Community Power

  1. Funding
  2. Funding programmes
  3. Community Power

Expressions of interest for the development phase of Community Power closed on 5 February 2025.

But there are many other funding opportunities to come.

We’ve committed to a £100 million, 10 year Community Power fund. By community power, we mean local communities being able to influence and change the places they live. As well as the services they use, and decisions that affect their lives.

We aim to launch the broader programme in 2026. This development phase will shape how the broader programme runs. We’re going to work with 10 to 15 partners in the development stage. We have up to £1.2 million funding available over one year.

We’ll fund each partner organisation between £50,000 and £80,000 for the development stage. We expect this stage to run between spring 2025 and spring 2026.

Partners will deliver activities in and with communities to increase their agency, power and control. This can be new or existing work.

This development phase will also require partners to work with us, and each other, to understand what works to increase community power. Including what the barriers are. And what support and learning is needed to improve community power activities over the long term.

We plan to work with a mix of partners. Including smaller community groups as well as larger or national organisations.

Area
England
Suitable for
Community or voluntary organisations, public sector organisations
Funding size
£50,000 to £80,000 per partner organisation
Total available
£1.2 million
Application deadline

Closed to new expressions of interest

If you applied

How to contact the Community Power team

You can contact us by emailing CommunityPowerFund@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk.

What happens after you send us your expression of interest

  1. We’ll review your expression of interest against our priorities. We’re expecting to get a lot of expressions of interest.
  2. We’ll tell you if you’re invited to the next stage by the end of February 2025. We expect to invite 20 organisations to the next stage.
  3. If we invite you to the next stage, we’ll ask you for some additional information and complete some checks. Learn more about our checks. We’ll do this by phone or email.
  4. We’ll use this additional information to make a decision. We’ll aim to tell you our decision by the end of May 2025. We expect to fund 10 to 15 partners.
  5. If your application is successful – we'll contact you with the good news. If your application is unsuccessful, we’ll give you feedback.

What happens if you get funding

We’ll get in touch with you to discuss what happens next.

Before we can pay any of your funding you’ll need to:

  • send us a bank statement dated within the last three months. So we can check the account you want us to pay the funding into
  • sign an agreement with us and return a copy.

We’ll expect that you take part in activities we arrange to share and develop learning among the partners. This will support us to learn and shape the Community Power fund in the future.

See how we use the personal data you give us

By reading our data protection statement.

We do checks on the information you give us

As an organisation that gives out public funds, we carry out some checks on the information you give to us. Learn more about our checks.

Who could apply

The partners we’re working with

We plan to work with 10 to 15 partner organisations with experience of improving community power. They’ll deliver activities in and with communities to increase their power, agency and control. This can be new or existing work.

And we’ll work with them as a group to develop new approaches for our funding in the future. We’ll build on the evidence of what works, sharing knowledge, enthusiasm and experience.

We plan to work with a mix of partners, with different types of experience. Including smaller community groups as well as larger or national organisations.

Experience partners will have

Partner organisations will:

  • have experience of going beyond engaging communities by doing work to increase their community power
  • work in and with communities that are the most excluded and marginalised, and the least empowered
  • have experience of working in communities where the conditions are currently least suited to growing community power. For example where people have less trust in each other, do not feel they belong, or do not have places to meet
  • show how the values and approaches of community power are central to their work
  • be committed to working with us and the other partners to shape the principles of the future programme. This may include joint learning sessions, hosting or attending visits and more.

What organisations could apply to be a partner

Expressions of interest were open to these types of organisation:

  • constituted voluntary or community organisation
  • constituted group or club
  • registered charity
  • charitable incorporated organisation (CIO)
  • not-for-profit company
  • community interest company (CIC)
  • school (as long as their project benefits and involves the communities around the school)
  • statutory body (including local authorities, town, parish and community council)
  • community benefit society.

Any other funded partners also have to be one of these types of organisation.

Partners need at least 2 board or committee members who are not related

Related can mean:

  • related by marriage
  • in a civil partnership with each other
  • in a long-term relationship with each other
  • related through a long-term partner
  • living together at the same address
  • related by blood.

All companies who apply must have at least 2 directors who are not related in any of these ways. This also applies to companies that are also registered as charities.

Who could not apply

  • individuals
  • sole traders
  • organisations based outside the UK
  • companies that can pay profits to directors, shareholders or members (including Companies Limited by Shares).
What we plan to achieve

What we plan to achieve

We’ve committed to a £100 million, 10 year Community Power fund. It’ll give us a better way of working with, and funding, communities to increase community power.

Before launching the broader programme we want to work with partners on a one year development phase. It’ll run from spring 2025 to spring 2026, and have up to £1.2 million funding. Partners will run activities to improve community power in local communities. And work with us to learn from what’s worked best.

Community Power is one of 3 partnership approaches we opened in January 2025. The others are:

Read about these in our vision for funding in England

Watch our recorded webinar to find out more

You can find a transcript of the webinar by watching on YouTube (opens in new tab).

You can also see a list of frequently asked questions (PDF, 103 KB). These questions are from the webinar and from emails we’ve received.

What community power means

By community power we mean communities being able to influence and change:

  • places they live
  • services they use
  • decisions that affect their lives.

By communities we mean people living in the same place, whether at a neighbourhood or larger level.

Development stage: what partners will do

For this first development stage we’re offering funding of £1.2 million. We’ll fund 10 to 15 partner organisations to run new or existing work to improve community power. And we’ll work with all the partners together to learn from what they’ve done. This will shape the longer-term Community Power fund.

We’d like to fund a range of different approaches to improving community power. We’re interested in testing out innovative approaches. But we also want to fund things that already work. We think both are important.

The work we’ll fund could include:

  • addressing barriers to community power
  • supporting communities to use their power
  • improving confidence and accessibility
  • supporting communities to influence decisions that affect their lives
  • raising awareness of other ways to use community power.

But we’re interested in any approaches that can increase community power.

Why we’re doing this

We want to be more than a funder

By this we mean doing more than giving out money. We want to support and involve the communities we fund in other ways too. We’ve committed to this in our new strategy, It Starts with Community.

We want to explore equity-based support for civil society organisations to achieve our missions.

We’ve set out to achieve 4 community-led missions. We’ll support communities to:

  • come together – such as enabling people from all backgrounds to shape the future of their communities
  • be environmentally sustainable
  • help children and young people thrive – like supporting them to shape the decisions that affect them and their communities
  • enable people to live healthier lives – such as increasing opportunities for community participation to shape better health services.

The work we fund to increase community power will help achieve these missions.

We know we’re not the experts

We think that increasing community power is important in achieving all of our missions. We also know we’re not the experts.

That’s why we want to work with a mix of partners. We’ll share knowledge, enthusiasm and experience. And come up with something better than if any of us did this on our own.

What partners can spend the money on

What partners can spend the money on

If you're a partner we’ll fund you between £50,000 and £80,000 to deliver activities that increase community power. And to work with us and other partners to share what works best.

We can fund:

  • delivery costs for running activities that increase community power
  • salary costs
  • transport costs and expenses
  • other costs involved in working as our partner and taking part in development 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 this work. Like a senior manager or an office admin worker.

For example, the delivery work 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.

We cannot fund:

  • things you’ve spent money on in the past and are looking to claim for now (retrospective costs)
  • any other costs not related to:
    • activities that will increase community power
    • working with us and partners to develop our new Community Power fund.

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.