Emergency COVID-19 Fund – Grant application guidance
Introduction
This fund has now closed to applications.
THe process are guidance below is available for informationGreenwich Charitable Trust, the borough’s NHS charity, has provided £75,000, focusing on health and wellbeing, and the Royal Borough of Greenwich (RBG) has matched this with a further £75,000, focused on tackling poverty and food, to make £150,000 in total funding available to support the local voluntary, community and faith sector in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
These funds are being administered by METROGAVS.
The local RBG voluntary community and faith sector (VCS) are invited to apply for funding of between £5,000 – £10,000 in one of the three following areas:
- Funding area 1 – Supporting VCS organisations in financial difficulty that are key to the health and wellbeing of the local community
- Funding area 2 – Supporting VCS organisations to adapt services to support people around health and wellbeing during the pandemic, with a particular focus on mental wellbeing
- Funding area 3 – Supporting VCS organisations tackling poverty and food poverty in the local community caused by the effects of COVID-19
How do we apply?
You should provide a business case with the narrative being no longer than four pages of A4 in Arial at 12 point.
In addition, you can provide as much financial data as you wish, provided it supports the application and allows for reasonable assessment.
For all funding areas please provide the following information:
- Which funding area you are applying for (you can only apply in one area)
- Details of your organisation, including the email and phone number of an individual we can contact
- What your organisation does
- How long you’ve been operating in RBG
- How you intend to use the funding
- The impact your organisation has had on the health and wellbeing of local people in RBG over the last two years
- How you will monitor the use of the funding you are applying for to demonstrate that the funding has been well spent, its impact on your organisation and the people you serve
- Budget outlining how you intend to spend the funding
- Your last set of audited accounts or accounts that have been independently examined or if your turnover is less than £25,000 your last set of accounts
For Funding area 1, please also set out:
- Details of the financial difficulties you have encountered as a result of COVID-19
- How you have tried to overcome these financial difficulties
- How you intend to spend the funding to support the future sustainability of your organisation
- How the funding is key to your organisation’s service delivery
- How the additional funding will support the future health and wellbeing of RBG’s communities.
For Funding area 2, please also set out:
- How you want to adapt your organisation so that it can better meet the health and wellbeing needs of people in the borough in response to the COVID-19 epidemic.
- How you know about the new needs of people in light of the pandemic
- How you know that the adaptations are likely to meet the new needs
For funding area 3, please also set out:
- What you want to do to alleviate poverty and/or support the provision of food/healthy eating in the borough in response to the pandemic
- How would you identify who has these needs in the light of the pandemic
- How you know that the service/project will meet the needs of local communities
- How the funding proposal dovetails with existing activity in the borough
All applications will be assessed against the following criteria:
- The effectiveness of the charity in previous years
- The efforts already made to find alternative funding
- The effectiveness/feasibility of the proposal
- The impact of the proposal on the health and wellbeing of the borough’s communities
- The quality of the budget
- The quality of the monitoring information proposed
There will be equal weighting for all the above criteria.
Applications should be sent to naomi.goldberg@metrocharity.org.uk by 12 noon on Monday 11th May 2020.
Are we eligible to apply for funding?
You are eligible for funding provided:
- Your group has a constitution or is registered as a charity
- Your group has a bank account or will be using the bank account of another organisation
Is funding available for individuals?
No, funding for this programme is only available to groups.
Can I get help with our application?
If you need help with any of these requirements, please contact METRO GAVS either by email,
gavs@metrocharity.org.uk, or telephone, 020 8305 5000.
What type of projects can be funded?
- Awards will be between £5,000-£10,000
- Each organisation can only apply for one grant, not multiple grants adding up to £10,000
- Funding must be used by end March 2021
- Public sector organisations cannot apply for funding, nor can they hold any of the funding on behalf of other organisations
The programme will not fund:
- Items which are due to be paid for by other public or private sector grants
- Statutory fines, criminal fines or penalties
- Liabilities incurred prior to the date of this agreement
- All paid for events, conferences and exhibitions, including hire of venues for ‘purely’ promotional events
- Projects that are purely based around marketing/communications such as newsletter projects or advertising campaigns
- Projects that are purely making payments to statutory organisations, such as Local Authorities, schools, the Police Force and arm’s length public sector organisations. This includes organisations that are in any way controlled by, for example, a Local Authority, a Clinical Commissioning Group or agencies of these
- Any party-political activity
- Activity where the key purpose is to promote a religious doctrine or the beliefs of a particular faith
- Commercial ventures
- Funding of organisations which support or promote extremist views or which do not support the fundamental British values of human rights; equality before the law, democracy and full participation in UK society
- Any other activity which Greenwich Charitable Trust and Royal Borough of Greenwich Council, in their absolute discretion consider is not directly associated with developing the Programme
What will we need to do if successful?
METRO GAVS will send you a grant acceptance email, which includes a declaration that you accept the terms and conditions of the grant, and will also ask for your bank details so that we can pay you. You will need to complete this and send back to naomi.goldberg@metrocharity.org.uk.
You may be asked to attach one or two files to the form:
- A copy of your constitution if you are not a registered charity or a member of METRO GAVS
- A copy of your Safeguarding Policies if not already provided to METRO GAVS
Once this form is submitted online with the required attachments, METRO GAVS will then release the funding.
Once your project is finished you must then submit a monitoring form that explains how your project went, and how much money you actually spent. You will need to return any unspent funds to METRO GAVS.
Top tips
- Check your budgets add up
- Concentrate your funding on health and wellbeing and/or poverty and food
- Demonstrate clearly how you will work will meet the funding area
- Seek support from a METRO GAVS Development Officer. Please note these METRO GAVS’ staff members when supporting you will not pass on any information about this support or the contents of the application to the METRO Director of Strategy (Naomi Goldberg) to ensure the integrity of the grants panel
- Make sure your management committee/board/trustees are aware of the bid and its contents
- Ask someone who hasn’t been closely involved in writing the application to read it through before you submit
- Address all the assessment criteria and the application requirements
- Be clear about how your application represents value for money
- Please make sure that the monitoring processes you decide to use are explained and in particular, you show how the monitoring will show improvements to health and wellbeing and/or poverty and access to food