Norfolk Women’s Fund to support Women Economic Empowerment (UK)

Deadline: 31-Dec-20

Norfolk Women’s Fund has been announced that support women’s economic empowerment in Norfolk, offering small grants to seed fund transformational ideas. NWF specifically wants to support nascent projects or initiatives that are finding it difficult to get support anywhere else.

They aim to offer small amounts that could make a big difference. For example,

Seed or development funding to help you to test your idea or make a case to larger funders.
Upskilling or capacity building for you or your team, that will enable you to do more.
Projects that have the potential to be transformational (ie. they have longer-term ambitions to change systems, organizations or barriers to equality).

Funding Information

They usually offer a grant of up to £5,000, but they may consider more for exceptional cases.

Other Areas

Applications should be focused on women’s economic empowerment. That is the process of achieving women’s equal access to and control over economic resources and ensuring they can use them to exert increased control over other areas of their lives. It can include:

Skills and learning.
Employability and job search.
Self-employment and entrepreneurship.
Assisting women to access better quality and higher-level employment.
Career and life planning.
Childcare and dependent care to enable participation in activities.
Social protection (ie. systems to help people cope with economic shocks, including pensions, unemployment, health etc.)
Access to financial services and information.

They welcome applications that target groups of women who are particularly disadvantaged, including, but not limited to, those from particular ethnic origins or with a disability.

Eligible Areas

Breckland, Broadland, Great Yarmouth, King’s Lynn & West Norfolk, North Norfolk, Norwich, and South Norfolk.

Who can apply?

Charity, Church/PCC, Parish/Town Council, Social Enterprise/CIC, and Voluntary/Community Group.

How to Apply

They recommend that you contact them in the first instance to discuss your proposed application.
They consider full applications on a quarterly basis (please get your application to them by 31 March / 30 June / 30 September / 31 December each year). If your initiative is particularly time-sensitive, then they may be able to consider it on an ad-hoc basis.

To apply please write no more than 3 pages of A4, responding to the following questions:

What is your proposal – and how does it support women’s economic empowerment?
What is different or innovative about this initiative?
Who are the key people involved, what relevant experience do they have and what is driving their interest in this issue?
Who will benefit from the project?
What does success look like and how will you measure it?
How do you hope to build on this seed funding and make your plans sustainable?
What are the key project milestones and time-scales?
How much funding do you need for your project and how much of that are you applying for from Norfolk Women’s Fund?
How would the requested grant be spent? If the grant requested will not cover the full cost, explain how the remainder will be covered
Name and contact details of organisation applying, and main contact for the application.
Two references and their relationship to you.