Funding for Schools and Communities
On this page you will find all of the latest funding and opportunities for both schools and communities.
Apply to the Booster Fund for business development grants and equity match-funding for your community share offer. You can find out more information on how to do this here.
Postcode Places Trust supports smaller charities and good caused in East of England to make a difference to their community for the benefit of people and the planet. You can find out more information about this here.
The aim of Postcode Neighbourhood Trust is to support smaller charities and good causes in the north of England to make a difference to their community for the benefit of people and planet, including physical activity projects. The maximum grant is £20,000 for charities and £2,000 for other community organisations. You can find out more information about this here.
Since its launch in 2021, the Community Matters Fund has awarded £10.5 million to local groups across the Midlands, South West England and South Wales - the areas where National Grid provides electricity.
This Summer, the Community Matters Fund’s focus is on ‘Future Skills’ with the aim of supporting groups that deliver practical, focused programmes to boost skills and improve employability for those furthest from the job market in the Midlands, South West England and South Wales where National Grid distributes electricity.
There is a total funding pot of £250,000.
The deadline for applications is Midnight on Wednesday 10th July 2024.
The Home Office is offering grant funding to a wide range of civil society organisations from across the UK to provide direct support to vulnerable people as they make the transition from physical immigration documents to eVisas by the end of 2024.
Applications can be made either for a national support grant, which will be awarded to a single organisation in each of the four nations, or a community support grant of up to £30,000 each. These will be awarded to individual organisations, multi-organisation consortiums or partnerships that will deliver specialist support for a specific vulnerable group(s) regionally, nationally, or UK-wide.
To be eligible, organisations must have at least two years’ experience supporting individuals with complex needs.
You can find further details of the grant here. You can find out how to apply here.
Apply here for a grant to train a senior mental health lead to develop your school or college's approach to mental health and wellbeing.
The government are offering a grant of £1,200 for eligible state-funded schools and colleges in England to train a senior mental health lead. This training is not compulsory, but is part of the government’s commitment to offer this training to all eligible schools and colleges by 2025. Training will support senior mental health leads to develop and implement a whole school or college approach to mental health and wellbeing. They must start their training by Monday 31st March 2025.
You can find out more about your eligibility, payments, what the training covers and who the training is for online by clicking here.
Resuscitation Council UK’s Community Grant Scheme is now open for applications. As part of their Restart a Heart 2024 campaign, grants of up to £1,500 are available for small charities and community groups to help educate people about CPR and how to use a defibrillator. In the UK, only 1 in 10 survive an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Resuscitation education is vital to increasing the chances of survival from cardiac arrest in your community.
The deadline for applications is Friday 28th June 2024 at 5pm. You can apply here.
The objectives of The NFU Mutual Charitable Trust are to promote, facilitate and support such purposes as are exclusively charitable according to the laws of England and Wales in the areas of agriculture, rural development and insurance in the United Kingdom and in particular:
To advance the education of the public by means of research and dissemination of information in relation to agriculture
To advance the education of young people within rural areas
To relieve poverty within rural areas
To promote the benefit and social welfare of inhabitants of rural communities by associating together with the inhabitants and local authorities, voluntary and other organisations to advance education and leisure
To promote research into agricultural associated activities
To advance the education of the public by means of research and dissemination of information in relation to insurance
The NFU Mutual Charitable Trust will focus on providing funding to larger initiatives, which would have a significant impact on the rural community. The primary focuses that are outlined in the Charitable Trust’s strategy are as follows:
Education of the public about agriculture and education of young people in rural areas
Relief of hardship and promotion of mental health and wellbeing in rural communities
Support for the next generation of farmers
For further information you can visit their website here .
Parkinson's UK are delighted to offer a grants programme to help people with Parkinson's to get and stay active.
In 2024, they are able to provide grants of up to £3,000 to support physical activity projects for people with Parkinson's all over the UK.
The programme opened for applications on Monday 3rd June 2024.
You can find out more information and start your application here.
The funding can be used to provide wellbeing and emotional support to help people feel more able to access advice services. It can also be used to improve existing advice services so that they better meet the needs of people experiencing financial and social disadvantage, marginalisation and discrimination. This could mean developing more culturally appropriate services, or carrying out mapping work to understand who the service is not reaching and how best to change.
Applications close at 3pm on Wednesday 19th June. You can find out more from their guidance and how to apply on their website.
The Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust will award grants of between £5,000 and £50,000 on behalf of the MOD’s Armed Forces Families Fund Early Years Programme, towards projects lasting up to two years, which help enhance early childhood education and childcare settings to meet specific needs of young children from Armed Forces families.
You can find out more information here.
The North West Regional Strategic Migration Partnership (RSMP) is offering grants for voluntary, community, and social enterprise organisations across Northwest England to support Hong Kong BN(O)s and facilitate a network of organisations delivering BN(O)s. You can view the prospectus here where they explain the purpose of the new VCSE Grant scheme to be delivered in the financial year 2024/25. The prospectus provides information to assist you as you complete your application.
On Wednesday 22nd May 2024, the Prime Minister of the UK, Rishi Sunak, announced the date of the next General Election. On Thursday 4th July 2024, elections will take place across the UK to determine the future composition of the House of Commons. The party that secures the most seats will then win control of UK Parliament.
