Funding News

This page is maintained by Barry Millar, SAVS Funding Development Officer
Tel: 01702 356008 Email: funding@savs-southend.co.uk

Please visit this page regularly as information and funding opportunities will be posted here as they become available which is likely to be faster than SAVS Items of Interest email.

You may also wish to consider SAVS membership which includes a monthly Funding Update.

Southend Borough Council Grants 

Last Chance - Investment and Innovation Grant – Round 4

Southend has allocated in excess of £200,000 in I&I grants to organisations who will be working hard to deliver an exciting range of services in the coming year. We have been able to identify a further sum of money and wish to encourage organisations to consider applications to meet needs in the following areas, identified by children/young people and their families:

• Computer club (after school and/or weekends) to include web design, Social Networking (Facebook / My Space / Twitter Etc) design, personal On-Line Security as well as Game playing
• Regular (monthly?) discos (the new Shoebury Youth club has already offered the resource as a monthly venue, including the provision of disco equipment and DJ – what is needed is an organiser and staffing (to include volunteers)
• Coach trips for children/young people to major sporting events and/or appropriate theatre events
• Regular art/craft based club
• Holiday performing arts scheme including range of music, drama, Video camera work/editing

The Application form is available from the following address and the closing date for receipt of a signed original hard copy is 5pm on Wednesday 17th March. Laura suggests that this copy is sent (Registered) and addressed to her or brought to the Lighthouse (address below). The Steering group will be meeting on Thursday 25th March and it is hoped that a decision can be made regarding Applications on this date.

The address you need for the application form is http://www.southend.gov.uk/content.asp?content=12598

Laura Clarke
Aiming High Commissioning Officer
Short Breaks
Lighthouse CDC
Snakes Lane
Southend SS2 6XT
07789 723508

Community Voices Grants
Community Voices is funding 26 selected projects, all of which will benefit from face-to-face training and professional mentor support. They hope they will not only showcase the value of the Community Voices spirit, but also inspire other communities to make a difference.

The grant application process is open for isolated and disadvantaged communities in England. You don't have to have an official status as an organisation, however you could be an organisation (for example a charity, housing association or local authority) applying in partnership with, or on behalf of, a community of people. Equally you could be an individual member of your community. Here are some other examples:

Projects already using digital media to develop their work with a specific community (perhaps a library with an online access programme looking to work with an identified deprived or isolated community)
More formal community organisations looking to develop digital media to engender community voice and cohesion (perhaps a carers' trust looking to use digital technology to support isolated informal carers in their homes)
More informal communities looking to embrace digital media (perhaps a residents' or tenants' association in a deprived community looking to use digital media as a mechanism to bring residents together)

So that they can ensure the grants go to community-led projects, you need to be able to demonstrate that you have the backing of the community for the project you propose. Projects have to be fully engaged with the communities they aim to benefit.
Projects selected will be showcased on their website, with each project receiving a bursary to attend one of their training events, and a wealth of additional communications support. If you're helping to give your community a voice through digital media they'd like to hear from you.

The application process will run until 28th February 2010. All community projects will be selected by 31st March 2010, and will run until March 2011.

To celebrate the varied and inspiring ways you are already using digital media to help empower disadvantaged communities, Community Voices has 20 x £500 awards to give away before the end of March 2010. Further Inspiring Voices awards will be made available at the end of the year. We'll keep you informed!

If you prefer to submit an application by post or email, you can download the application form from their website via this link www.mediatrust.org/community-voices/grants/application-form/

Disability Essex - Healthy Arts Project - More services for Southend

The ‘Healthy Arts Project’ aims to improve health in the community and independence amongst people with disabilities. Disability Essex will do this by offering a mobile outreach service that is broken into two elements, ‘Health Monitoring and Advice’ and ‘Arts Classes.’

Last month the Rochford Strategic Partnership (Health and Local Authority joint working) awarded Disability Essex £12,500. This will fund the continuation of healthy living and screening services, using a specially adapted mini-bus, to go out to isolated communities and individuals. Health advice will come to the public - not the public struggling to get to busy centres with expensive parking or using problematic public transport.

For 2 years Disability Essex, with Lottery funding, has operated across the County. Thousands of people have been screened and advised. Rochford's award ensures this service will continue in that rural district.

Now, the Southend Partnership of Health and Local Authorities has also awarded
Disability Essex a further £12,500 to continue with services in the Borough. This follows last year's extra funds for diabetes checks, which, also, has been extremely successful.

