Against all the odds Croydon’s community sector has gone from strength to strength since the pandemic, specialising in work enabling people to be more independent and active in their communities. Innovation and enterprise are alive and well in Croydon, but at the grassroots and neighbourhood-level local people can sometimes need a helping hand to get things up and running.
And that is where the Croydon Community Grants programme comes in. It’s a small grants programme with a difference – we want to fund you twice!
Our aim this year is to support a range of social inclusion and health activities. To start off, we’ll be inviting bids for up to £1000 – enough to make a real difference to groups starting up a new activity or scaling up existing work; we expect to be awarding approximately 15 groups. After that our successful groups will be given a chance to bid again, but this time for as much as £5000 – enough to put their activities on a more solid footing. We particularly want to fund:
Initiatives and activities which tackle youth disenfranchisement by providing opportunities and activities for young people
Initiatives which support people experiencing homelessness, people living in temporary accommodation and/or refugees and asylum seekers
Initiatives and activities meeting local priorities as defined by Community Plans of Local Community Partnerships
Your project might be creating pathways to social inclusion or removing the roadblocks – and by social inclusion we mean any kind of health, wealth or creative activity that supports people in poverty, ill-health or social isolation. We’ll take small steps at first to help you – with equipment, marketing, events, space-hire or transport costs – and then if you can demonstrate how your grant has made a positive impact on the local community, we’ll be inviting you to bid for the larger amount.
We particularly want to support grassroots groups with an annual income of £75,000 or less that are working with people in some of our hardest-hit communities. You need to be a constituted group with a constitution, a safeguarding policy and Public Liability insurance.
We expect to distribute approximately 15 grants of up to £1,000 each in the first part of the programme.
But first things first. Our bidding round for the initial grants will:
- Open on Monday 9 September 2024
- Close for applications on Monday 30 September 2024
- Successful applicants to be notified on 7 October 2024
- All projects to be delivered and reported on by Monday 16 December 2024.
BONUS!
Our successful bidders will also be given the opportunity to have a mentoring, capacity building and upskilling session with a Unibail–Rodamco–Westfield employee, who will provide support and guidance on any specific needs – i.e. marketing, finance, legal, health & safety etc.
To apply, click here and complete the form by Monday 30 September.