Funding

When starting up a new food-related initiative it may be necessary to apply for funding to cover the costs of the scheme, particularly if it is a pilot project.

These guidelines relate to external funding, which is available from a variety of different sources. They do not cover internal funding that may be available to groups / local authorities to support local food initiatives, but hopefully this guidance will be helpful when trying to secure internal funding for food work.

The types of funding that you are eligible to apply for will primarily depend on the following factors:

What type of organisation you are.
What type of project you are working on.
Who you are working with – target group, and
Where you are based – location.

Type of organisation

Many funding streams are only available to community and voluntary sector organisations, rather than statutory bodies, such as local authorities and Primary Care Trusts. There are also some trusts that will only award grants to registered charities, although there are a lot that now fund any organisation that has charitable objectives and operates on a not-for-profit basis. Central government departments often provide specific grants to local authorities, this includes grants from the FSA and other initiatives run by Defra or DoH. It is often a good idea for statutory bodies to work in partnership with community groups to secure funding.

Type of project

In general most funding bodies do not dictate the specific types of projects they fund but do highlight the project areas that they are interested in supporting. There are few grants that are focussed solely on food and nutrition, apart from those from the Food Standards Agency, therefore you will generally have to show how your food initiative improves health, benefits members of disadvantaged communities, increases food-related skills, stimulates the local economy or helps the environment, as these areas are far more likely to be funded. All these areas are also key to the wider local goverment agenda and improving community health and well-being.

Target group

Many funding bodies specify the main groups of people that they want to help. This is often based on age e.g. a lot of grants are only available for projects that work with children and young people. Certain grants may also target other specific sectors of the population e.g. BME groups, homeless people, refugees, people with learning difficulties, etc. It is important to research the most relevant target group within an area and identify measurable outcomes.

Location

Different funding streams and grants are available for different areas around the UK. For example some sources of funding such as Neighbourhood Renewal Funding are only available to the most deprived local authorities in the UK. There are also other sources of funding that are only available to rural areas. Many trusts and foundations will have very specific towns or villages that they support. Other sources of funding, such as lottery funding differs according to whether your project is based in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

FOOD STANDARDS AGENCY GRANTS

The Food Standards Agency operates several awards schemes, some of which are targeted at local authorities and other at community food initiatives. All of these grants are awarded on an annual basis and so there will be specific dates when you will be able to apply. They may also change their focus from one year to the next, as to who can apply and what types of initiative they will fund. The FSA in Wales and Scotland also have their own separate awards schemes. The amounts awarded by the FSA vary between £2,000 and £15,000 and generally there are a specific number of awards made each year.

Sheila McKechnie Award

This award scheme is made annually to community food initiatives to commemorate the contribution that Dame Sheila McKechnie made in helping to set up the Agency. Two community food initiatives will be chosen every year and each will receive £15,000 (£5,000 a year) over a three-year period. The awards are available to any community food initiative in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. For more information go to: http://www.food.gov.uk/aboutus/how_we_work/damemckechnieaward/

Awards for Food Action Locally – FSA Wales

AFAL awards recognise local nutrition initiatives that have made a positive impact on the diet or eating habits of residents in the communities within which they operate. The awards are open to all individuals or organisations whose work seeks to improve the diet of their local community in Wales. This covers all sectors including community and voluntary workers, those in education, caterers, retailers, food producers, and local authorities and health boards. Awards will be made to the five projects considered to make the most significant contribution to improving diet in their community. Five runners-up will also be awarded. Winners receive £2,000 for investment into their healthy eating initiative. Runners-up receive £1,000. For more information go to: http://www.food.gov.uk/wales/nutwales/afal/

Food Hygiene and Nutrition Grants

These grants have been awarded by the Food Standards Agency each year since 2003. Initially, grants were awarded solely for food hygiene initiatives, but since 2005 the scheme has been extended to incorporate projects aimed at improving both food hygiene and nutritional standards. Food Hygiene grants were also previously awarded by the FSA in Scotland. The scheme addresses targets in the Agency's Strategic Plan 2005-2010 to support local food hygiene and healthy eating initiatives, particularly where they relate to schools and vulnerable people. The scheme is open to local authorities, food liaison groups and trading standards regional groups across the UK and the current maximum grant is £10,000.

