At 10am on 3 August 2020, Lloyd’s Bank Foundation will be launching £7.4 million COVID funding aimed at supporting charities to recover beyond the immediate crisis. Please find information below:
From our conversations with small and local charities and the wider sector, we know that to be able recover from this health crisis charities need unrestricted funding and the space and support to adapt their organisational, income generation and service delivery models which have been significantly impacted by COVID-19.
To meet these needs, our COVID Recovery Fund will offer around 140 charities a two-year unrestricted grant of £50,000 alongside a Development Partner to help charities navigate a tumultuous future.
To survive the aftermath of the pandemic, charities have needed to alter the way in which they operate, deliver services and source income. Alongside crucial funding, we know charities need the space, support and resources to be able to do this and become more resilient to future challenges. This kind of work is complex, it takes time and involves the whole organisation and with the COVID Recovery Fund programme, a Development Partner will be appointed to work hand in hand with charities through this process.
The Development Partner will support you in this journey through your own internal resources, a range of external partners and consultants through our Enhance capacity building programme and will help you share and learn across charities through structured peer forums.
The months and years to come will be difficult, as a funder, we know that to provide the best support for the charities we partner with we need to learn from them as much as they need to learn from each other. We will develop our own learning to understand how we can be a true partner to the charities we fund and the wider sector.
This fund is open to small and medium sized charities with an income of between £25,000 and £1 million a year that are helping people overcome complex social issues such as mental health, homelessness and domestic abuse.
We know there is an explicit link between the vast majority of our complex social issues and racial injustice, and that these intersecting inequalities are best addressed by the small charities that are rooted in the communities they serve. We want to ensure that this funding is distributed equitably to the charities that are best placed to serve the communities who need it most. To make sure we can achieve this, a minimum of a quarter of this funding will go to charities that are led by and for people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities.
Following a comprehensive review of our grants portfolio and the wider sector, we found that some charities in specific places were being excluded by our criteria. We recognise that many of these charities often provide a response to a specific social issue such as homelessness or domestic abuse alongside helping communities and individuals around a range of other issues. That is why, we are also relaxing our eligibility criteria for charities based in Wales and the six communities where we are working to support long term transformational change.
Applications will open from 10am 3 August 2020 and will close at 5pm 11 September 2020.
If you have any questions about this funding, please contact our team here.
We will be holding a Q&A webinar with our grants team on 11 August between 2pm – 3.30pm you can register here to learn more and ask us questions about the fund.
