Stronger Communities

To apply for a grant, you will need to complete an online application form and submit this electronically with your supporting documents to the City Corporation's Central Funding and Charity Management Team (CFCMT).

We will only consider one application from your organisation at any one time.

All application forms should be completed through the City Corporation's online grants portal. Application forms in large print, Braille or audio would be offered to applicants by special request.

Proposals that support individuals can be accepted under this theme. However, if you are an individual wanting to make an application, we ask that you apply for funding through a City-based constituted group or organisation, residents association or a charity who will be able to support and countersign your application and thus have “ownership” of the project.

Should you be a resident on one of City Corporation's Housing Estates and would like to consider establishing a Residents Association (should there not be one already operating in your area), you should contact your local Resident Services Officer, who will be able to provide you all the necessary advice and guidance on how to proceed. Their contact details can be found on your estate page on the website, or you can contact the Resident Involvement team directly.

Your local Council for Voluntary Service would be able to provide you advice and guidance in constituting any other type of organisation.

Once we have received your online application and all supporting documents, it will be passed to one of the City Corporation’s officers for assessment. As part of this process, an officer may contact you for more information.

We will acknowledge receipt of your application within ten working days of it being received. If your application is not complete, it will be returned to you and you will have a further ten working days to send us the missing information.

A Funding Officer may also arrange to visit or call your organisation as part of the assessment process. Once a full assessment has been completed, your request will be referred to an appropriate Committee.

If we fund your project, we will need you to complete an end-of-grant monitoring report to confirm how the grant has been spent and what you achieved. Please make sure that you keep receipts for all the items or services you buy with the grant and that you keep them somewhere safe as we may ask you to provide them.

We may also visit you to check how the grant has been spent.

You will be required to keep us up to date if your project or any of your contact details change at any stage during the period of your grant.

If your application is successful, an initial offer letter detailing the level of grant awarded will be issued. This may contain special conditions relating to the grant award or pre-agreement grant conditions.

Grant acceptance terms and conditions will be subsequently issued which should be signed and returned within 20 working days.

Once all documentation has been received and approved, you would be asked to formally request payment of your grant award.

Note: You cannot start your project until we have received, checked and approved all information that we have requested. 

Due to the limited budget available and the number of applications for funding we receive, we unfortunately cannot provide funding to every applicant that applies for a grant. Grants are therefore issued on a discretionary basis; there is no appeal process, and the decision of the City Corporation is final.

If requested, your assessing officer will be able to provide feedback on why your application was unsuccessful.

We urge all applicants that are unsure about whether to submit an application to read all available eligibility criteria on our website.

If you have an enquiry that is not covered within the online guidance, please contact the Central Funding and Charity Management Team (CFCMT) directly, who will be able provide answers to general queries regarding the application process

You may apply for new funding or to deliver a continuation of the same project; however, organisations cannot hold more than one of our grants at any one time.

If you are a current grant holder, you will need to have satisfactorily met all our grant monitoring requirements before applying again. 

Some things we are unable to pay for are shown below:

• Activities that have already taken place or start before we confirm our grant
• Any costs you incur when putting together your application
• Fundraising activities for your organisation or others
• Items that are purchased on behalf of another organisation
• Loans or interest payments
• Projects that actively promote religious or political activities
• Purchase of alcohol