Covid-19 Frontline Women’s Fund (United Kingdom)

Deadline: 16-Nov-20

The COVID-19 Frontline Women’s Fund is being announced by Smallwood Trust, supported by The National Lottery Community Fund. This Fund is designed to fund women’s organisations and services that are supporting women who are experiencing poverty and low income as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Organisations will be able to apply if:

They are supporting women who experience disproportionate challenges and difficulty as a result of the COVID-19 crisis; and
They are providing services and support for vulnerable women, for which there will be increased demand as a result of the COVID-19 crisis.

Aims

To make women’s sector organisations stronger, more sustainable and able to build their resilience to economic shocks caused and magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic.
To use the knowledge and expertise of the specialist women’s sector to ensure the most vulnerable women are supported, and to help influence medium and longer-term responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.
To make women, on low income or at risk of poverty due to the pandemic, more financially resilient and giving them the confidence, tools, skills and support to secure a stable financial future.

Funding Information

Organisations can apply for grants between £5,000 and £25,000.

Area of Benefit

Funding is open for organisations across England but will be prioritised for women’s sector organisations and services where the pandemic has had the most impact including:

Greater Manchester and Lancashire;
Liverpool and Merseyside;
West Midlands – Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Stoke-on-Trent and rural Staffordshire;
East Midlands, including rural Leicestershire and Derbyshire;
Hull and Humberside, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield;
Deprived coastal towns in the north of England;
Newcastle, Middlesbrough/Tees Valley, other North East areas.

Eligibility Criteria

Organisations applying for a grant £10,000 and over will need to be an organisation which serves communities within England and which is either:
- A registered exempt or excepted charity, a Community Interest Company or Community Benefit Society;
- A social enterprise, being: a company limited by shares, a company limited by guarantee (that is not charitable) or a co-operative society organisation which:
  - has a clear social mission which, in the reasonable opinion of the Delegate, is analogous to a recognised charitable purpose;
  - distributes less than 50% of post-tax profits and reinvests at least 51% surpluses into pursuing its social mission;
  - has a constitutional or contractual lock on its social mission, its dividend and surplus distribution policy and “asset-lock”;
  - carries out, or has ambitions to carry out, trading activities in support of and which are causally linked to its social mission;
  - offers its products and services for general public benefit without restrictions and barriers, such as affordability;
  - is open to undertaking an independent social impact audit;
  - has remuneration and benefits policy which it is willing to make publicly accessible, and which is reasonable and proportionate relative to the market practice for voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations;
  - in the case of a sale of the organisation, the directors make best efforts to preserve the social mission under new ownership;
  - can demonstrate that no private benefit will arise from the Grant; and
  - no state aid issues have been identified.
- APPLICATIONS UNDER £10,000: Applicants applying for a grant under £10,000 must be constituted.
- This means that an award under £10,000 can be made to a constituted not-for-profit group.