You may apply for a grant or an interest-free loan of up to £500.

A grant is money that we pay you that you DO NOT need to return to us. An interest-free loan is money that you MUST pay back to us over an agreed period of time.

Our average grant/loan is normally between £200 and £250. We may not provide funding for the full amount requested. We encourage applicants to seek match funding from other sources including family and friends.

If you feel that there is a reasonable chance that you will be able to repay the sum of money requested you should apply for a loan. Otherwise you should apply for a grant. When we assess your application, we may decide to offer you a loan instead of a grant. Similarly, we may decide to offer you a grant instead of a loan, if we feel that this would be of greater benefit to you.

The Trust will fund subsistence costs on a one-off basis, but we will ask beneficiaries to clearly indicate how they will improve their general economic situation to avoid future dependency on grants. We are willing to fund an application which includes BOTH subsistence costs AND funding which supports better skills development and improved employability. The Trust is unlikely to fund subsistence costs more than once in every 3 years.

In general, we do not support regular grants. We believe in providing funds that result in clear social outcomes, which improve the lives and opportunities available to our beneficiaries. We will only provide applicants with ONE grant or interest-free loan in a 12 months period.

You cannot apply for funding if you have successfully received a grant and/or a loan every year for the last 3 years, unless an additional 2 years have elapsed since your last grant payment.

Unsuccessful applicants may apply again at any time, but we recommend that you pay attention to the feedback received from your last application.

Previous beneficiaries who have failed to follow our auditing, reporting and monitoring procedure after receipt of a grant will not receive a second grant from the Trust.

The General Welfare Fund is an on-going fund, with no deadlines. At busy times we may delay applications to the following month so that worthy causes may have a better chance of receiving funds.

The Grants Panel conducts a rigorous assessment of each application, including ID checks, mandatory telephone interviews and visits, where appropriate. The number of applications always exceeds funding available, and decisions are made in accordance with a points system approved by the Board of Trustees. We cannot guarantee that every worthy application will be funded.

A decision can normally be made within fourteen days of receipt of the application. However, security and reference checks can lengthen the process by about 2-3 weeks, depending on how long it takes to receive the necessary documentation. We aim to fully process each application within 30 days, although we cannot guarantee this. Some grant applications are more complex to process, and will require policy intervention from the Board of Trustees. In these cases, it will take us longer to process the grant, but we will keep you informed during the process as to when you can expect a decision.

We do not make emergency grant payments as part of the General Welfare Fund. We will only issue a grant after it has undergone the full assessment process. We will, however, prioritise an application which we feel is urgent. This is an internal decision, and applicants cannot expect us to accelerate the assessment process.

Wherever possible, the Trust will pay the supplier directly. Otherwise we may pay the beneficiary directly or request receipts for reimbursement. Regardless of the payment option, the beneficiary will have to complete a monitoring form by the end of the period of the grant. In the case of subsistence costs, our payments are sometimes staggered across a period of time.

As a general rule, grant funding that is to be made directly to a beneficiary is transferred into an account bearing the beneficiary’s name. We cannot transfer money to someone else’s account, other than a registered charity or a statutory agency that agrees to administer the grant on our behalf. Cheques can be issued, but the process will take longer.

We never make cash payments to a beneficiary.