COMMUNITY AWARDS APPLICATION PROCESS
Are you looking for a grant of £2,501 - £50,000? Please click below for an overview of the Community Awards Application Process.
The Outline Proposal is a short form which quickly tells you whether you are eligible to apply to the Community Awards programme and whether your project is one that the Trustees might consider funding. If you would prefer to do this before making a full application, please click here to download an Outline Proposal Form.
COMPLETE YOUR APPLICATION
Email your application to us at least four months before your project is due to start to allow us to process your application in time.
We will only consider one application from your organisation at a time. If you are a current grant holder you need to have satisfactorily met all our grant monitoring requirements before applying again.
We will acknowledge receipt of your application within five working days of it being received.
If your application is not complete it will be returned to you and you will have 10 working days to send us the missing information.
WE ASSESS YOUR APPLICATION
For how we assess your application please see page 13 of the Guidance Notes.
During assessment by the grants team, we will read through the application and prepare it for a meeting where the Trustees will consider and make a decision on your application.
We may need to ask you some questions to plug any knowledge gaps, so we can present the best possible case for you. The extra questions we come up with are not generic but will be unique to your application and should lead to a stronger chance of success.
Assessment allows you to build a relationship with us through personal contact. It also allows us to keep our application form shorter and less daunting. At this stage we can give you a definite date for the Trustee meeting so you know when a decision is going to be made.
WE TELL YOU OUR DECISION
We aim to have a decision to you within ten weeks of receiving a complete application.
If your application is successful we will send you a conditional offer letter. We will ask you to accept our terms and conditions, and to provide the supporting documentation described in the 'What we will ask you to send us' section on page 16 of the Guidance Notes.
If you do not do this within the deadline included in your conditional offer letter, we will withdraw our conditional grant offer.
If your application is unsuccessful, we will write to you and tell you why.
If the documents are satisfactory we will send you a grant confirmation letter, which will tell you how we will pay the grant. We will also tell you when you can announce it to the press and media.
If the documents are not satisfactory or we require further information, we will contact you if we think this is something you can resolve. If there is a major problem or something that cannot be resolved, we will withdraw our conditional grant offer and tell you the reasons why.
START YOUR PROJECT
You can start your project once you receive our letter confirming the grant.
FINISHING YOUR PROJECT
You must complete your project within 12 months of the date of our letter confirming the grant, unless, by exception, the Trustees have awarded a grant over a longer period.
You will be asked to complete an end of grant report telling us how the grant has been spent and what was achieved.
We may visit or telephone you, or ask to see original receipts to check how the grant was spent.