Charitable grants are funds given to the voluntary sector for research, projects or general management.
The biggest grantmakers are government departments which offer grants to civil society organisations to carry out statutory work on their behalf.
Other major grantmakers are the Big Lottery Fund, which distributes National Lottery funding, charitable trusts and corporate foundations.
Grants are usually time-limited and are offered to implement government policy, innovate or to secure agreed outcomes.
Voluntary groups usually have to compete for grants.
Conservative MP Oliver Letwin has said the Tories will ask the voluntary sector to go beyond its current capacity if it wins the next election.
Conservative MP Oliver Letwin has expressed his “regret” that charities focus so much effort on campaigning, just hours after NCVO chief Stuart Etherington and former Shelter head Adam Sampson lauded civil society's campaigning activities.
A Conservative MP has admitted that there will be “pain across the public sector”, even in areas protected against spending cuts.
Gareth Jones looks at how a strong increase in grants and fees has masked a fall in voluntary income.
A coalition of Scottish MPs has called on Lloyds Banking Group to reconsider its decision to halt funding for the Lloyds TSB Foundation for Scotland. Last week, the Foundation announced that it had closed its doors to new grant applications “for the foreseeable future” after failing to reach an agreement on future funding with its main benefactor the Lloyds Banking Group
NAVCA has accused the Adventure Capital Fund of discrediting grants by urging organisations to move away from ‘grant dependence’ in its recent guidance on the £70m Communitybuilders Fund. In a 500-word report, Kevin Curley, chief executive of NAVCA, has complained that ACF’s language and thinking is damaging to the interests of the local voluntary and community sector.
The closeness of the NCVO’s relationship with government is revealed in the Office of the Third Sector’s annual assessment of the progress made by the umbrella body with its strategic grant in 2008/09. Under the section on ‘voice’ - or advising on development of government policy - the NCVO lists dozens of issues and policies where it has had input.
A £1.3m fund has been opened up for organisations working to reduce prisoner reoffending rates. Up to six unrestricted grants worth between £200,000 and £350,000 will be given to charities and social enterprises with a proven track record in reducing rates of reoffending.
The Euclid Network, a European network of civil society leaders led by Acevo, has secured a United Nations grant of $300,000. The funding has been awarded for Euclid's work on strengthening civil society across borders to develop democracy. The two-year project will primarily focus on Moldova and Ukraine. A Euclid spokesperson said developing a strategy for the project was in the early stages but would include connecting civil society with government to get involved in policy-making, training civil society leaders, online forums and roundtable sessions.
The NCVO has secured a £750,000 grant from the Big Lottery Fund to help it demonstrate how it and other infrastructure bodies benefit the sector. The umbrella body will share the grant with Triangle Consulting and the Third Sector Research Centre, who all bid jointly to BIG’s Basis programme for the funding. The money will be used to devise the Value of Infrastructure programme – a three-year, England-wide project that will, according to the NCVO, “identify the most effective ways for infrastructure agencies to communicate the value of infrastructure to sector organisations and improve the planning and monitoring of their work”.
The survival of the London Civic Forum is hanging in the balance after the Greater London Authority withdrew its core grant once Boris Johnson became mayor. The charity’s chair Andrew Wakefield has warned other infrastructure organisations that they are likely to face similar cuts as politicians direct limited public funds to frontline services.
Financial advisers are having trouble finding charities to help their cash-strapped clients, according to research commissioned by advice charity Turn2us. More than a third of the 293 advisers polled said they have to rely on word of mouth to identify those charities that can provide further assistance, such as benevolent funds. Some 52 per cent said they didn’t know which charities provided such grants, while 35 per cent said they didn’t know how best to access them once they’d identified them.
There is a growing resentment towards religion in the UK, according to the chief executive of the British Humanist Association, Hanne Stinson. Can we hope for a world without religious privilege or discrimination?
Homelessness charity Shelter is to cut 43 jobs in response, it says, to a "sharp decline in fundraising income" caused by the economic downturn.
Infrastructure organisations in Plymouth are vying for thousands of pounds of funding left up for grabs following the failure of Plymouth Community Partnership, the accountable body for ChangeUp in the region.
New income-based criteria are excluding small and medium-sized charities from applying for central government grants, according to the Directory of Social Change.
While the relentless pursuit of government funding irrespective of mission is questionable at best, managing to ensure funding for your mission is commendable
HM Revenue & Customs has broadened the criteria for its grants to help vulnerable and disadvantaged people gain access to the correct benefits and tax relief, and is offering the grants to all types of third sector organisations for the first time.
The potential to redevelop the relationship between local government and civil society is greater now than it ever has been, delegates at a debate on representative and participative democracy have been told.
The Department for International Development has committed an additional £10m to a grants fund aimed at strengthening citizens' ability to hold their governments and other bodies to account.
The chief executive of Community Foundation Network on cohesive action at grassroots level
Individually tailored support for its beneficiaries and a good deal of introspection makes this seventeenth-century fund a modern model
The NCVO has been overlooked by Capacitybuilders for new grants to provide ICT support to the sector, despite being awarded £4m by the Home Office three years ago to lead the ICT Hub under the same ten-year ChangeUp programme.
The government's decision to nationalise the beleaguered Northern Rock bank will include a commitment to guarantee its Foundation a minimum income of £15m a year for the next three years. Chancellor Alistair Darling said this will be paid directly by Northern Rock, and be a condition of any sale during this period. The new board of the bank will also be asked to identify a viable long-term future for the Foundation.
Less than 2 per cent of charitable grants and just 5 per cent of donations from private individuals go to environment charities, according to figures from New Philanthropy Capital's latest report, Green Philanthropy. The report's writers have described the figures as "woefully inadequate" given the recent unprecedented growth in concern for environmental issues.
Grantmaking, risk spreading and doing good by stealth in the City Parochial Foundation
Community foundations will need to increase their endowments by £2.5bn over the next 20 years if they are to be sustainable, according to a new report on the future of philanthropy.
A NEW UK-WIDE INITIATIVE, the Payroll Giving Grants programme, is rewarding any employer, with fewer than 500 staff, for setting up a payroll giving scheme with a cash incentive of up to '500.
The lottery of grant funding
Vic Cocker, chair of WaterAid, and Sir Nicholas Young, chief executive of British Red Cross, advise an international aid charity facing insolvency where the acquiescent trustees have been kept in the dark.
