The Process
Community Summit funded by the Wesleyan Foundation (Small grants fund)
To apply for a grant, please follow the steps below
Step 1
Check you are eligible
To apply for a grant from Leicestershire and Rutland Community Foundation, as a minimum you must be a not-for-profit organisation or social enterprise working in Leicester, Leiceshire and/or Rutland* with the following in place:
- At least 3 Trustees, Directors or Management Committee members who are independent and unrelated, and none of whom have more than 50% control.
- A written constitution or set of rules that show how your group is managed and states your charitable aims/benefit to the community, and includes a charitable dissolution clause.
- A bank or building society account in the name of your organisation with a minimum of two unrelated cheque signatories.
- Accounts or a record of income and expenditure for your group (if you are a new group, you will need to provide forecast accounts).
- Policies including safeguarding and equal opportunities
Please note: We strongly recommend that you check the specific grant page for the full eligibility criteria for each of our programmes.
*NB: any national charities would need to be able to demonstrate that they have a local branch. This would
include a local bank account, finances, and demonstration of fundraising and delivery in the local area only.
Step 2
Visit our ‘Apply for a Grant’ page
Step 3
Submit an online application
Tell us about your organisation and/or project and how you meet the criteria for the grant programme you are applying to.
- Each of our grant programmes have different criteria and an online application form you will need to complete, which can be found on the individual grant website pages.
- You will need to provide supporting documents alongside your application; these are detailed within the grant programmes eligibility criteria and application form.
- Please contact a member of the grants team if you have any queries or need help at any stage of the application process. We are always happy to help in any way we can. grants@llrcommunityfoundation.org.uk
Step 4
Assessment Stage
Our Grants Team will review applications to carry out the following due diligence checks:
- Are your governance documents, policies and finances in good order?
- Does your organisation and project meet the priorities of the grant programme?
- Have you evidenced the need in your community for your organisation and project?
- Does your organisation have the capacity to deliver the project? Is your budget realistic and accurate?
- How do you partner with, or offer something different to, other similar groups nearby?
- Have you shown evidence of good planning and management? This could include the experience of your committee members, staff or volunteers or qualified staff to deliver specialist work.
We may contact you if more information is needed to support your application.
Step 5
Decisions made at panel or by private donors
A decision will be made at either a panel meeting or by individual donors (depending on the fund).
Grant panels include external panel members and an advisory group to make sure the assessments and decisions are as neutral and well-informed as possible.
Panel decisions and deadlines vary depending on the grant programme: please see the grant programmes specific webpage and criteria for further details.
Step 6
Notify you of the outcome
The outcome of your application will be emailed to you, letting you know whether it has been successful or not. Please wait to hear: we won’t forget you! There is no need to chase us.
If you are successful, we will email you with:
- A Grant Agreement to sign and return
- Any logos and promotional information
- Your monitoring form with instructions on what is required
Applicants who are unsuccessful will be notified of this decision along with any available feedback that has been provided by the panel members or private donor. Many of our programmes are oversubscribed, so an unsuccessful application could simply be due to lack of available funding.
Step 7
Grants awarded
If you are successful in your application and meet any conditions we have made, we will require the following before payment can be made:
- A signed copy of the Funding Agreement.
Payment will then be made within 3 weeks of the Grant Agreement being returned correctly. Once payment is received you will need to return a payment receipt.
Step 8
Deliver your fantastic work or project in your community
You can now begin delivering your funded work.
All applicants are required to use:
- the provided fund logos
- any promotional literature, websites or media activities.
We always welcome any photos, quotes or updates along the way and can help spread any stories across our social media channels.
If you do encounter any problems delivering your project, please do tell us as and when they occur so that we can try and help with solutions.
Step 9
Tell us about how your funding was spent and the difference it made
You will need to complete an end of grant form, reporting back on the outcomes and impact of your work. We encourage you to share stories and photographs at this stage that we can share with our donors.
Monitoring and evaluation enables us to better understand the impact of our grant making. It helps us understand community need, enables us to learn from our grant making and inform future strategies, and also enables us to show donors the impact of their funding and hopefully encourage them to give more! It should also help you to collect valuable information on how service users benefit from your work, what works and what doesn’t, how you can make your services more effective, as well as demonstrating to funders the value of your work.
If you do not send us your monitoring forms by the deadline given, this may affect the outcome of any future applications.