Deadline: 8-Oct-25
The Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust’s Early Years Programme will award grants towards projects which help to enhance early childhood education and childcare settings to meet specific needs of young children from armed forces families.
Projects should directly address barriers they may experience in accessing good quality childcare for their children.
Funding Information
- You can apply for a grant of between £5,000 and £80,000 towards a standalone project being delivered over a period of up to two years.
Expected Outcomes
- Projects should look to address at least one of the four programme outcomes depending on the number of service children at your setting.
- Expanded capacity in early years settings, allowing more service children to attend.
- Enhanced learning environments that better support the educational development of service children. DIO should not be involved.
- Improved staff skills and knowledge of service children through targeted training and professional development.
- Establishing collaborative networks and shared resource through clusters, to effectively address the needs of service children.
Beneficiaries
- Your project must primarily focus on young service children aged 0-5 years.
- The project beneficiaries are those who will directly benefit from the project. For example, young service children.
- Incidental beneficiaries are non-service children who may indirectly benefit from the project. Your incidental beneficiaries should be limited in number and applicants must demonstrate that the project is primarily focused on service children.
Who is eligible to apply?
- To be eligible for this funding, you must be one of the following:
- An early childhood education and childcare provider operating where armed forces families live or work. Your setting must offer group-based childcare and have 50% service children (unless applying as a cluster) on roll as a minimum. You must be registered with, and inspected by, one of the following:
- Ofsted (England),
- Care Inspectorate (Scotland),
- Care Inspectorate (Wales)
- Early Years Teams within Health and Social Care Trusts (Northern Ireland).
- A local authority
- An early childhood education and childcare provider operating where armed forces families live or work. Your setting must offer group-based childcare and have 50% service children (unless applying as a cluster) on roll as a minimum. You must be registered with, and inspected by, one of the following:
- The following additional eligibility requirements also apply:
- Applicant organisations must be based in the UK.
- Applicants must be a registered charity, a CIC, or a company limited by guarantee or a local authority in one of the four countries of the UK.
- Charities
- Your organisation must have been registered in the UK (with one or more of the charity commissions for England and Wales, or Scotland or Northern Ireland for at least three years at the time of your application and able to provide published accounts for all three years if requested.
- Your organisation must have a minimum of three unrelated trustees at the time of applying, and, if successful, throughout the life of your grant. This must be verifiable at all times on the relevant charity regulator’s website.
- Local authorities
- Organisations that fall within this category cannot apply for statutory local government delivery work, or for work that has a core focus on the delivery of the Armed Forces Covenant/Duty.
- CICs
- Your organisation must have been incorporated in the UK for at least three years and you must have submitted three years’ of accounts to Companies House at the time of applying.
- Your organisation must have a minimum of three unrelated directors at the time of applying, and, if successful, throughout the life of your grant, and this must be verifiable at all times on the Companies House website. Please note that Company Secretaries cannot be considered as one of your three Directors, unless they have been registered separately as a Director as well.
- Private ltd companies
- You must have been incorporated, and you must have submitted at least three years’ of accounts to Companies House at the time of applying & have been working in the Early Years sector for at least three years.
- You cannot budget for contributions to management or overheads costs (or profit/investment) in your application.
Who cannot apply?
- The following types of organisations are not eligible for funding from the Early Years Programme.
- Sole traders or partnerships, including childminders.
- Commercial organisations aiming to charge for services to childcare providers – for example, an organisation could not be awarded a grant to develop a training course which it then charges schools to attend.
- Organisations delivering childcare that do not hold a valid OFSTED or equivalent regulatory registration.
- Unincorporated or voluntary community groups.
- Schools, universities, or colleges (whether private or publicly operated); unless operating nursery education that meets the definition above.
- Training providers, although you could work as a delivery partner with a setting or local authority
- An Academy Trust – you cannot apply for an overarching project across your academy chain, though individual schools can apply.
- A newly registered charity or CIC
- A charity or CIC that is based overseas.
- Not-for-profit organisations that are not registered as either a charity or CIC.
- An organisation that has charitable status but is an Exempt Charity.
- A private or for-profit company.
For more information, visit The Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust.
