The UK Fund

Who can apply

You can apply if your organisation is a:

• registered charity
• constituted voluntary or community organisation
• company limited by guarantee (if it has a not-for-profit clause or is a registered charity)
• community interest company (CIC)
• charitable incorporated organisation (CIO)
• community benefit society
• co-operative society (if it has a not-for-profit clause and is registered with the Financial Conduct Authority)
• statutory body (including town, parish and community councils)

You can also apply as a partnership of organisations. Partners that will get any of the funding must all be one of the types of organisations we’ve listed.

You 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 two directors who are not related in any of these ways. This also applies to companies that are also registered as charities.

If you already have funding from us

You can still apply. When we assess your application, we’ll consider how it would fit in with your other funding.

Who cannot apply

We cannot accept applications from:

• individuals
• sole traders
• organisations based outside the UK
• companies that can pay profits to directors, shareholders or members (including companies limited by shares).

If you’re not sure if you can apply

You can:

• phone us on 0345 4102 030. Lines are open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm
• contact us by email at general.enquiries@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk
• check if our other funding is more suitable for your project

What we’re hoping to fund

We’ll fund projects that help bring diverse communities together. We’ll also fund projects that help children and young people use their voice to influence change.

Your project must meet one of our aims

Which are to:

• improve relationships between people with different life experiences.

  Like bringing together people from different backgrounds, generations or places.

• help people and communities who find it difficult to meet face-to-face to make meaningful connections online.

  For example because of physical or mental health, or poor transport links. Or because they live far apart from other people who have a shared identity or experience to them.

• help people from all backgrounds to influence the future of their communities.

  Like setting up ways for communities to influence decisions that affect them.

• help children and young people facing specific challenges change the systems that affect them.

  By making their voices heard and acted on.

• help more organisations to involve and listen to children and young people.

  Using what they say to improve their communities, and the systems and services they rely on.

You are more likely to get funding if you meet one aim really well

You do not need to meet all the aims. We’re unlikely to fund projects that do a little of everything.

Examples of projects we could fund

On our blog you can read examples of projects helping children and young people to use their voice.

What we mean by ‘communities’

By communities we mean people who share an identity, interest or experience. Or people living in the same place.

We’ll only fund you to increase the impact of things you’re already doing

So we will not fund you to try out a completely new way of working. We also want to fund projects that will do more than deliver a service. You need to show us how your work will also help to change systems. There’s more about what this means in the criteria that all projects must meet.

It’s fine for your project to change over time

We expect projects to evolve as time goes on. We’re comfortable with uncertainty, and we’ll be flexible. We will support you to keep on meeting your community’s needs. We want to understand what we can do to build capacity in communities and learn from your experiences.

Criteria that all projects must meet

You must show how your project will:

• benefit communities across the UK.
  For example by:
  • running activities in more than one UK country
  • collaborating between countries
  • sharing learning from your work with people doing similar things in other countries.
• scale up your impact by expanding your work.

  This could include reaching more people or expanding into new locations. But it could also be developing better infrastructure. Or increasing the help you already offer to people.

• support people experiencing poverty, disadvantage and discrimination.

  And making things fairer for these groups (sometimes called improving ‘equity’).

• help make significant change to services or systems that affect people’s everyday lives.

  Sometimes called ‘systems change’. By this we mean making big and lasting changes to how organisations or sectors work together. This includes changing rules, habits and how people work together. It also includes the resources they have, who has power, and what everyone thinks is important.

We’re particularly interested in how your project will:

• collect learning to show your impact

  And share this in a way that’s useful to others. Like sharing learning with the people it could help most, instead of broadcasting it to everyone.

• collaborate and work with partners

  By sharing your work openly, and working with others. We’ll want to know how you plan to collaborate with other organisations, or across sectors. And how you’ll make sure that organisations or communities you work with will be equal partners, even if they are smaller or less experienced.

• have a positive impact on people, communities and the natural environment.

We’re unlikely to fund projects that:

• are brand new (where you are trying out a completely new way of working)
• do not have evidence of their impact so far
• have no plan for increasing their impact
• only focus on delivering services (and not changing systems)
• only plan to move their existing activities online
• work alone to make changes (rather than working with other people and organisations to make bigger and longer lasting changes).

What we look for when it comes to learning and evaluation

When you apply you should tell us about:

• how you know what you’ve done already is effective
• how you’ve used what you’ve learned to make things better
• how you’ll increase your impact with this funding.

If you get funding, we’ll expect you to measure the difference your work makes. We know this can be complicated, and that things will not always go to plan. We’ll work with you to agree what we need and when.

We’ll expect you to share what you learn with others, and with any partners we bring in to help gather evidence and learning.

We are happy to fund learning and evaluation work

Including paying for external organisations to help you if you need it. You should include costs for this in your application.

If you’ll be working with children, young people or vulnerable adults

You need to have a policy in place that explains how they’ll be safe. If you get funding you’ll need to follow our expectations on safeguarding children and adults at risk.

The NCVO website has child safeguarding advice and information services.

Equality, equity, diversity and inclusion

We expect your organisation and the activities we fund to be open and accessible, to promote equalities and challenge discrimination.

We would like to understand your approach to equality, equity, diversity and inclusion. We might ask to see your organisation’s equalities policy as part of our assessment.

You can read more about our equality principles.

Considering your environmental impact

We're committed to helping you protect the environment. You can check our guidance on:

• reducing your environmental impact
• making an environmental action plan.

Our Climate Action Hub also has information about our approach to tackling the climate emergency, including learning and insights, stories and funding.

If you’d prefer to watch a video about what we’ll fund

You can watch a short video summary of The UK Fund.

How much funding you can get

You can apply for between £500,000 and £5 million. Funding is available for 2 to 10 years.

We expect to fund around 20 projects a year.

We can fund things like:

• staff costs, including sessional workers
• development work (testing new ways of working, staff training and development, developing governance, tech or IT upgrades and purchases, sharing learning)
• transport
• utilities and running costs
• volunteer expenses
• learning and evaluation
• equipment
• capital costs (but these should not be a significant amount of the funding you ask for)
• costs associated with delivering your project in other languages, like Welsh.

We can fund some political activity and campaigning

But only if:

• the activity is not party political. This means that it must be about policy, practice, or legislation rather than opposing or supporting a political party
• the activity is meant to help the cause of your organisation and benefit the public or society.

We will not fund projects where political activities are the main purpose. But we can fund projects that are mainly about campaigning.

If you’re invited to the next stage, we’ll talk to you to agree what the funding will cover.

We cannot fund:

• statutory activities and activities that replace government funding
• large capital or building projects
• loans, endowments or interest
• paying someone else to write your application
• activities where a profit will be distributed for private gain
• fundraising activities
• VAT you can reclaim
• alcohol
• things you’ve spent money on in the past and are looking to claim for now (retrospective costs)
• items which will only benefit an individual, rather than the wider community
• religious activities (but we can fund religious organisations if their project benefits the wider community and does not include religious content).

UK’s subsidy control commitments

Our grants come from public funds and successful applications 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.

Delivering your project in Wales

If one of the countries you will be working in is Wales, you will need to deliver your services bilingually (in Welsh and English). This is part of our grant condition. Read our guidance on managing your project bilingually and remember to include the costs in your budget. Read our guidance on managing your project bilingually.