Community Core Costs fund for organisations working with people affected by the Grenfell Tower fire

Application criteria and process

  • Are you a voluntary or community organisation working in North Kensington with people affected by the Grenfell Tower fire?
  • Do you need additional funding to help cover the costs of this work?

North Kensington’s voluntary and community organisations have been at the forefront in providing support to local residents in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire. Because of this, a group of local and national trusts and foundations has come together to help you access some additional funding to support your emergency response.

The aim of this programme is to provide funding for urgent core costs and additional resources in a quick and straightforward way. In addition, many trusts and foundations are also thinking about how they can provide support in the medium and longer term as well. Information on how this longer-term support might be offered will come out later: our first priority is to address the immediate needs of groups working on the ground.

Who can apply?

Organisations already working in North Kensington to support individuals and communities affected by the Grenfell Tower fire. This could include:

  • Registered charities
  • CICs
  • Local faith groups
  • Constituted community groups
  • Residents’ groups
  • Schools and nurseries

You are likely to be a local organisation or small group based in or working primarily in North Kensington. We are unlikely to make grants to larger national organisations under this programme, even if you are working on the ground with local people affected by the fire.

If you are working in the community with people affected by the fire but do not have a constitution we might still be able to consider an application. You will need to have a bank account, and also provide us with details of a trusted local organisation which could give you a reference.

What can the funding be used for?

The Community Core Costsfund is intended to provide you with some easily accessed funding to help you respond to immediate needs within your community. It is intended to help support work you are doing over and above your normal day-to-day work - the vital extra work voluntary and community groups have been doing -and will be doing - over the next few months in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire.

The funding can be used to work with and support people affected both directly and indirectly by the fire.

The funding can go towards things like:

  • Work you have already done in supporting people within your community affected by the fire.
  • Equipment, supplies or urgent building repairs which will allow you to work more effectively with the community as you move forward.
  • The costs of additional work, over the next six months, which focuses on supporting people affected by the Grenfell Tower fire.For example, you might have extra costs such as increased hours for sessional workers; additional volunteer expenses; higher utility bills due to your building being open for longer than usual or larger than usual bills for food if you are supplying meals for community residents.

As this is a crisis response fund we will not be making grants towards the salaries of new permanent members of staff, or towards new projects or initiatives designed to meet the needs of people affected by the Grenfell Tower fire in the long term. The aim is to get funds out quickly to groups to help support the core costs and additional resources underpinning their initial, immediate response to a community in crisis.

How much money is available?

£1 million has been made available to help meet the initial needs of voluntary and community groups working with people affected by the Grenfell Tower fire. The pot of money is limited so this means that, unfortunately, we might not be able to fund all requests, or to fund all requests in full. We will be looking at all applications in the context of need across the whole community. We will also be considering things like the size of the applicant organisation in relation to the size of the request.

We are not asking for a full budget to accompany this application as we understand that this is a changing situation and it is impossible for you to know exactly how much you will require.We are looking instead for an estimate of how much you think you might need, always bearing in mind how these limited resources can best be shared between the hundreds of groups doing vital work on the ground. Please be realistic in your request.

Please note that in most cases we will only be able to accept one application per organisation to the Community Core Costs fund.

If further crisis support is needed beyond the initial £1 million allocated, more funding may be made available. And as noted already trusts and foundations are also looking at how they can best work together to provide support in the medium and longer term.

How to apply

This crisis fund will be running throughout July: the final deadline for receiving applications by email or post is Monday 24th July. You don’t have to get your application in immediately; it is fine to apply at any time up to this date.

You can apply in two ways – by filling in a brief application form and emailing or posting/delivering it to us, or by attending one of our weekly funding surgeries, to be held at the Westway Trust, and talking your application through with one of our team of grants managers. We can help you fill in the form then.

Applying by application form

Please fill in the Grenfell Tower response – Community Core Costs fund form which can be downloaded from the London Funders website: You can also email

and request a copy.

  1. Email your form, along with a scanned copy of a recent bank statement, to . It is essential that you send a copy of a bank statement along with the application as this will allow us to get the payment out quickly if a grant is made.
  1. Post or hand deliver your form, together with a photocopy of a recent bank statement, to:

London Funders Grenfell Tower Response

c/o The Tudor Trust

7, Ladbroke Grove

London

W11 3BD

Once we have received your application we may ring you or arrange to meet with you to clarify particular points, or just to talk through the request, so please make sure that the person named as the applicant on the form has a copy of the form and is happy to talk to us about the application.

Applying at a funding surgery

Grants managers from the different local and national trusts and foundations involved in this initiative will be running funding surgeries at the Westway Trust each Thursday in July: the 6th, 13th, 20th and 27th. Surgeries will run between 10.00am and 2.30pm. If you are not confident about filling in the form, or would just like to talk to us about your application before filling it in, please come and talk to us and we can talk about what you need and get the form filled in there and then.

Surgeries will take place at:

The Westway Trust

1 Thorpe Close

London

W10 5XL

You don’t need to make an appointment, please just come along between 10.00 and 2.30 to talk to one of the team. You might find it helpful to download a copy of the form before you come to talk to us, and think about the various questions we are asking. You could make some notes under the different headings to help with the discussion.

Please bring a copy of a recent bank statement with you to the funding surgery – this is really important as we will use this to confirm your bank details.

If you can’t attend a funding surgery…

If you’re not confident about filling in the form without support and aren’t able to come along to a funding surgery, we might be able to come and meet you at your base instead. We can’t guarantee that we will be able to do this, but to discuss the possibility please call the Information Team at the Tudor Trust on 020 7727 0214.

Timescales

We will be making grant decisions each Thursday in July, starting on 6th July, with payments then being made directly into bank accounts on the Friday.

At the moment the intention is to run this programme until the end of July: we will review the situation at the end of the month.

Reporting back

We need to account for the funds we have distributed but want to keep the reporting process as simple and straightforward as possible. So instead of asking for a written report, we will call you to talk to you about how things are going and how you used the funding a few months after the grant was agreed.

Questions

If you have any questions about the application process or the sort of funding we can offer, please come to one of our funding surgeries. If this isn’t an option for you please email your question to , giving a phone number we can use to contact you, and we will arrange a call back from one of our team of grants managers.

London Funders

June 2017

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