Smallwood Trust
Overview
Their funding will seek to address the following needs:
- A sense of financial well-being
- An ability to cope with adversity
- An ability to manage finances including debt
- An ability to cope with unexpected expenditure/crises
- Access to appropriate jobs, skills and education
- Building confidence and self-esteem
- Access to affordable childcare
Grants for Individuals Programme
As part of their continued plan to transform their grant-making to be community led, the Smallwood Trust Grants to Individuals programme will focus on continued work with Community Grant Partners. Community Grant Partnerships (CGPs) are strategic partnerships that help them shift power for grant making decisions to local community organisations, the majority of which are led by and for women.
Through their work to date they have seen that collaborative working can have a greater impact on supporting women experiencing poverty. Therefore, they will continue to award individual grants through the cohort of c.30 Community Grant Partners.
They have provided a list of links for alternatives on their site here.
Grants for Organisations
Current Projects
Women’s Urgent Support Fund Round 1 - CLOSED FOR APPLICATIONS
Round 1 of the fund offered emergency funding for organisations delivering frontline services that are led by, for and/or serving women with an income of £1,000,000 or less. The funding will help organisations address the increase in demand for priority basic needs of women who are most vulnerable to poverty due to the cost-of-living crisis. You can read more about the grants that were made here.
Upcoming: Women's Urgent Support Fund Round 2
Round 2 of the Fund will be co-produced during Autumn 2023 with a view to launch for applications in 2024. This opportunity will be part of Smallwood's ongoing response to the impacts of the cost-of-living crisis on women's organisations.
Grants for Policy Initiatives
Current Projects
Pay and Progression of Women of Colour - Fawcett
In November 2021 the Fawcett Society published a Smallwood-backed report, as part of a wider project run alongside the Runnymede Trust, which produced an article in the Financial Times concluding that ethnic minority women are “almost invisible from positions of power across both public and private sectors” in the UK. The project and its findings are set to be presented to the government, employers and the public to mobilise support and bring about change.
View Pay and Progression of Women of Colour Literature Review.
Domestic Abuse Bill (2021) - Surviving Economic Abuse (SEA)
In March 2021 it was announced that a campaign by SEA that Smallwood have supported has led to the government announcing that post-separation abuse will become a criminal offence under the Serious Crime Act when the Domestic Abuse Bill passes into law.
Smallwood and SEA have been working together to oversee the implementation of the act since.
View article on the announcement here.
The Local Data Project - Women's Budget Group (WBG)
The Local Data Project is supported by Smallwood and run by WBG and aims to build the capacity of local women’s and equalities organisations and groups to access, analyse and use local data. This in turn will improve their ability to influence local and national policy making and hold decision makers to account on issues of women’s poverty and economic wellbeing.
As well as producing reports, the project has also provided to workshops wanting to make use of local data as well as workshops related to themes highlighted in the reports such as the gender pay gap.