Community Grants

Funding Round Launched 22 October 2008

The first London Development Agency Community Grants application round was launched on Wednesday 22 October 2008. The application round is four weeks long and will close on Wednesday 19 November at 5pm.

Application Workshops
Application Surgeries
What is the Community Grants programme?
Eligibility Criteria
Types of Projects to be Supported
Key Target Groups
How Do I Apply?
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Application Workshops

The Application Workshops for the Community Grants round have now finished. You may download the PowerPoint presentation from the workshops below.

Community Grants PowerPoint Presentation

Application Surgeries

Throughout the whole funding round, Application Surgeries will be available for all potential applicants. Organisations will also be able to have a fully-trained member of staff go through draft application forms, assessing proposals and pointing out areas for improvement.

These surgeries are completely free of charge, and are strongly recommended as they will also give you a chance to check that all the extra paperwork that must accompany the actual form is correctly filled out.

To book a surgery

Surgeries are held at the LVSTC’s offices at Bromley Hall in Tower Hamlets, but we are also travelling around London to enable more people to access our services.

We will be in Haringey at the Selby Centre, N17 on Tuesday 11 November.

We will be in Lambeth at Stockwell Community Resource Centre, SW4 on Thursday 13 November and Friday 14 November.

Please contact Geoff Robinson on geoffr@lvstc.org.uk or Ingrid Babcock on ingridb@lvstc.org.uk or by telephone on 020 7538 4309.

What is the Community Grants programme?

The Community Grants programme will provide grants of up to £12,000 to small voluntary and community organisations to support their capacity to engage with local communities and deliver a range of skills and employment support activities.

The grants aim to support a quality outreach provision in providing an essential stepping stone for participants to progress onto other provision, with the emphasis being clearly on this progression.

The programme will support small third sector organisations who are best placed to reach excluded individuals who face barriers to employment.  Grants cannot be given to individuals.
Typical organisations which will be supported to deliver the projects include:

• Social enterprises;
• Registered charities;
• Voluntary and community organisations supporting refugees, women, children, families, disabled and other disadvantaged groups.

The application round is four weeks long and so will close on Wednesday 19 November at 5pm.

Eligibility Criteria

Organisations will need to meet the full eligibility criteria which you can find published in the Guidance to Applicants. The criteria includes:

• No more than 2 full time paid staff or the equivalent
• Income in the last financial year of no more than £60,000
• The organisation must be fully constituted with a management committee or board of trustees
• The organisation must have a bank account in the organisation's name with a minimum of 2 signatories
• Organisations must not have received ESF funding before (except as a Fast Forward Grant)

Make sure you read these criterion fully before starting your proposal, because if you fail to meet even just one of them, your application will not even be read.

Types of Projects to be Supported

The grants will cover a range of activity to support individual progress to further learning and employment, including:

• initial help with Skills for Life training
• taster work experience including voluntary work
• training advice and counselling
• job search assistance
• soft skills such as confidence building, assertiveness training, presentation skills
• engaging with communities and individuals to provide support to overcome barriers to employment in a relaxed and friendly environment.

Projects can include two or more of these areas, but higher priority will be given to projects which give skills training, such as ESOL, ICT, and accredited basic skills. Projects that focus on more generic advice and guidance activities and general job search will be given lower priority, so make sure to bear this in mind when coming up with your proposals.

Key Target Groups

For projects to be eligible, the people you support must be unemployed or economically inactive. 

The key target groups are:

• people with disabilities and health conditions
• lone parents
• people belonging to ethnic minority groups experiencing most disadvantage in the labour market
• women
• people aged over 50
• young people aged 19 to 24 who are not in education, employment or training

Projects that work with one of these target groups will have a much greater chance of succeeding in this round as they will receive higher priority. If your project works with a different target group, then you can still make a submission, but your proposal will receive lower priority, so for the best chance of success, ensure you hit one of these target groups.

How Do I Apply?

In order to make an application, you should visit the GLE's website at http://www.gle.co.uk/services/communitygrants.htm and download all the relevant paperwork, there should be five documents that you need. Make sure that you first read the Guidance Notes thoroughly to ensure that your project will be eligible, and then you will be ready to fill out the form.

