Comic Relief: Core Strength - Local Communities

Overview

This scheme provides funding for groups’ core costs - meaning expenditure that is not connected to delivering projects but focusing on investing in the organisation as a whole, such as basic running costs. Comic Relief know securing core funding can be tough and want to use this programme to help support those doing much needed work in their local communities.

Grants of £1,000 to £5,000 (inclusive) are available under this scheme.

The Grant shall be used to support groups that can evidence a sustained beneficial impact on people’s lives who are excluded or disadvantaged this may be through low income, rural or social isolation, age, disabilities, race, sexuality or gender. Priority is to be given to small, locally based groups or organisations in areas of disadvantage that have a clear understanding of the needs of their community and are undertaking actions as a means of addressing these needs.

Who Can Apply?

You must be a locally led and based organisation. This means you are based within the area you are carrying out activities and have local people involved in the running of the organisation. As such they accept applications from the voluntary and community sector including:

• Constituted Voluntary and community groups
• Charities
• Social Enterprises
• Co-operatives
• Community Interest Companies

Your organisation will need to have been running activities for a minimum of 12 months.

Your annual income must be £100,000 or under for your last full financial year. You will need to provide your accounts to prove this.

To be considered for funding you will need to:

• Be working in a disadvantaged or deprived area
• Have limited access to other sources of income
• Clearly define the need you are addressing
• Clearly demonstrate the benefit of your activities to local people
• Illustrate how you aim to deliver social outcomes
• Provide clear evidence that your services provided are inclusive to all

Examples of what they will fund

Overheads

• Rental costs
• Heating, lighting, water rates
• Core staff costs (this could be any member of staff for time spent doing the day to day running of the organisation or taking time to do planning for the future for example – this cannot cover any time spent delivering activities – for example they could fund a youth worker to develop a monitoring and evaluation framework for the organisation but not to deliver the weekly youth club).
• Stationery, small capital items, internet
• Any volunteer costs if your organisation is purely volunteer led OR if you have paid staff then they will cover volunteer costs who help the day to day running of the organisation (i.e. a volunteer receptionist)

Organisational development

• Staff training
• Trustee training
• Volunteer training
• Fundraising
• Business planning and development
• Developing monitoring and learning
• Marketing and communications

This list is not exhaustive but the main point to remember is that their funding cannot be used for direct project delivery. This is about your organisational needs and support. See the exclusions section for some examples of things they cannot fund.

They want communities to be heard and to be able to make the changes they need to thrive. Your organisation will focus on building the confidence of local people to tackle the issues they face and empower them to make changes as they need. This could be through building up skills and ability of local people to campaign and take action, or for single issue groups to improve their circumstances through awareness raising for example. This is about supporting community led solutions to improve their own lives.

Each organisation will be able to choose one outcome to report against, from the following:

1. Connected communities: seeking to improve inclusion and cohesion in communities

2. Productive communities: investing in local residents to help them solve the issues they are facing using local people and resources

3. Empowered communities: working to empower marginalised and disadvantaged communities

Your organisation may be working under one or more of these outcomes, in which case you should choose the one where the majority of your work is focused on.

Priorities

It is anticipated that this will be a very competitive programme. Having priorities helps them to make difficult decisions when there are so many applications.

• Priority will be given to small, locally based and local run groups or organisations in areas of disadvantage that have a clear understanding of the needs of their community and are undertaking actions as a means of addressing these needs. Depending on the quality and volume of applications received priority will be given to:
• Those that are new to Comic Relief and/or Community Foundation funding
• Those in areas of high deprivation
• Those in geographically underfunded areas
• Those with lived experience, where people directly affected by the issues are involved in all levels of the organisation
• Those with innovative approaches, to respond to clearly defined need
• Those demonstrating effective practice, with evidence that the methodology being used will be successful