Deadline: 22-Apr-22
Do you have an idea for a project that could benefit your community? If so, the Make It Happen Fund, is for you.
This fund is the result of a partnership of a few local organisations. Local funder, Islington Giving, and local housing associations Peabody Community Foundation, Newlon Housing Trust, Southern Housing Group and Hyde Housing have come together to create The Make It Happen Fund.
They decided to work together with communities to build individual and community resilience and support innovation. The Fund will provide grants of up to £500 to groups of residents or small organizations already working in the community to help you do the things you care about. Projects should aim to make residents happier, healthier and more connected.
Aims
Projects must align with one of the following aims:
- Healthy
- Helping people with their physical and mental wellbeing.
- Happy
- Helping people make the most out of their lives through active citizenship, volunteering and community involvement.
- Connected
- Putting people at the center of grants, exploring what is important to them.
Funding Information
Grants are up to £500 and you will have 3 months to begin spending your grant and 6 months to complete the project. They will also ask you to:
- Explain how you plan to keep everyone doing the activity safe.
- Share what you’ve achieved – for example through pictures or asking people what they think about the project.
Eligible Funding
They will fund your project if it meets their criteria and their aims of helping people to lead happy, healthy and connected lives. Some examples of this include:
- Activities that bring the community together
- This could be your neighbors or another community such as people that enjoy playing the guitar.
- Projects that seek to improve health and wellbeing
- This could be anything from an online keep-fit class to a workshop on managing stress or a socially distanced knitting club aimed at helping people relax.
- Something that explores what’s important to you and your community
- This could be developing an art project to be displayed where you live, or an open day to introduce children to nature.
Eligibility Criteria
- The fund is to support activities and events that meet their aims and supports local people to act on the things that they care about.
- The people who benefit must live in Islington.
- Projects must be free or offered at a significant subsidy.
- You need to show how what you plan to do supports the wider community. For example, if you want to buy gardening equipment it should be available to others to use, such as a local gardening club.
- Applications can be made by local community groups without paid staff (such as tenants and residents associations, parent-teacher associations, mutual aid groups, and friends of parks groups) or groups of three or more residents who will work together to run a project or event. Individuals will be supported by an established voluntary or community sector organization, who will hold the grant on your behalf – if you are not in contact with a local group that could do this for you then they will try to help with this.
- They cannot fund groups and organizations with an annual income of more than £50,000.
For more information, visit https://islingtongiving.org.uk/make-it-happen-fund/