Grassroots Grants - great news!

East End and City Consortium wins over £1.3m cash injection for small community groups

Small community groups and projects in the London Boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Newham and the City of London are to benefit from a cash injection of over £1.3 million, after the East End and City Consortium made a successful bid to distribute Government funding to grassroots initiatives, it was announced in mid July.

The consortium is between St Katharine & Shadwell Trust, the community foundation for the East End and City of London, and three local Councils for Voluntary Service, Hackney Council for Voluntary Service, Newham Voluntary Sector Consortium and City.COMM. The Consortium will manage the funds for the boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Newham and the City of London.

The initiative, called ‘Grassroots Grants’, is a three year grants and endowment programme that will provide much needed funding to small community groups. The funding comes from the Office of the Third Sector and is administered nationally by the Community Development Foundation.

The money is part of a £130 million nationwide drive by the Government to support thousands of groups and projects across the country, working to improve their local communities.

Today’s win means that the Consortium will be able distribute over £1.3 million in small grants over the next three years, using its expertise and knowledge of the local areas to identify those small local charitable organisations, best able to use the money to make a real difference.

Local community organisations could also stand to benefit from a further £1.3 million if local philanthropists and businesses come forward to put up cash to match some of the government’s funds announced today.

Under the scheme, local people are being offered the opportunity to more than double the value of their charitable donations if they do their giving through a long-term fund set up by the Consortium, which will ensure that further grants are available when the current programme ends in March 2011.

The Partnership said:

“This is great news for the four boroughs. We are excited about working together to strengthen the voluntary and community sector in these boroughs.
We urge individuals and businesses who want to put something back into the local community to consider using this scheme. There has never been a better and more cost effective way to give and to see the impact of that giving more than double/treble because of government help.”

Congratulating the East End and City Consortium, national Community Foundation Network Chief Executive, Stephen Hammersley, explained the Consortium had been chosen to manage the scheme across the four chosen boroughs because of “its collective expertise in revitalising local communities through effective charitable giving, knowledge of the areas and proven ability to ensure that money invested in the local communities made a lasting difference”

Application forms for Tower Hamlets, Newham and the City should be available in the middle of August and for Hackney in the middle of September. For more information, please contact any of the Consortium members or visit their website:

Hackney Council for Voluntary Service – www.hcvs.org.uk
Newham Voluntary Sector Consortium – www.nvsc.org.uk
City.COMM – www.citycomm.org.uk