More information and application forms can be found at
http://www.food.gov.uk/enforcement/laresource/lahngrants/

Many previous awards winners also feature as case studies on the Food Vision website. For more information on the grants awarded in 2006 go to: http://www.food.gov.uk/news/newsarchive/2006/oct/grantsschemes

Safer Food Better Business grants

These grants are awarded to local authorities to work with caterers and food retailers to help them implement Safer food, better business (SFBB). SFBB is the food safety management pack to help catering and other food businesses comply with simplified hygiene legislation that came into force in January 2006. The Food Standards Agency is keen to support those applicants that: have secured supplementary funding from other sources, demonstrate added value from partner organisations or collaborative partners, are good value for money, address local challenges and include proposals for future sustainability. For more information go to: http://www.food.gov.uk/news/newsarchive/2006/may/sfbbgrants

GOVERNMENT FUNDING

Most central government departments provide funding for voluntary organisations with a national remit or undertaking initiatives of national significance. Grant schemes are designed to fit policy objectives of each particular department. Some central government funding programmes open annually on a straightforward competitive basis with a set deadline. Criteria may change from year to year to reflect changes in government policy. To find out more you can search on the website below – please note however that many of the grants listed are currently closed to applications. http://www.governmentfunding.org.uk/

EUROPEAN FUNDING

The European Union funds a variety of programmes. These are available to organisations and businesses. Some of the main sources of European Funding are: Leader +, Interreg Funding, the European Social Fund and EU Structural Funds – Objective 1, 2 and 3. These are generally only available to specific areas of the UK, and some will require projects to have a partner in another part of Europe. Many grants will also require you to have significant match funding from other sources. European funding is often quite difficult to apply for and has quite stringent monitoring and reporting requirements. Therefore as with any other sources of funding you will need to weigh the benefits in terms of the amount of the funding you are likely to receive, against the costs in terms of the time spent applying and keep records.

The DEFRA website has information on European and other funding that may be relevant to food and farming initiatives: http://www.defra.gov.uk/funding/index.htm

You can find out more about European Funding via the Europa website: http://ec.europa.eu/grants/index_en.htm

In particular there is a Practical guide to EU Funding Opportunities for Research and Innovation published 15 September 2008. This guide provides all stakeholders with user-friendly information on the different funding sources. It includes a description of each fund, advice for policy makers and an innovative Checklist and Scorecard. The Checklist and Scorecard allow potential beneficiaries to quickly identify exactly how they can access European funding at every stage of the development and implementation of a project.

LOTTERY FUNDING

The National Lottery works in partnership with lottery distributors to support good causes in the arts, heritage, health, education, environment, community and charity sectors. The main streams of lottery funding that could be used to fund healthy lifestyle and other food-related projects are:

Awards for All

Awards for All is a Lottery grants scheme for local communities. There are different schemes for each of the four countries of the UK. The amounts awarded in different countries vary between a minimum £300 or £500 and a maximum of £5,000 or £10,000. The grants can be used for projects that promote education, the environment and health in the local community. Awards for All is a good source of funding for small-scale projects and for one-off items of expenditure such as equipment, as you can apply at any time, the application form is short and simple and you will be told if you are successful or not within 8 weeks. For more information go to: www.awardsforall.org.uk

Reaching Communities England

This programme is for community-driven projects which benefit those most in need, including communities with shared interests. Projects should complement or fill gaps in local strategies where appropriate. Communities should be involved throughout the life of the project. This is primarily a revenue programme, and will cover costs such as salaries and rent, but they can contribute up to £50,000 towards capital costs. Voluntary, community, public sector organisations and social enterprises can all apply. The minimum grant is £10,000 and the maximum is £500,000 and grants can be awarded for up to 5 years. For more information go to www.biglotteryfund.org.uk

Local Food

Local food is a £50 Million pound programme that will distribute grants to a variety of food related projects to help make local food accessible and affordable to local communities. Communities will benefit from improved health and wellbeing through excercise and better nutrition; strengthened local economies through the creation of social enterprises; and more sustainably through the better use of resources such as food redistribution and composting.