If you have any questions about any aspect of this, then don't hesitate to give us a call at LVSTC on 0845 262 2006 or 020 7538 4309.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

If you have a question not covered here that you would like answering, then please contact Geoff Robinson on geoffr@lvstc.org.uk or 020 7538 4309.

Q: Can you help me since I do not have the facilities to burn an electronic copy of my form onto a cd or memory stick?

Yes we can. LVSTC can burn a copy of your application form onto a cd for no charge. You will need to email the form to us in good time by Friday 14 November, so that we have time to return the cd to you by post so that you can include it in your application submission. If you would like to have your electronic copy made after this date, we can do that for you, but you will need to pick up the disc from our offices here at Bromley Hall.

Q: Can LVSTC provide me with a statement of support?

LVSTC and SKEIN cannot give you statements of support. The statement of support should be written by someone who knows your organisation well and how it works within the local community, so any partners you may have had, your local Council for Voluntary Service, local networks or partnerships or even a Ward Councillor would be appropriate as long as they know you and the work that you do.

Q: We would like to budget for 2 computers which are £600 each so will add up to £1,200, thus going over the £1,000 threshold. Is this ok?

Yes it is. The rule about not going over £1,000 applies to a single piece of expenditure, so you cannot purchase a single computer that costs £1,200, but two which add up to that amount is fine.

Q: Can I use 8 point type in my application so I can fit more words into the box?

No you cannot. You must use no smaller that 11 point type.

Q: My income for the last financial year is zero, can I leave the section about reporting income blank?

No, you must answer the question, even if it is just to report zero income. So if you have received £1,000, then you enter that sum; likewise if you have not received any money, then you must enter zero in that box. Failure to do so could lead to your application form being ruled ineligible.

Q: Do we need to prove that beneficiaries who come on the project are unemployed?

Community Grants are given to organisations to help unemployed people move closer to the labour market so if you run a project, you will be asked to make your beneficiaries sign a self-declaration form indicating that there are indeed unemployed.

Q: What is the definition of unemployed?

People who are out of work, want a job, have actively sought work in the last 4 weeks, and are ready to start in the next 2 weeks.

Q: What is the definition of economically inactive ?

Economically inactive is defined as those who want to work, but are either not looking for, or not available for, work (e.g. those looking after the family and home, students and those who are long-term sick or disabled). This includes those who are claiming “inactive benefits” such as Incapacity Benefit, Disabled Living Allowance, Income Support etc.

Q: Are newly formed organisations less than a year old eligible to apply for Community Grants funding? The guidance states that groups have to be constituted on or before 31 October 2007 to be eligible for Community Grants funding.

It is a requirement that organisations have been formally constituted on or before 31 October 2007.

Q: If applications are handwritten, how do I submit my application forms electronically?

We are not able to receive handwritten applications. Please note that if successful your organisation will be expected to have access to computers and we expect to be able to correspond with your organisation via email. Therefore, your organisation must have access to both computers and the internet.

Q: Question 4 (track record) asks us to provide details of previous ESF support received during the 2000-2006 programme and give details of two referees who we can contact about our track record. What if an organisation hasn't received ESF previously or hasn't received funding from any funder? What should they do?

Please provide details (amount, source(s) and timescale) of either funding received from a funder or monies raised through other sources to deliver similar types of activity that demonstrate your track record. You can use these funders as referees. This information will be taken into account by scorers. NB the referee should not be someone who works for your organisation or who is a friend or family member.

Q: What age group does the term young people refer to? Are disabled people classified as young people up to the age of 25?

For the purposes of the Community Grants Programme, 19-24 year olds are considered young people. This refers to all participants.

Q: What definition of disabled is being used for the Community Grants programme?

The following definitions are being used for the programme:

• Those with health problems (including people with mental health issues and those on incapacity benefit)
• Disabled people as defined by the DDA. The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) defines a disabled person as someone who has a physical or mental impairment that has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on his or her ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.

Q: Do we give memory sticks back to groups after submission with the application?

Yes. Memory sticks can be collected by your organisation upon request.

Q: Does the provider of the statement of support have to be different from the track record – referee?

No, it can be from the same source.

Q: Are people who live in London on a spouse visa eligible to participate in Community Grants funded projects?

Yes, if they have permission to work.

Q: Can groups apply for Community Grants funding three years in a row?

Yes