FAQs for applicants

No, our funding is available to both registered charities and constituted groups. However, if you are a constituted group you are currently only eligible to apply for a Wee Grant.

We have decided to focus our funding initially on smaller organisations, and on certain legal entities (registered charities and constituted groups). As our work to address poverty and trauma develops, we will review the types of organisation we need to work with and will review our guidance in line with this.

Annual income is based on the money you received in the last financial year, as presented in your most recent set of annual accounts. If you are a new charity or constituted group that has not yet produced accounts, we ask that you provide a recent bank statement and may ask for any forecast/projections for the forthcoming year.

Charities with an annual income of more than £2 million a year are not currently eligible for Our Funds. 

Our Programme Awards are available to charities with an income over £2million per year. For more information see here. 

To be kept informed, please sign up to our mailing list. 

This depends on which fund you apply to. Our Wee Grants provide funding of one year only. Transport Grants provide funding of one-three years. Our Small and Large Grants (coming soon) can provide revenue funding of up to a maximum of five years. 

Due to the level of demand and constraints on our budget, our ability to provide 5 year funding is limited and will be made only in exceptional circumstances. We are committed to providing long term support for our grantholders and are reviewing how best to accommodate this going into the next financial year. We will be clear with individual applicants on possible options beyond three year funding.   

The duration of funding we are able to offer will depend on a number of factors, including the fit of your work in relation to our Strategy; whether we have funded you previously; and if your work will add to our understanding of poverty and trauma and help inform our future funding practice. 

The size of our grants vary and can depend on the type of funding that you apply for. The upper and lower thresholds for each Fund are detailed on the guidance pages.

We try to be proportionate in how much we award and take into consideration a number of factors including your organisation’s financial position and annual income; whether you have an immediate need for our funds; the fit of your work in relation to our Strategy; the scale of your work geographically.

We plan to share examples of these considerations in practice through case studies and other communications messaging on our website.

No. While it is always great to have some funding in place, you don’t need to have this in place when you apply. There may also be some occasions where we can fully fund some projects, so there may be instances where you do not require match funding at all.

Our Wee Grants and Transport Grants are now open to applications. You can apply at any time using the online form linked within the guidance for each fund. 

In the coming months, we’ll be introducing our other Funds, including our Small and Large Grants. Please check here or sign up to our mailing list for full details when they become available.  

You can only hold one revenue grant from us at a time. This includes revenue funding from our previous Open Awards Programme (2016-2019/20). The earliest you can reapply for further revenue funding is 6 months before the end of your current grant period. If successful, we would not release any funds before your existing grant ends and you’ve sent us your End of Grant Report. 

If you have already received funding from us under the 2020-30 strategy, please be aware that within Large Grants you will need to show that your proposed activities are clearly and purposely designed to address one of the priority issues listed within one of our funding themes. Without this, we are unlikely to be able to consider your request.  As part of the assessment process, we will ask you about how your work has benefitted the people you support during your first funding period and any developments planned or underway. 

It is possible to hold a revenue grant and a Transport Grant from us at the same time (the latter can provide revenue and/or capital funding). If you have a revenue grant already and need funding for a vehicle or transport costs, or, if you have a Transport Grant and need revenue funding towards your organisation’s wider work, please view Our Funds to see which of our funds you might be able to access. 

If you applied to us after September 2020 and were unsuccessful, we outlined in your decision email how soon you can re-apply. If the reason we didn’t award you funding was something we think you can address, you may be able to re-apply once you have been able to do so. This is explained in your decision email. You can also find links to other sources of funding and support here. 

Each fund has slightly different timescales, but we will try to give you a decision within 8 to 12 weeks depending on the fund you have applied to. 

As we have been receiving increased numbers of applications across Our Funds, there may be times where we have to extend our published turnaround times. We will do our best to respond to requests and assess new applications within our published deadlines, but if there are any changes to this we'll either communicate this in advance and/or notify applicants on an individual basis. 

Governance relates to the way your organisation is run. It is essentially the principles against which your organisation carries out its work and your process for decision-making. We expect your organisation to have a minimum of three unconnected Trustees or Directors and for you to be able to show that you hold regular meetings. If your charity employs staff who are also Trustees/Directors, or there are any related/connected persons within the organisation, we will ask you to provide details of the policies you have in place to mitigate any conflict of interest.

It is always helpful for you to explain any plans you may have in place to change your Board structure under these circumstances. Please note that we will not consider funding the salaries of employees who also hold Trustee/Director positions within the applicant organisation. Other indicators of good governance include openness and transparency with your internal policies, strong financial controls and fair decision-making processes. It also includes access to appropriate training and support for your staff and volunteers, and the effective management of relationships with partners and stakeholders. You may also want to highlight in your application any key organisation accreditations you have, and/or recent reports from regulatory bodies such as the Care Inspectorate.

Under Large Grants, we welcome applications from organisations working in partnership with others. Here we will prioritise awards for work which addresses those issues listed under one or more of our 4 funding themes. We would also expect to see a focus on prevention and on change , either at practice, organisational or at system level.

