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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

How much you can apply for

We offer funding from £20,001 to £500,000.

The amount you can apply for depends on your organisation’s size:

  • organisations of any size can apply for £200,000 or more
  • only smaller organisations can apply for less than £200,000

By smaller organisations, we mean those with an annual income under £500,000. Based on your average income over the last 2 years.

What we can fund

We can fund things like:

  • equipment
  • staff costs
  • training costs
  • transport
  • utilities
  • volunteer expenses
  • small refurbishment projects needed to deliver your service
  • overheads related to your project

We can fund both direct costs to deliver the project and some indirect costs, also called overheads. This could include:

  • rent or insurance
  • part of a salary for someone not working directly on the project (such as a senior manager or admin worker)

For example, if the project you’re applying for makes up half your organisation’s work, we could fund half of your overheads. This is known as full cost recovery.

See our guide to full cost recovery to help work out your overheads.

What we cannot fund

We do not fund:

  • projects that are mainly about capital work (like buying or developing land or buildings)
  • retrospective costs
  • alcohol
  • contingency costs, loans, endowments or interest
  • paying someone else to write your application
  • profit-making or fundraising activities
  • VAT that you can reclaim
  • religious activities (we can fund religious organisations if their project benefits the wider community and does not include religious content)
  • statutory activities
  • activities that help children or young people with schoolwork during school time
  • overseas travel
  • projects outside the UK
  • activities that make profit for private gain

Political activity and campaigning

We can fund political activity and campaigning, but only if:

  • it’s not party political – it must focus on policy, practice or legislation, not on supporting or opposing a political party
  • it supports your organisation’s cause and benefits the public or society

We will not fund projects where political activity is the main purpose. But we can fund projects where campaigning is the main focus.