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Welcome to our new website. You may still see some pages from our old site as we move things over.

What you can spend the money on

Costs we can cover

We can fund a wide range of project costs, including:

  • equipment
  • one-off events
  • staff costs
  • training
  • transport
  • utilities
  • volunteer expenses
  • part of your organisation’s overheads

We can also fund some indirect project costs (sometimes called overheads). This could include:

  • rent or insurance
  • part of a salary for someone not working directly on the project, like a senior manager or admin worker

For example, if your project makes up half of your organisation’s work, we could fund half of your overheads. This is sometimes called full cost recovery. You can learn more in our guide to full cost recovery.

Capital costs

We can fund small capital costs, but we will not fund projects that are primarily for capital work.

You can apply for up to £50,000 of capital costs as part of your total request. This could cover things like:

  • small building repairs
  • refurbishments to spaces used to deliver your project, for example, to help create a community kitchen or garden

Match funding

It’s helpful if you have other funding alongside ours – for example, from fundraising or other funders. This is known as match funding, and it helps us make our money go further.

We recommend that you have some match funding, especially if you're applying for a larger amount. But if that’s not possible, we may still be able to cover the full cost of delivering your project. We’ll talk about this when you get in touch.

What we cannot fund

We do not fund:

  • costs for things that have already happened (retrospective costs)
  • alcohol
  • contingency costs, loans, endowments or interest
  • paying someone else to write your application
  • profit-making or fundraising activities
  • VAT you can reclaim
  • religious activities (we can fund religious organisations if the project benefits the wider community and does not include religious content)
  • statutory activities
  • activities that support schoolwork during school time
  • overseas travel
  • projects that take place outside the UK
  • activities that make a profit for private gain
  • cash payments made directly to individuals