Formal Partnerships

These are Partnerships where any approved funding would be distributed directly to several members of the partnership. If this is the structure of your partnership, please nominate a lead organisation who will complete the application on behalf of all the partners. We will also require a signed copy of your Memorandum of Understanding, which includes the contact details for all partners. Please note that all partners should meet the eligibility criteria for Our Funds. This means that organisations with an annual income of more than £2 million would not be eligible for support within a partnership approach under Our Funds. We will also take into consideration the nature of any current awards which partners may currently be holding from the Trust.

If you are thinking of applying for a formal partnership award, please contact us to discuss your ideas before you complete an application form.

Otherwise, applications from informal partnerships, where only the lead organisation will receive and spend any approved funding, are welcome through our standard application process.

Yes. Downloadable forms are available on the specific webpage for the fund that you are applying for.

Once you have completed your application, you will receive an acknowledgement email from us confirming that we have received your application, clarifying what you can expect from us and the timescales for decisions.

We are always trying to improve the support we offer applicants and are available to answer any questions that you may have about your application form or existing grant. We are a very small team and would ask that you read the associated guidance and help text in the application forms before getting in touch. We will soon have some resources available that may help you complete your application, including videos, blogs and previous webinars.

We consider financial need on the basis of the accounts provided in support of your application. As a general rule, if these indicate that you have reserves in excess of 12 months’ expenditure, we are unlikely to fund your organisation. However, we recognise that there may be a good reason why you hold onto these funds, for example, for an upcoming capital project or to meet a planned increase in costs due to your organisation expanding its work. We will take such factors into consideration but it is important that you tell us when you apply – you will find a section within our application forms which allows you to do this. You can also send recent management accounts with your application, which will help us to gain a more up-to-date picture of your organisation’s finances than your latest approved accounts can provide.  

In the first instance, we ask you to check our FAQs and any additional resources available on our website. However, we understand that you may still have questions that can not be answered from this information. We do accept enquiries by email to funding@therobertsontrust.org.uk but have also set up a dedicated voicemail to deal with any enquiries on 0141 353 4321. We are a small team but try to respond to enquiries within 3 working days.

Before getting in touch, we would ask that you check your internet connection and firewall settings first and try opening the link in a different browser, such as Chrome or Firefox. If you are still experiencing problems let us know at funding@therobertsontrust.org.uk 

Yes! Simply click on the ‘Save my progress and resume later’ button at the top of the first page of the application form. Please make sure you enter a valid email address.

When you save an application to resume later, we’ll send you an email to confirm that your draft application has been saved. This email includes a link to resume your form at any time. You can also click on the link to a new application from our website and click on the ‘resume a previously saved form’ link at the top of the page.

Input the email and password you used to save the online form and click the resume this form button. Do not hit enter.

When you save an application to resume later, we’ll send you an email to confirm that your draft application has been saved. This email includes a link to resume your form at any time. If you forget your password, click on this link, select ‘Forgot your password?’ and enter the email address you used to save the form. We’ll then send you an email to reset your password.

This means you must answer that question in order to complete and send us your application. When you hit send, it will tell you if any fields haven’t been completed or have been completed incorrectly.

You must be able to answer ‘yes’ to certain eligibility questions within the online forms, such as having a minimum of three unconnected members on your Board or Committee. If you answer ‘no’ to any of these questions a message will appear explaining why we cannot consider your application. This also means you won’t be able to complete the application.

If you answered ‘no’ by mistake, simply click on the ‘yes’ answer to the question. Please note however that you must meet these criteria in order to apply and that we will check this as part of our assessment of your application.

All amount fields should be numbers only, no pound signs, commas or decimal points.

We ask for details of two contacts in the application form, one must be a Trustee or someone who can authorise your organisation to apply. The other should be someone who is able to answer any questions about the application and who acts as the main point of contact for this.

We also ask for this to make sure any emails we send, for example confirming receipt of your application and our decision on this, are received by your organisation. You must input details of two different contacts in order to apply.

Click on the ‘upload file’ button again and upload the correct file.

You can send us any additional documentation in support of your application to funding@therobertsontrust.org.uk or weegrants@therobertsontrust.org.uk for Wee Grants applications. You can upload a blank word document for any mandatory file upload questions if you need to.

Any documents you attach to your application must not exceed 25MB. If you receive this error message, you will need to return to the form and remove any large documents, which you can send to us at funding@therobertsontrust.org.uk. Please quote the grant reference for your application in the email.

When you click Send, a preview of your completed application will appear. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the ‘Print this page’ link. You can save a copy of your form as a PDF and print it. We will, however, also send you a PDF copy of your application with our acknowledgement email.

It can take a couple of minutes for this to process, so please be patient and do not hit refresh on your browser. A page will appear to let you know we have received your application when this has gone through. We’ll ask you if you want to complete a short survey with your feedback on the application process and confirm that you can close your browser.