Locality cost of living grants

Overview

Guardian and Observer readers donated money to the annual charity appeal in December 2022 and January 2023. Anyone was able to donate online, and the appeal raised £1.5m.

What is available?

Locality will distribute grants of £10k to eligible community organisations who are members of Locality, DTA Scotland, DTA Wales and DTNI. The number of grants will be dependent on the total amount we receive from the appeal including any gift aid contributions, however they expect this to be no less than 65.

What is the timeframe for the grant programme?

Applications will be accepted in a four week window between 21 February 2023 – 17 March 2023. They will then score and notify successful applicants, and they expect to be able to pay grants to successful organisations in May 2023. Successful grant holders will be asked to provide light touch feedback on how they used their grant funding in October 2023 (or how they expect to use it if it has not yet been used).

Who is eligible?

They know every member is doing amazing work, but obviously they cannot make grants to everyone. So they need to target the money and make judgements on where they can have most impact across the membership.

Their approach is to draw tight eligibility criteria upfront to restrict the pool of eligible organisations so that they reduce the number of organisations who they have to turn down post application. They know your time is precious and they would rather restrict the pool than ask many members to write an application knowing that they can’t fund as many as they would like.

They will focus on smaller organisations whose costs have increased because of the cost of living crisis, on the basis that the grant will go further for these organisations and make more of an impact on their operations.

Organisations will need to be delivering services to support their communities through the cost of living crisis to be eligible. They also want to focus funding on community organisations working with people in the most disadvantaged communities and people in racially minoritised communities who have been disproportionately affected by the cost of living crisis.

They will ensure that grants go to organisations in each nation of the UK and in each region of England.

Therefore, to be eligible for this grant programme, applicants must:

• Be a Locality member with an Essentials or Membership Plus package and your membership fees settled or be a member of DTA Scotland, DTA Wales or DTNI (as of 16 December 2022).
• Employ staff
• Have delivered services to support people affected by rising costs over the last year
• Have a turnover below £500K (If applicants are slightly outside of this income bracket, they may still consider the application).

AND EITHER:

• Be working in IMD decile 1 or 2 (click here to find your area’s Index of Multiple Deprivation decile)

OR

• Be led by or doing substantial work with racialised communities* (you will be asked to provide evidence of this).

*Racialised communities is a term they are using to describe people who have experienced disadvantage because they have been categorised as coming from a certain racial group. This includes direct and indirect racism as well as long term structural inequality.

How will applications be assessed?

Applications by eligible organisations will be scored on their answer to the following questions:

• Tell us how your organisation is providing support to people with the cost of living crisis, in no more than 300 words.

Guidance on how to answer this question

Please tell them how your organisation has been helping people manage rising costs – this could be in a wide variety of ways, but it could include food provision, warm spaces, poverty or debt advice, mental health support, hardship fundings, or other types of services, support or advice. Please be specific about what you have done. They will use this answer to confirm that you are eligible for the grants. You can write up to 300 words for this question.

• Tell them how you intend to spend the funding and what impact it will have in no more than 100 words.

Guidance on how to answer this question

Please tell them what you will use the £10,000 funding for if you are successful, and what impact this will have. The money must be used to help people struggling with rising costs, but beyond that there are no restrictions. You do not have to provide a full budget, but please be specific about what the funding will be used for as your answer will help them to decide who to give grants to. If you are successful, you must use the funding for the purpose(s) you have set out in this answer. You can write up to 100 words for this question.

They also ask you for information about your organisation. Shortlisted applicants will be scored and approved by Locality, DTA Scotland, DTA Wales and DTNI and members of staff from the Guardian. They aim for grants will be awarded to communities across the UK.

Note

As a condition of the grant, all successful applications will be asked to provide short feedback in October 2023, to confirm how the grant has been used (or how they expect to use it if it has not yet been used). Their goal is to make this as easy as possible for successful applicants – there will be no other grant conditions made by Locality.