This unique outreach service also received a Commendation from the Essex
Millennium Fund at an award ceremony in Colchester earlier in April. A new nurse, Linda Peacock, is joining the Disability Essex Project Manager, Caroline Carpenter, RGN, to add to the existing services for Brentwood, Thurrock and Basildon areas.

The outreach team can be contacted on 07919 153320

Disability Essex believe that art and craft can have many benefits to both the able and disabled. There will be no charge for these activities and they can provide a great opportunity for the members, both disabled and able, to express themselves through creativity and enjoy themselves offering the opportunity to experience these benefits. If you would like Healthy arts to visit your group please contact the community arts officer Jo Shenton on 07919 153352

Despite the "credit crunch", the value-for-money services provided by the
Charity continue to be seen by Health Professionals as the most effective way to
save money whilst increasing service provision.

The Grassroots Guidance and Application form is available to download and use with effect from 1st April 2009. The form has been revised to take account of the closure of the first year of the funding (2008/09) and the major increase in the annual income limit which has risen by £10,000 to £30,000.’

CLICK HERE FOR GUIDANCE NOTES & APPLICATION

Paradoxically, new funding opportunities have appeared, almost out of the blue, which may answer the prayers of some of the smaller voluntary organisations, whose funding has been very low for years, as well as supporting some of the hardest working  with a funding boost which is really welcome.  I am referring here to:

Grassroots Grants – administered by Essex Community Foundation and aimed at those voluntary organisations with annual incomes of less than £20k.

Young Carers Strategy Group funding 2009 – 2010 – an amount of £180k targeting Young Carers and Carers of children with a disability/learning difficulty.

Southend Together Partnership, Additional Voluntary Support Grant Funding for Southend amounting to £105k – made available to the Southend Together Partnership by our local PCT as a result of their very prudent handling of funds in the current financial year. 

What can we practically do for our organisations?

I think one could begin with a range of standard good housekeeping considerations such as: 

Revisiting budgets and reserves.  Is that planned expenditure really necessary?  How long will that item you want to replace continue to work for and what will its cost of running be if you continue with it?  You may need to look to build-up and retain larger levels of reserves in order to try to provide a larger ‘cushion’ to fall back on if needed.

Critically examine your cash flow statement.  See just how sensitive it is to unwanted variations in income and expenditure.  Flex the cash-flow statement by posing questions like ‘what if A or B are unable to pay us on the due date’ and ‘how much do we need to allow for heating and lighting in the next quarter’ etc.

Consider making economies wherever possible. This will inevitably mean looking more closely at each constituent of your costs.  Can you make sustainable savings by changing energy supplier?  Can you reduce quality without harming the effectiveness of your work?  Saving pennies is good so long as doing so does not cause you to lose pounds.

Staff and Service cuts need to be considered particularly now you have looked at your budgets and cash-flow statements.  These may be very unpleasant things for you to consider but it is necessary in order to focus on exactly what you must try to keep available for your beneficiaries knowing just how valuable each of your services are. However, consider talking to another organisation who are engaged in similar work – they are probably also having to consider tough questions and you may be able to find a way of working together which would enable you both to continue to run services which you would otherwise not be able to maintain.

Revisiting short and longer-term business plans.  An organisation needs to have a workable business plan at all times and this will mean that two and three year plans will need to be revisited and altered in line with the years plan which you will now be revising.  Predicting the future has always been difficult but there is now much more uncertainty with fewer signposts to help you to chart your way.  However, by revising your expectations and targets, to that which you still feel are achievable, will give confidence to potential funders you apply to from here on!

This is a time of difficult challenges but it is also a time of new opportunities.  If one approaches these challenges from a negative viewpoint very little worthwhile is likely to result.  However, if you view these times positively it can be a wonderful opportunity to make your organisation even stronger and more effective.

I also believe that the above new funding opportunities suggest we must be much more flexible and ready to take advantage of any opportunities which come our way by being prepared with new ideas.  I am sure that most organisations have thoughts about one or two new benefits they would like to bring to their beneficiaries.  These could be completely new services or extensions of existing services.  If organisations plan to put some time and effort into working up their ideas into a project plan they would then be in a much better placed to submit strong applications when a suitable funding window opens.

We are lucky with the above funding windows as Grassroots is being considered monthly and each of the other two have late February deadlines.  This is not common and is a major reason for needing to be better prepared. So to put it another way ‘when the going gets tough’ we have to get tougher.  For the Charity Commission article of 14^th October 2008 please click on the link below: 

http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/news/crunch.asp