Page 17 - NAS Members Guide to Funding

of a “communal greenhouse” project! The association made a firm plan to bring their idea to life: a plot was allocated for the communal greenhouse project and,
with permission, an old polytunnel was obtained from
a local disused garden centre. The original plan was to cover the frame with plastic polytunnel sheeting; however,
year. Hence, they are a significant group of organisations as the plan progressed, concerns appeared about the
for your association to consider. These trusts and ongoing cost and difficulty of regularly replacing the
Independent Funders
Grant-making trusts and foundations
There are approximately 8,000 independent grant-
making trusts and foundations in the UK and these
are collectively known as “grant funders” or “funders”.
Altogether they award around £2 billion in grants each
xt few slides in the deck.
foundations invest their money to make it grow. They then use the interest accrued to pay out grants to good causes which meet their criteria.
Grant funders have firm rules on what they will and will not fund (“criteria” see part 5). This often relates to
the way the fund was set up originally and can be about any topic/theme. Hence, what is awarded and to which organisations varies enormously. With so many funders out there, you need to be able to search strategically (not randomly) and only for funders whose criteria your association’s plan fits with (see below).
Businesses and Companies
Some companies have their own charitable trust, which distributes funding to good causes. It is up to each company how it does this and there may be additional T&Cs for your association. There are newer grant funding models from companies too, these operate in a different way compared to simply receiving a grant. An example is the Aviva Community Fund operated
by the Aviva insurance company. Instead of a grant, the company will match donations to your association up to a total of £50,000. There are some additional T&C’s which involve your details being on the firm’s website and being part of a PublicVote.
CASE STUDY: “Winning a Severn Trent
Water’s Public Vote: Binley Woods Allotments in Warwickshire”
Binley Woods Allotments are celebrating after being awarded £5000 in funding from Severn Trent Community Fund’s ‘public vote round’, enabling the completion
polythene cover. A revised plan was drawn up to use twin-wall flexible polycarbonate sheets curved over the recycled frame to give a longer lifespan. Next in the plan, a water harvesting system was researched, including a solar panel water pumping system and storage tanks to collect the water that falls on the polytunnel. “This water management system was welcomed by SevernTrent Water plc who liked the design that much they put our project up for the public vote....and we won! We are extremely grateful to everyone that voted for us. Severn Trent’s Community Fund has been set up by SevernTrent Water plc to fund projects that aim to reduce carbon and help communities care for nature across the Severn Trent Water area. We are delighted to receive the funding and feel sure that our “communal greenhouse” will help us, as we strive to be more environmentally aware. We want
it to be a useful area that we can utilise all-year round for a variety of different things. Obviously one of the main uses will be for our plot holders who haven’t got the luxury of their own greenhouse, to raise their own young plants. We intend to kit it out with staging, raised beds, and a large seating area. The raised beds will be used to grow more food for our local food bank and the seating area will mean we can hold meetings/training in a warm, dry place. At the moment our committee meetings are held under a shelter that our lovely plot holders built a few years ago out of recycled fence panels. While it does the job and keeps us mainly dry, it can be very cold and windy at times! Ultimately, we hope that our communal greenhouse will enable the community in Binley Woods to engage more with their local allotments. We will have no excuse now for not providing lots of our own young plants to sell at our open days. After all who doesn’t love
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