Grants
FAQ
Here are some answers to questions we are frequently asked about
applying to the Trust. Click on a question below to display the
answer.
If you have a query that is not answered below, please telephone
the Trust on 020 7332 3710 or email
citybridgetrust@cityoflondon.gov.uk.
1 Who can apply to the Trust?
2 What type of grants do you give?
3 Will you fund core costs and what is your
approach to full cost recovery?
4 How much can we ask for?
5 Does the Trust require match funding?
6 Do you have deadlines for receipt of
applications?
7 How many grants can an organisation have at any
one time?
8 What about charities with branches?
9 Do you ever fund national charities?
10 You have funded our project already. Can we
come back for another grant for the same purpose?
11 We have received funding from you for three
years already. When can we re-apply?
12 We have been rejected - when can we
re-apply?
13 Are grants awarded 'all or nothing'?
14 We want to apply for £25,000 or more. What
further information do you require?
15 I do not know how to fill in the financial
information. What should I do?
16 Do you visit projects?
17 What happens if my application is
successful?
18 We will have to close next month if we cannot
get any more money. Can you help?
19 We have a good project which meets your funding
criteria and current funding for it is about to expire. Can you
help?
20 Do you consider consortium bids?
21 We wish to apply for the capital costs of
making our building more accessible. Do we need to have an access
audit?
22 What do you mean by 'taking steps to reduce
your carbon footprint'?
1. Who can apply to the
Trust?
We fund third sector organisations, usually registered
charities, and we can only fund charitable activity.
Our grants must benefit people who live in greater London and we
only fund organisations; we do not fund individuals. Further
details of eligibility and exclusions can be found in our
funding
guidelines.
2. What type of grants do you
give?
We give grants for capital or for revenue costs, although not
usually both at the same time. The exception to this is our
Improving Services for Older People programme (which is for
organisations with an income of less than £50,000 per annum) and
grants awarded on the Accessible Buildings priority of our
Accessible London programme.
3. Will you fund core costs
and what is your approach to full cost recovery?
Yes. We recognise that core costs are incurred in the delivery
of good services and are willing to consider funding these costs,
provided the work supported meets our priorities and you can
demonstrate the costs cannot be found from elsewhere.
We are sympathetic to full cost recovery where proper costing
exercises have been done and where costs requested are not already
funded from other sources. However, we always receive more good
bids than we have funds available, and all requests are dealt with
on a case by case basis, taking account of your available resources
and other funding possibilities.
4. How much can we ask
for?
With the exception of our
Improving Services for Older People programme (which is for
organisations with an income of less than £50,000), there is no
minimum or maximum revenue grant. However, large grants to small
organisations are unlikely to be made and the Trust will not be an
organisation's largest single revenue funder.
Grants to very large charities are unlikely to exceed more than
50% of the total cost of the project whilst grants for large
capital projects will not usually exceed £50,000. Please contact us
if you would like further advice on this.
5. Does the Trust require
match funding?
No, but we do look at what other funders are already involved or
have been approached. We are also interested in developing funding
partnerships, especially on larger projects.
6. Do you have deadlines for
receipt of applications?
The trustees meet regularly and applications are accepted
throughout the year for most of our funding programmes. It usually
takes about 4 months from receiving your complete application until
a final decision is reached and you should take account of this
when planning your project.
Our Special Edition programmes do have deadlines, however.The
Young People and Parents Tackling Violence programme has a
closing date for completed applications of 31 October
2008. The
Improving Services for Older People programme, which is for
organisations with an annual income of less than £50,000, and has
been running for two years already, will close at noon
on 1 October 2008.
7. How many grants can an
organisation have at any one time?
A single organisation may usually only hold one grant at a
time. The exceptions are:
- where an organisation which does not have the environment as a
main focus seeks funding for an environmental project in addition
to funds for work addressing another of the Trust’s programme
areas
- where a support organisation (such as a council for voluntary
service) is ‘housing’ a project which is in the process of becoming
a separate charity
- where a charity is the lead applicant of a Consortium bid (see
below)
- where the Trust commissions an organisation to undertake a
piece of work.
8. What about charities with
branches?
The principle is that of one grant at a time per organisation.
This means per registered charity (in effect having one set of
charitable trustees). So if you are a branch, say, of Age Concern,
with your own charitable number, constitution and set of trustees,
you are free to apply in your own right (although only for one
grant at a time - see question 7 above). However, if you are
structurally part of a larger organisation, all under one charity
number and therefore legally governed by one set of trustees, you
can apply only if your HQ prioritises your application and endorses
it as the charity’s ‘one bite at the cherry’. It saves time
and disappointment if you sort this out before making
your application. Some charities with branches running discrete
activities in different parts of London can hold up to three
grants at a time. You are advised to speak to us if you think this
might apply to your organisation. In such cases the national or
regional office of the applicant organisation should co-ordinate
applications.
9. Do you ever fund national
charities?
Yes, provided the work is for a discrete London project.
Organisations based outside London also need to demonstrate that
they have the necessary skills and experience to work in
London.
10. You have funded our
project already. Can we come back for another grant for the same
purpose?
It depends on what basis the original grant was made and for how
long. The maximum length of time the Trust will fund any one piece
of work is usually three years in one go. If the work is going well
and the original grant was for less than three years, you can apply
for the remainder of the three year period provided the
work continues to meet the Trust's priorities as set out in our
programme
guidelines. There is, of course no guarantee that the
application will be successful. Remember, it takes four months for
us to get you a decision, so if you want a continuation grant
without a gap, get your timing right and contact the office for
advice if you are uncertain about this.
