Garfield Weston Foundation

Open (ongoing) Active citizenship Addiction and substance misuse Adult Education/Learning Advice services Age Aged 26 - 59 years Aged 60+ Archives and artefacts Arts, culture and heritage Black and minority ethnic Buildings and built environment Built heritage Children (0-12) Communities Community and neighbourhood development Community development Community safety and crime prevention Craft and design Cross community Cultural heritage Cultural, events and festivals Dependants and carers Education and learning environment Faith and religion Family and parenting good relations Health promotion Health, wellbeing and sport Healthcare services Housing and homelessness Human rights and equality Information Technology Medical conditions Medical research Miscellaneous Multiculturalism Natural environment and climate Offenders and ex-offenders organisational development Peace and reconciliation People with disabilities Performing arts Policy, advocacy and campaigning Poverty and deprivation Pre-school education Recycling and waste Antrim & Newtownabbey Ards & North Down Armagh City, Banbridge & Craigavon Belfast City Causeway Coast and Glens Derry City and Strabane England Fermanagh and Omagh Great Britain Lisburn and Castlereagh Mid and East Antrim Mid Ulster Newry, Mourne and Down Northern Ireland Scotland Wales Large (over £60,000) Medium (up to £60,000) Micro (up to £1,000) Small (up to £10,000)

Track grant Notes

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Overview

The Foundation appreciates how challenging it is for charities to raise funds and aims to keep the process of applying uncomplicated with a one-stage application which typically takes around four months from submitting your application to receiving a decision.

Types of organisations they fund

They fund organisations working in the following areas:

Arts
Community
Education
Environment
Faith
Health
Museums and Heritage
Welfare
Youth

Your organisation may work in more than one of these areas. They don’t earmark funds for specific areas of work or geographic regions.

They support organisations that are one of the following:

UK registered charities
charitable incorporated organisations (CIOs)
exempt and excepted under Charity Commission guidance

To check if your organisation matches their funding, please take their simple online eligibility quiz.

They support charities that have at least one year’s worth of annual accounts. This means that to be eligible to apply, you will need to submit one of the following:

your annual accounts, independently audited or examined
a copy of your Charity Commission annual return
- If you don’t yet have accounts, please wait until you do as your financial track record is an important part of their decision making.

There is further information related to the following types of organisations. See the FAQ section of the website: universities, schools, medical research charities, hospices, and counselling charities

What do they fund

The types of grant they make fall into one of three areas:

operating/core costs
capital projects
projects/specific activities

They recommend you ask for what your organisation needs the most.

Capital projects

Capital means building works or repairs, or equipment that's necessary to your organisation's work.

What do I need to consider?

If you are applying for building works or repairs please take the following into consideration.

Any relevant planning permissions should be secured before you apply to them. If you are applying from a religious building, they expect that faculty permissions or similar will also be in place.
If you don’t own your building, they are unlikely to make a grant unless you have at least 20 years on your lease.
Tell them what your organisation is doing to improve your building’s environmental efficiency. If you are working towards specific energy or environmental certification (e.g. BREEAM), tell them.
Tell them how your capital project will affect the ongoing operating costs of your organisation. For example, will a larger building cost you more to operate? If so, tell them how you will meet these increased costs. Or your capital project may lead to cost savings so tell them about that!
Tell them who will manage your capital project and about their relevant experience.
They expect quotes for capital projects to be up to date and no more than three months old where possible.
They recommend that you have around half of the total project costs raised before applying.
They expect to see an appropriate contingency in your project budget which will help should your project costs rise or the project is delayed

What size are capital grants?

Normally, capital grants are no more than 10% of a total project cost. However, for local community projects (e.g. village halls, community centres, places of worship, etc.), grants are unlikely to be over £30,000 regardless of the project size. They expect to see local fundraising activity as we believe that shows how much your local community values your organisation.
If your organisation wants to apply for £100,000 or over, they expect your annual income or project to be over £1 million. Please refer to their Major Grant guidance.

Projects/specific activity

These grants are for a specific project or area of your work. It will have a defined scope of work and timetable, for example:

a theatre’s outreach project with communities over a nine month period
a health organisation’s advice and information service over two years

What do I need to consider?

They are unlikely to be the only funder of a project and so please tell them what other funding sources you are building into in your fundraising plan.
They want to understand all the costs involved in delivering your project, including materials and a reasonable contribution to your organisation’s core costs or overheads (up to 15%).
They recommend you have around half the project’s funding secured before applying to them.

What size are project grants?

They expect you to have secured around 50% of your project funding prior to applying. Their support tends to be approximately 10–20% of your costs.

Please refer to their Major Grant guidance for grants of £100,000 and over.

Operating/Core costs

These grants are made towards the general running costs of your organisation. This means they can be used to help pay your bills or rent and provide support towards your salaries.

They don’t use the term ‘unrestricted’ as their operating/core cost grants can’t be put towards endowments or building up your organisation’s reserves.

Operating/core cost grants can be made for one year, or over two or three years (multi-year). They are more likely to make a multi-year grant if they have funded your organisation before and understand the impact of your work.

If successful, they generally support around 10-20% of an organisation’s total annual budget.

If your organisation wants to apply for £100,000 or over, they expect your annual income or project costs to be over £1 million. Please refer to their Major Grant guidance.

Funding Level & Notes

Regular Grants - under £100,000

To apply for a Regular Grant, please complete their online Eligibility Quiz.

If your organisation is eligible, please complete the online application form and submit your proposal.

They are open to applications all year round and there are no deadlines for submission.

They will contact if they have further questions. It takes a maximum of four months from submitting your application to learning the outcome.

Major Grants - above £100,000

These are considered by their Trustees at one of eight Board meetings per year.

To be considered for a Major Grant, your organisation must either have an annual income of over £1 million, or your total project or capital costs must be over £1 million.

They have the following types of grants:

Capital or project costs: the total cost of your project (capital or revenue) must be at least £1 million regardless of your organisation’s annual income.
Core costs: for this type of grant, your organisation’s annual income must be at least £1 million. These grants should be used to support general running costs.

To apply, complete their Eligibility Quiz. If your organisation is eligible, please complete their online Expression of Interest Form, where you will be asked a few questions about what your organisation does, what it is raising funds for, how much the project costs, what the shortfall is and any relevant timings.

You can submit an Expression of Interest all year round and there are no deadlines for submission. All Expressions of Interest will be carefully reviewed on a rolling basis and they will be in touch with next steps. If your Expression of Interest is taken forward, then you will be invited to submit a full proposal (see below for details) for consideration at one of our board meetings.

See Guidance Notes for further details including format of proposals.

Track grant Notes