Deadline: 28-Jan-24
Through an exciting partnership with Green Future Investments, Let’s Go Zero is inviting funding bids from organisations and collaborations supporting school decarbonisation.
The Zero Carbon Fund is a grants programme for projects helping UK schools decarbonise. It exists to discover, spotlight and help grow bold and innovative projects with schools with the potential to boost green measures and reduce emissions.
The Fund is part of Let’s Go Zero – the campaign uniting schools across the UK to work together to be zero carbon by 2030.
This grants programme will support exciting and impactful solutions which bring about longstanding change in educational settings. Examples of projects they might fund are those helping schools monitor and reduce energy use, improving teaching resources on climate change or developing green spaces in playgrounds.
Funding Information
- They have a funding pot of £500,000 and aim to fund five projects for £100,000 each over one year.
- The Zero Carbon Fund will not finance retrofit in individual schools.
What can be funded?
- They intend to support a variety of projects helping UK schools decarbonise with the Zero Carbon Fund. They will consider costs for salaries and core costs if you show they are part of an expansion of existing work or contribution to a new project. Funding can cover projects that focus on one or more of the following areas:
- Energy, water, waste, travel, food, nature, procurement, adaptation and resilience, teaching, green careers and community engagement.
- The kinds of applications they might fund include:
- Collaborative project working with partner organisations to engage with schools on climate action;
- Increasing project capacity by funding additional members of staff;
- Expanding the functionality of existing tools and technology to support climate action in schools;
- Boosting project communications to reach new audiences and improve engagement.
What cannot be funded?
- They will not be funding:
- Projects and organisations that don’t meet the eligibility criteria or funding priorities;
- Projects that take place outside of the UK;
- Individuals, bursaries or student fees;
- Action only taking place in an individual school;
- Short-term or one-off projects that are not part of a longer-term strategic programme of work;
- Profit-making/fundraising activities;
- Retrospective costs.
What they are looking for?
- They will be supporting a variety of creative projects across the UK through the Zero Carbon Fund and are excited to hear innovative and bold proposals.
- You can use the funding to add to existing work, or to help set up new, creative projects. Organisations applying to this grant scheme must have existed for at least a year and be able to demonstrate experience of working with schools.
- You need to make your proposals relevant, meaningful and clear on the project’s impact and legacy. You should demonstrate how your work is addressing a compelling need and how you will measure that impact. You should also explain how you will sustain the project beyond their funding and outline your long-term goals.
- They will give priority to projects that focus on less-advantaged areas and those that include youth and community voices in decision-making. They will look favourably on projects that include elements of match-funding.
- By ‘schools’ they mean any educational setting supporting young people aged 18 and below.
Eligibility Criteria
- They are only considering applications for projects that are developed and managed by a legally identified not-for-profit organisation or charity.
- They will consider applications from consortiums of 10 schools of more, with the application led by one individual school on the group’s behalf.
Ineligible
- They cannot accept applications from:
- Individuals;
- Sole traders;
- For-profit organisations or those that pay profits to directors, shareholders or members (Companies Limited by Shares included);
- Organisations based outside of the UK;
- Organisations that do not have at least two people on their board/committee who are not married/in a relationship, living together at the same address or related.
For more information, visit Let’s Go Zero.