Benefact Trust: Community Impact Grants

Overview

Programme Overview

Benefact Trust’s Community Impact Grant programme supports projects that will make a positive and transformative impact on lives and communities.

The programme has four key objectives:

Growing congregations and Christian communities (e.g. faith development, engaging young people, church planting and construction of new chapels for hospices).
Addressing social challenges facing communities (projects addressing a broad range of social issues, e.g. homelessness, food poverty and mental health).
Enabling wider community use of church buildings (projects resulting in a clear increase in use of church buildings by the wider community, e.g. new or expanded facilities for use by new groups or for new services). Requests for essential building improvements should come through our Building Improvement Grants programme.
Schools and educational institutions. (new spaces or facilities to improve collective worship or spiritual reflection, e.g. chapels and outdoor worship spaces).

Through this programme, they fund new or expanded work only and we make contributions to capital and revenue projects.

Who can apply

The Community Impact Grants programme is open to applications from churches, cathedrals, denominational bodies, Christian charities, and schools and theological educational institutions with a clear Christian ethos (N.B. Schools and theological educational institutions can only apply under Objective 4: Schools and educational institutions).

Please note that they are only able to provide funding to organisations which are registered as charities in the UK or Ireland (unless the organisation applying has 'exempt' status, which is restricted to churches and educational establishments).

What they can fund

All funded projects must contribute to one or more of the Community Impact Grants programme objectives):

Growing congregations and Christian communities
1. Projects which focus on growing church congregations and communities by encouraging numerical growth and growing faith and spirituality across all ages. Typical areas of support are likely to include:
  1. Outreach and wider engagement focused on mission, growth and faith development
  2. Projects aiming to engage more young people with faith and the church community
  3. Church planting projects
  4. Construction of new chapels for hospices or other charities
Addressing social challenges facing communities
1. Projects focusing on addressing, or building the capacity of Christian organisations to address, the following types of issues:
  1. Food poverty
  2. Debt / financial issues
  3. Mental health and wellbeing
  4. Children and families
  5. Young people
  6. NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training)
  7. Older people’s needs
  8. Homelessness
  9. Refugees & asylum seekers
  10. Offenders / Ex-offenders
  11. Addiction / substance misuse
  12. People with disabilities
  13. Modern Slavery / human trafficking
  14. Inclusion
Enabling wider community use of church buildings
1. Projects resulting in a clear increase in use of church buildings by the wider community (beyond the immediate congregation). Please note that requests for essential building improvements should come through their Building Improvement Grants programme unless they are a small part of a larger project clearly focused on enabling wider community use. The types of projects likely to be supported include:
  1. Redevelopment, expansion or improvement projects resulting in new or improved facilities for wider community use or community benefit beyond the immediate congregation
  2. Re-ordering of existing church facilities to enable increased community use
  3. Other activities or resources to support a sustainable transition to increased community use (e.g. a new staff member to undertake programming/coordination of community spaces)
Schools and educational institutions
1. For schools and theological educational institutions with a clear Christian ethos, the following types of projects will be considered:
  1. New spaces or facilities to improve collective worship or spiritual reflection among students (e.g. chapels, outdoor worship spaces, prayer gardens, etc)
  2. Repairs/refurbishment of a chapel or other worship space used by students for worship or spiritual reflection

They can support a range of capital and revenue (e.g. salary costs) as long as these are directly relevant to the delivery of your project. All costs included in your budget should clearly deliver additional value to your existing work, through new or expanded activity

How much can I apply for?

When completing your application, you will be asked to present the total costs of your project and details of the other funding you have secured, rather than requesting a specific grant amount. If your project fits the programme criteria, the size of your grant will be calculated by their Grants Officers based on your total project costs and our assessment criteria.

They will also take into account deprivation levels where your project is taking place and may apply a deprivation uplift when determining the size of your grant. A recommendation for a grant award will then be made to their Trustees. Trustees are keen to support as many projects as possible which align with programme criteria.

Other funding

All applicants will be expected to have secured funding for at least 30% of their total project costs before making an application (it is not possible to submit an application form until this level of match funding has been secured). Applicants should also have a clear plan for how the remainder of the match funding for the project will be secured (i.e. it should not be assumed that Benefact Trust will cover the entire funding shortfall).

Eligible Costs

Revenue
Staff costs	Salary costs and direct expenses of employing new staff and/or extending contracted hours of existing staff in relation to new or expanded work
Training	Training of staff and/or volunteers in relation to new or expanded work
Volunteer expenses	Modest expenses necessary to enable volunteers to play their role in the enabling of new or expanded work
Hire of buildings and/or equipment	Specific hire costs necessary to enable new or expanded work to take place
Marketing and promotion costs	Costs that represent a proportional amount of overall project budget and relate to new or expanded work
Running costs	Not eligible
Events, conferences, travel and consumables (e.g. meals, food, promotional materials, etc)	Not normally eligible. Items that are clearly an integral and necessary part of delivering or enabling new or expanded work may be considered eligible in exceptional cases.
Creation of digital assets (e.g. websites, online courses)	Costs which have a direct link to enabling new or expanded work aligned with programme objectives, and where there is a clear plan in place for how digital assets will be maintained
Capital
Alterations, new building work and installation of new facilities	Costs with a clear and direct link with the delivery of one of the four programme objectives (see above)
Building Repair work	Not usually eligible but could be eligible in the following cases: if the repair work forms a small component of a wider project which clearly fits under the CIG programme for schools/theological institutions applying under CIG objective 4 (e.g. chapel repair)
Equipment and materials	Costs of equipment clearly or materials necessary to enable new or expanded work to take place, including equipping staff and volunteers with what they need to carry out their role, or ensuring that facilities are appropriately equipped to ensure that project outcomes can be achieved Reasonable quantities of AV equipment, tablets or computers that will remain in situ at the project location and will enable the new or expanded work to take place

Track grant Notes