Our Funds Update: Small and Large Grants

We are delighted to announce that our Small and Large Grants will reopen towards the end of October, with an initial focus on our Financial Security, Education Pathways and Work Pathways funding themes.

This is the second stage of the phased return of Our Funds. Our Wee Grants and Transport Grants reopened for applications last month.

Earlier this year, we paused to new applications as part of our commitment to embed cycles of learning and continuous improvement across all our work. The purpose of this pause was to look at where we can have the biggest impact within our themes and ensure we are clear externally about what’s in and out of scope for funding. In other words, to sharpen the focus of Our Funds to achieve our strategic aims, rather than changing those aims. In other words, to sharpen the focus of Our Funds to achieve our strategic aims, rather than changing those aims.

We look forward to sharing more information about the application process for our Small and Large Grants in the coming week.

In the meantime, we want to highlight that as part of the phased reopening of Our Funds, we will initially focus on funding requests which address one or more of the following themes, and the priorities within those:

• Financial Security: improving income adequacy, income security, manageable costs, financial safety nets and advice for those most at risk of poverty and trauma.
• Education Pathways: preventing and reducing poverty and trauma through access and engagement in early years, education, training and learning.
• Work Pathways: improving access to good and fair work that can prevent and reduce poverty through increased pay, hours and career progression. We will also consider support for employability, focused on areas or groups with lower employment rates.

We will be launching a fourth funding theme later this year, following on from our previous Emotional Wellbeing and Relationships theme, with a sharper focus aligned to the aims of our strategy.