Local food will run from spring 2008 thorugh to March 2015.

There are also a large number of other lottery grants many of which could incorporate work around healthy eating. For more information on how to apply and to search for available grants go to: http://www.lotteryfunding.org.uk

TRUSTS AND FOUNDATIONS

There are over 9,000 grant-making trusts and foundations in the UK, which give approximately £2 billion in grants each year to charitable organisations. The following grants have previously been awarded to food-related initiatives.

Healthy Heart UK

Heart Research UK Healthy Heart Grants support innovative projects designed to promote heart health and to prevent or reduce the risks of heart disease in specific groups or communities.Grants of up to £10,000 are available to community groups, voluntary organisations and researchers who are spreading the healthy heart message. Applications are only accepted during January and February for the May round of grants and July and August for grants awarded in November, each year. For more information go to: www.heartresearch.org.uk

Esmee Fairbairn Foundation

The Esmée Fairbairn Foundation is one of the largest independent grant making foundations in the UK. They make grants in four programme areas: Arts and Heritage, Education, Environment and Social Change: Enterprise and Independence. One of the aims of the Environment Programme is to help create a UK food economy that offers a viable marketplace for local or organic producers, to reduce 'food miles' and promote farming/fishing methods that are favourable to biodiversity. For more information go to: www.esmeefairbairn.org.uk

Tudor Trust

The Tudor Trust is an independent grant-making trust which supports organisations working across the UK. They aim to support work which addresses the social, emotional and financial needs of people at the margins of our society. The Tudor Trust makes grants to charities and organisations with charitable objectives. Support is given both for capital and revenue costs. They have previously funded the start up costs of a Healthy Living Cafe; (including salaries and running costs) in a community centre and an educational food growing programme in primary schools. For more information go to: www.tudortrust.org.uk

There are also numerous other trusts and foundations throughout the UK and so it worth trying to find out about those in your area who will specifically support local projects. There are several websites where you can search for grants but these often require you to pay a subscription charge. See the section on Other Support and Advice for other useful contacts.

OTHER FUNDING

Community Food and Health (Scotland) small grants scheme

Community Food and Health (Scotland) has an annual small grants scheme available for groups and agencies who wish to improve access to, and take up of a healthy, varied and balanced diet. Grants from £500 to £3000 are available and grant recipients are expected to spend their grant money within one year. The small grant scheme opens in the spring and closes in the early summer. Successful applicants usually receive their grants by the autumn. The small grant scheme in 2007 will open on 19 April 2007 and applications must be returned by 29 June 2007.

Communtiy Food and Health (Scotland) also have funding advice and sources of funding on their website. http://www.communityfoodandhealth.org.uk/....

WHAT MAKES A GOOD APPLICATION

Ten do's for making a good funding application:

Confine your application to the information required
Show evidence of need for the project
Describe the project in a way that meets the funder’s priorities
Make sure your objectives are clear and measurable
Describe how the project will be managed and monitored
Make a request for a specific sum of money
Ensure the figures in the budget add up!!
Make sure the budget is realistic
Make it clear where any other money is coming from
Describe your “exit strategy”

OTHER SUPPORT AND ADVICE

Funding guidelines have been produced by the FSA Wales for community groups looking for funding for food projects in Wales. These can be downloaded by following the link below: http://www.nutritionnetworkwales.org.uk/.....

Many local authorities have funding officers whose role it is to advice and assist organisations in securing external funding to support local initiatives. Local CVSs also have staff who can advise community and voluntary sector organisations on applying for funding and they often have copies of funding databases such as Funder Finder which can be used to search for suitable grants.

Another good source of advice are funding bodies themselves, as they would rather offer initial advice over the phone than have to spend time assessing applications that are totally unsuitable. So if you are unsure whether your project is eligible contact the funders first before spending a lot of time on your applications.

The following websites also have useful information sources of funding and advice about what makes a good application:

The Charities Information Bureau www.cibfunding.org.uk
FunderFinder www.funderfinder.org.uk

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