The Royal Countryside Fund (RCF): Supporting Rural Communities

Overview

This new differentiated funding will support transformative, community-led initiatives across the UK, unlocking the huge potential for positive change in rural communities. Their aim is to support innovative solutions that will “power up, not prop up” communities, inspiring change and encouraging economic vibrancy.

Organisations can apply for grants of up to £25,000 over a period of 24 months to deliver activities along the themes of:

Through this programme, they want to support projects that fall under four key themes:

1. Keeping young people in the countryside: they will support projects which increase access to skills training and employment opportunities in rural communities, creating greater opportunities for young people to stay, live and work in the countryside.
2. Powering up rural communities: they will support organisations which aim to provide financial benefits to the locality through developing innovative, replicable projects which address local needs.
3. Increasing environmental sustainability: they will support community-driven projects which aim to increase the environmental sustainability of their community through reducing emissions/environmental impact, creating positive benefits for the community and improving the quality of the local environment.
4. Building emergency resilience in rural areas: they will support communities to develop preventative measures and plans to respond to the impacts of climate change and extreme weather events, helping them to be better prepared to cope with and recover from emergencies.

Key Characteristics

Support will be focused on isolated rural areas where the activity is required due to a lack of alternative services. Projects must be community led and show that they actively listen to, understand and respond to the needs of their local community.

They are also looking for community organisations that demonstrate one or more of the following characteristics:

• Working towards a long-term vision
• Facilitating collaboration/connectedness
• Demonstrating innovation.

Communities are invited to bid for funding that will create tangible change. This could be a project that generates a new income stream for the local community, or the delivery of training to develop skills opportunities for young people. It could also be activities to increase community awareness and engagement in the local environment, or an initiative to bring the community together to plan for the impacts of climate change.

The RCF is particularly seeking innovative solutions to the challenges facing rural areas. Is there a project that hasn’t been done before that could be replicated in other rural communities, helping to increase the scale of change?

Who can apply?

This funding is available to community organisations, not individuals or private businesses. You can apply if your organisation has an income of less than £500,000 a year and is a:

• constituted voluntary or community organisation
• registered, exempt or excepted charity
• charitable incorporated organisation (CIO)
• not-for-profit company limited by guarantee
• community interest company (CIC)
• community benefit society
• co-operative society

Funding Available

You should apply for as much as you need to complete your project, to a maximum of £25,000, to be spent over a period of up to 24 months.

They can fund:

• Direct costs to deliver activities in your community – such as project staff, materials, equipment, room hire, volunteer expenses and project evaluations
• Organisational development – such as business planning, testing new ways of working, staff training and development, developing governance and leadership, tech or IT purchases or upgrades, developing and sharing impact and learning, and increasing capacity to support collaboration and partnership working
• Core or fixed costs to support the day-to-day running of your organisation – such as core salaries, utilities, equipment
• Refurbishing or developing of land and buildings (excluding funding of statutory requirements, planning permission/building regulations) and providing that planning permission is in place and a rent/lease agreement has been secured if necessary.

The above was information previously supplied by funder.