Spring 2011 Newsletter
Welcome
Welcome to the Spring 2011 edition of our newsletter. If you are in the UK, I hope you are enjoying the early warm weather as much as we are!
As usual we’ve put together a few articles on recent news and points of interest for fundraisers along with some information on grant funding opportunities with upcoming deadlines. This issue we look at grant levels for the Big Lottery Funds flagship Reaching Communities fund, we also look at changes to Gift Aid following the budget, major changes in international funding at DFID and a helpful new site from BT that aims to reduce the cost of online fundraising. We also thought you might like to know a bit about what our Fundraising Consultants get up to, so Sarah has included a report on her recent trip to Uganda, where she was working with one of our clients, Food for the Hungry.
We hope you enjoy reading the newsletter and please remember to get in touch if you have any suggestions for future editions or if you would like to talk about how we can help your organisation.
Big Lottery Fund – Reaching Communities Grants
If you’ve ever had the fun of completing a Reaching Communities funding application then you probably wondered how large the average grant from them was. We thought we would go one better and find out what the distribution of their grants looks like. So here it is in a nice bar chart, showing the number of grants in 2010 within each £50,000 band. There were 647 grants in total with an average level of £267,200. Big Lottery Fund have also recently released an update on the status of recent applications received and success rates. You can read it on the Big Lottery Fund website.
Changes to DFID funding
DFID have announced that there will be no more funding rounds of the popular Civil Society Challenge Fund (CSCF) and that it will close in 2015 after the completion of on-going projects.
The CSCF was one of DFID’s main central funds for civil society with an annual budget of £14m and was highly competitive – in 2010 out of 409 received concept notes only 32 projects were funded. The CSCF aimed to contribute to poverty reduction in the developing world by building the capacity of organisations in the developing world through advocacy and empowerment projects.
BT mydonate
BT have launched a new fundraising donations service with no subscription or commission charges. The only fees charged will be those levied by credit and debit card companies.
Sarah’s Uganda Trip
In February Sarah was invited to work in Uganda as part of our work for International Development Charity Food for the Hungry UK. Working with local Food for the Hungry staff, Sarah was instrumental in drafting a proposal for Comic Relief to help girls affected by the civil war in Northern Uganda.
Radical changes to Gift Aid
New legislation, announced by Chancellor George Osborne in the March Budget, will see Gift Aid available on the first £5,000 of small donations per year without the need for signed declarations. To be eligible, charities will need to have been registered with HMRC for Gift Aid for at least three years.
Upcoming grant funding deadlines
Here’s a summary of some upcoming grant funding deadlines:
- 26th Apr 11 - European Refugee Fund
- 29th Apr 11 - Veolia Environmental Trust
- 4th May 11 - Community Radio Fund
- 12th May 11 - BIG Lottery – Improving Futures
- 27th May 2011 - Freemasons Grand Charity
- 1st Jun 11 - Erach and Roshan Sadri Foundation
- 10th Jun 11 - Comic Relief – Older People
- 10th Jun 11 - Comic Relief - Sport for Change
- 30th Jun 11 - Support for European Cooperation in Education and Training
- 1st July 11 - Biffaward Flagship Programme
- Lloyds TSB Foundation
