Rural Recovery Fund 2021

Overview

The Rural Recovery Fund is a one-year €600,000 fund created by Rethink Ireland with support from Google.org and the Department of Rural and Community Development via the Dormant Accounts Fund. The objective of the Fund is to support projects working with communities in rural Ireland that focus on recovery and resilience, as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Fund will provide a package of awards and supports to innovative not-for-profit organisations that are working to increase their impact in supporting rural communities to recover from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and build resilience for future challenges. It will provide tailored support to solutions that are already seeing clear social impact.

There will be up to 5 awards available in total, and each Awardee will receive a cash grant (to a maximum of €80,000), mentoring support and placement on Rethink Ireland’s Accelerator programme.

This fund is open to organisations that have a not-for-profit legal form, e.g. charity, social enterprise and other voluntary organisations.

Eligibility & Criteria

Projects must meet both Rethink Ireland’s criteria and the specific criteria for the Rural Recovery Fund, as set out below:

Rethink Ireland Criteria

1. The project must address a critical social issue
2. The project proposed must be innovative in an Irish context
3. The project must be based on the island of Ireland and must make its main impact in the Republic of Ireland
4. The project must have potential and a desire to scale or replicate in Ireland (it may also have potential internationally, but this is not a requirement)
5. The project must provide evidence that it is up and running, or has been tested at least in a minimal way
6. Applicants must come from an entity that has a not-for-profit legal form, eg:

• A company limited by guarantee
• A co-operative
• Charity
• And other not for profit legal forms

Rural Recovery Fund Core Criteria

1. Projects must be based in a rural setting or aim to significantly improve their impact in rural areas:

• Re-skilling/upskilling/diversifying the labour force,
• Economic and social inclusion of marginalised communities,
• Job creation in rural areas (including supporting social enterprises to grow their operations)
• Equal access to education for rural communities,
• Digital inclusion for all (closing the digital divide).

2. The applicant must not be a public body. Collaborations with public bodies, where the main applicant(s) are community or third sector projects, can be considered for funding

Advantageous criteria

• Projects that are not headquartered in Urban areas
• Projects that work with any of the following groups;
• Traveller and Roma people
• Migrant people, (including people in need of international protection)
• People in the asylum process,
• People from minority ethnic communities