project review form about the project within 6 weeks of completing
     your grant, and no later than 14 months after receipt of grant;
    Maintain financial records for all grant spending and submit requested
     information to The London Community Foundation, including original invoices;
    Be available for a potential monitoring visit by The London Community
     Foundation or Comic Relief.
    Be available for a potential Evening Standard publicity visit, if you have agreed to
     this when submitting your application

Contact Us
Please contact Anya Stern or Sam Smallcombe at The London Community Foundation if
you need help with your application or have any queries about the Fund:

anya@londoncf.org.uk
sam@londoncf.org.uk
Tel: 020 7582 5117
www.londoncf.org.uk