What partners can spend the money on
How the funding works
We have a total of £2 million funding for this development stage. Partners will support communities to decide how to give out most of this funding to communities.
If we select you as a partner, you'll start getting funding from spring 2025. Although it may take us longer to pay out some types of funding. Find out more in the ‘if you applied’ section.
What partners can spend the money on
If you become our partner, you'll support communities to distribute most of this funding to communities for us.
Some of the funding will also cover your costs to work with us, and other partners, as we learn from these approaches.
We expect most partners to use a maximum of £80,000 to cover their costs.
For example, if we give you £400,000 to cover both your costs and onward granting, we’d expect:
- at least £320,000 to be used for onward granting to communities
- a maximum of £80,000 to be used to cover your costs
We may pay out these different types of funding at different times. Because we may need a different kind of legal agreement with you for onward granting. And this can take longer than our normal funding.
We’ll talk to you about timings and reasonable costs for your involvement when you apply.
What we can fund
We can fund:
- onward granting to communities (where you use our funding to make grants to other organisations)
- salary costs
- transport costs and expenses
- materials or equipment (like IT equipment)
- other costs involved in working as our partner, and taking part in the development and testing work. Check with us if you are not sure.
We can also fund overheads
This could include things like part of your rent or insurance. Or part of a salary for someone not directly involved in the development phase. Like a senior manager or an office admin worker.
For example, being our partner could end up being a quarter of the work your organisation does. In that case, we might fund a quarter of your overheads for that time.
This is sometimes known as full cost recovery. Find out how to work out overheads in our guide to full cost recovery.
What we cannot fund
We cannot fund:
- things you’ve spent money on in the past and are looking to claim for now (retrospective costs)
- activities that make profits for private gain
- any other costs not related to working with us to test and develop new approaches to involving communities in decision making about funding
UK’s subsidy control commitments
Our grants come from public funds and successful applicants will be asked to comply with the UK's International Subsidy Control Commitments listed on the GOV.UK website. You should seek independent legal advice if you need more guidance.