You can find out what this means for The National Lottery Community Fund here.
Veolia Environmental Trust award grants towards projects that make improvements to community facilities and the natural environment.
To apply for a grant you are asked to work through the 'Information', 'Guidance' and 'Apply' sections of their application process by clicking the links here in sequence, and following the instructions on each screen.
If you would like to discuss your project, you can contact them here.
The Sustainability Fund will provide cash sponsorship, in-kind resources or staff volunteers to support not-for-profit organisations and community groups to transform their local community or environment.
A successful project will provide evidence of one or more of the following:
Enhancing biodiversity
Promoting sustainable waste behaviours (reduce, reuse and/or recycle)
Protecting or preserving resources and the environment
Its use of recycled, reused or reclaimed materials
Veolia’s team looks favourably on projects that have considered the long-term or ongoing benefits for the community and will consider all projects based on merit.
You can read more information on this fund here.
The Big Bike Revival is all about helping adults to begin or return to cycling through a programme of free activities and services, delivered by local community organisations. You can find out more information here.
Applications are open from 05.03.2024 to 25.06.2024. Grant funding up to £3,500 can be applied for to support the delivery of a Big Bike Revival programme of events. Click here to start an application.
Schools, colleges and community groups in England can apply for grants to support the education and development of children and young people through educational, cultural, sporting and other projects. Of particular interests are projects which will help enhance the self-confidence, team working skills and future employability of children and young people. In most cases, grants will be made on a relatively small scale. Many grants will be under £2,000, most will be under £5,000 and only in a few cases will grants exceed £10,000. The funding provided by the BlueSpark Foundation and can be for physical assets such as iPads, sports equipment, or lighting for stage productions, for services or facilities such as sports coaching or music or drama tuition or simply for the provision of experiences such as theatre visits. (These examples are intended to be illustrative and not restrictive as to the funding which BlueSpark may provide to support projects). Applications can be submitted at any time and must be made online on BlueSpark Foundation’s standard application form.
The Woodland Trust want to make sure everybody in the UK has the chance to plant a tree. So they’re giving away hundreds of thousands of trees to schools and communities!
Active Suffolk has been awarded a share of up to £57m worth of Opening School Facilities investment from the Department for Education, to support schools to open their sporting facilities for local community and school users outside of the normal school day.
Schools play a vital role in encouraging children and young people to be more active. This funding will enable 21 local schools to open up their facilities for children, young people and the wider community to access more opportunities to be physically active, before school, after school, during weekends, evenings and school holidays.
You can read more here.
Tomorrow’s climate scientists is an extension to the Society’s school funding programme Partnership Grants. Introduced in 2020, Tomorrow’s climate scientists aims to give students across the UK not just a voice, but an opportunity to take action themselves to address climate and biodiversity issues – to become the climate scientists of tomorrow. Schools can apply for grants of up to £3,000 to run investigative STEM projects in partnership with STEM professionals from academia or industry.
The EEF are recruiting schools, colleges, and early years settings to take part in trials of high-potential programmes. They are also subsidising programmes that have previously shown to have a positive impact on student attainment, so more schools can benefit.
The Benefact Group has announced that it will be giving more than £1 million to charities and good causes across the UK and Ireland this year through random draws!
The way it works: charities and good causes are nominated by the public to be entered into a draw. Registered charities, non-registered charities, churches, not-for-profit organisations and Community Interest Companies (CICs) in the UK, Republic of Ireland, Channel Islands or Isle of Man can be nominated.
For over 40 years, the Fund has supported His Majesty’s charitable work. The Fund is on a mission to transform lives and build sustainable communities through grantmaking, social investment and incubation of initiatives and projects.
The Fund has invested more than £100 million in charitable causes in the UK and overseas. They award grants to a wide range of good causes across their funding themes of Environment, Countryside, Social Inclusion, Health and Wellbeing, Heritage and Conservation and Education.
Throughout all their work they endeavour to maximise charitable impact, drawing on their funding and convening power to leverage further support from others. To deliver this well, they ensure their governance and management are fit for purpose and in line with best practice.
You can read more here.
There are mix-and-match CPD events for schools across all phases which you can book here.
You can also click here to see some of the Edtech Digital Tools used across the curriculum.
Jerwood Foundation supports excellence and emerging talent in the arts in the UK and welcomes funding applications from organisations with a focus on making art available for public benefit and working with their Collection.
The fund aims to support organisations with a focus on making art available for public benefit and emerging talent in the arts throughout the UK. Up to £2 million is awarded each year and there is no maximum or minimum award amount specified. Grants of up to £180,000 have been awarded, although most grants range between £1,000 and £25,000.
Previously funded projects have included:
Brixton Chamber Orchestra to enable their Christmas 2023 and Summer 2024 tours of housing estates in Lambeth.
The Courtauld to support a major new exhibition of work by British artist Claudette Johnson.
Paintings in Hospitals to conserve, restore, and digitise a portion of their art collection.
Persona Arts to help fund the production of the Flying Dutchman performances in July 2024.
Arnolfini to collaborate on a three-year project that will draw upon Jerwood’s collection of modern and contemporary British art to help bring Arnolfini’s exhibition archive to life.