Work that is strategically important for London, and which has
already been funded for three years, may occasionally be re-funded
for a further two years, again provided the work continues
to meet the Trust's priorities. You should ring and seek
advice before applying, however.
Once your project has come to an end, you may re-apply to the
Trust for the same purpose three years after the previous grant has
finished. If you want a grant for a different
purpose, see the following guidance.
11. We have received
funding from you for three years already. When can we
re-apply?
At the end of your revenue grant you may apply for a further
grant for a different purpose one year after we receive a
satisfactory monitoring report for the final year of the grant.
In the case of capital grants a year must have elapsed since
payment of the grant and a satisfactory monitoring report must also
have been submitted a year after the payment of the grant.
If your grant came to an end before 1 October 2007, and you
submitted your monitoring by that date, you may re-apply at any
time. If your grant came to an end after 1 October 2007, you can
apply again one year after the final monitoring form was
submitted.
12. We have been rejected -
when can we re-apply?
The Grants Team and the Committee give careful consideration to
all applications. Unfortunately, demands for funding always exceed
funds available. This means some good applications, whilst meeting
our criteria, still have to be rejected.
You can re-apply one year from the date of the receipt by the
Trust of your original complete application.
13. Are grants awarded 'all
or nothing'?
No. The level of grant awarded is often different from that
requested. A grants officer will usually talk to you about this in
an assessment meeting, so it is unlikely to come as a surprise.
This can be for a number of reasons (beside our own budget
constraints). You may have over-budgeted; you may have added things
which are not really part of the same project; you may have asked
for more than is reasonable in relation to our usual funding
patterns; or we may take the view that you could find some of the
costs from another source.
14. We want to apply for
£25,000 or more. What further information do you require?
You need to bear in mind that the application form is usually
seen by the Grants Committee (although the fuller details are not)
and so it needs to contain enough information for your application
to be understood.
The fuller proposal will be used by the Trust's Grants Officers
to assess the strength of your application. It should therefore
include fuller details of what is proposed e.g. background,
targets, building plans (where appropriate), workplans, how the
project will operate, how you will measure its success and how it
fits into your organisation's overall objectives. Please refer to
the guidance notes attached to the application form for more
details of the information we require.
15. I do not know how to
fill in the financial information. What should I do?
Get help from someone who can because it is very important. We
use the financial information to assess your organisation in a
number of ways. If you get it badly wrong, we may wonder whether
you can manage a grant properly. Your finance worker, accountant or
council for voluntary service should be able to help. The boxes on
our application form are designed to reflect the same categories as
the SORP requirements set out in the Charities Act. So if your
accounts meet the SORP requirements, it should not be too
difficult. Remember assets and reserves should always total the
same as they are two ways of showing the same money (assets are the
funds you have and the reserves show what they are for).
16. Do you visit
projects?
Yes, one of the Trust's Grants Officers may visit an
organisation as part of the assessment process.
17. What happens if my
application is successful?
All applicants are advised in writing of the Trustees' decision
on their application within a few days of the relevant meeting. If
the application is successful, the letter will be accompanied by a
copy of the Trust's standard Terms and Conditions, which should be
signed by the organisation's Chair or Treasurer and returned
promptly. This does not constitute a request for payment. The
organisation should write to the Trust when it is ready to start
using the grant - this letter should be signed by whoever signed
the Terms and Conditions. Payments are made by bank transfer and
take a couple of weeks from receipt of request, providing any or
all relevant conditions have been met.
18. We will have to close next
month if we cannot get any more money. Can you help?
It is highly unlikely because our assessment process takes up to
four months, in order to carry out all the checks we require. We do
not provide deficit or retrospective funding or make grants to
solve the sort of crisis which results from poor financial
planning.
19. We have a good project which
meets your funding criteria and current funding for it is about to
expire. Can you help?
Possibly. We often make grants to extend good work on the expiry
of funding from another charitable trust where the work meets our
priorities. Again, remember within your planning that we take about
four months to advise you of a decision. The Trust does not usually
pick up cut statutory funds and so you must show that the work in
question was funded on a time-limited basis. Expect tough questions
about where future funds will come from.
20. Do you consider
consortium bids?
Yes. You must select one organisation to be the actual applicant
on behalf of the consortium, though, and the
financial/organisational information must be that of the applicant
charity. Any grant will legally be the responsibility of the
trustees of that charity. You must also give a clear account of why
a consortium is needed and how it will steer the work. A consortium
must be more than two organisations. Being the lead in a consortium
bid does not affect the organisation's own funding relationship
with the Trust.
21. We wish to apply for
the capital cost of making our building more accessible. Do we need
to have an independent access audit?
Yes and we will make grants of up to £5,000 towards the costs of
independent access audits, disabilities equalities training and
related consultancy, where an organisation could not be
expected to fund these costs itself.
If you are considering making access improvements to your
building, we strongly recommend that you contact the Access and
Sustainability Adviser we fund at the
Centre for Accessible
Environments, telephone 020 7840 0125 or email
asas@cae.org.uk.
You are also recommended to download our publication
Opening Doors Across London available from the publications
section of this website.
22. What do you mean by
'Taking steps to reduce your carbon footprint'?
Your carbon footprint is one measure of the impact your
organisation has on our environment and climate, through releasing
CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Most of your
activities contribute to this - through energy used for heating,
lighting, equipment and travel. Your footprint also includes the
energy used through the things you buy from others, and the waste
you generate.
If you have not yet taken steps to reduce your carbon footprint,
this will not count against you in the assessment of your
application. As part of our contribution to accelerating the shift
to a low carbon economy, however, we do encourage all our grant
recipients to adopt better envirionmental practice. Many such
changes are simple to make and can save your organisation money,
besides also helping the planet. See also;
Greening the third sector.