Grants

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Grants Programme Guidelines

Bridging Communities

Aims of the Programme
London is uniquely diverse, home now to people originally from all corners of the planet. More languages are spoken here than in any other global city and the strengthening of our economy is due in no small measure to the contribution of both settled and transient labour forces from overseas.

However, diversity can result in challenges if some people feel their needs and contributions are overlooked. We want to discourage communities from turning inwards, resulting in polarised relations and communities existing side by side but leading parallel lives with few points of contact.

This programme aims to build on commonalities between communities, encouraging groups to come together in common cause. We want to improve cohesion in London by requiring and assisting mainstream organisations to provide equality of access to services, at the same time helping minority communities grow in confidence in order to enable full participation.

We believe more can be achieved through partnership between mainstream and minority organisations which will strengthen and improve services.

What will we fund?

• Leadership initiatives bringing together people from two or more different communities. These can be geographical, faith based, cultural, ethnic or communities of interest.
• Joint work involving different communities working together, on volunteering or active citizenship projects.
• Work delivered by third sector organisations providing adults who are not accessing mainstream courses with English Language skills.
• New, partnership work between mainstream and minority community organisations on a specific issue, resulting in improved services for both.

Please specify on your application form which of these themes your project is addressing.

Making a Difference
We want to fund projects that really make a difference to people’s lives. We would like to know how our funding has helped achieve positive changes or “outcomes”. We want you to tell us how your work will contribute to our overall programme outcomes. You will need to demonstrate that your project can contribute one or more of these and that you have systems in place to collect information on numbers of people who have benefited, and how you will measure the changes your work will bring about.

Our Programme Outcomes
We want to fund projects which will achieve one or more of the following:

• more leaders from different communities with increased leadership skills, understanding and respect for each other
• more people from different backgrounds working together on projects which have benefited the whole community and improved community relations
• increased numbers of adults acquiring English and using it to access services and to increase their participation in the wider community
• more large, established mainstream and minority community organisations working together to deliver improved services.

If your application is successful, we will ask you to report regularly on your progress in reaching these outcomes although we recognise that some of these will be long-term. In addition, we will be interested to hear about other outcomes that you may have achieved as well as any unexpected issues that have added to your learning.

Please contact us if you are unclear on what an ‘outcome’ means in your area of work.

Good Practice
Please show how you:

• involve service-users in the management and running of the service
• welcome people of all backgrounds and value diversity
• value and support volunteers
• are taking steps to reduce your carbon footprint.