Volunteering Futures Fund in the United Kingdom

Deadline: 26-Sep-21

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) is inviting applications from grant makers to support high quality volunteering opportunities for young people and those who experience barriers to volunteering in DCMS sectors and across the Voluntary and Community sector. It aims to test and trial solutions to known barriers through the use of informal, micro, flexible and digital approaches.

Objectives

The core objective of the fund is to support young people and people who experience barriers to volunteering, to build their skills, well-being and social networks through volunteering.

Further objectives are:

To create better and more volunteering opportunities for people:
- in deprived communities,
- who are often or always lonely,
- who experience other barriers to volunteering.
To create better and more opportunities for volunteering in DCMS sectors with the most demand for new and young volunteers namely, art, culture, heritage, sport and youth.
To learn about the comparative effectiveness of different volunteering models (eg. Flexible, micro, informal and digital volunteering opportunities) and recruitment approaches for engaging and sustaining volunteers.
To leverage additional investment towards volunteering initiatives through a match funding challenge.

Funding Information

Applicants can request a minimum of £ 300,000 and maximum of £ 1.7m of DCMS funding.
The Volunteering Futures Fund will commence from October 2021 and end by 31 March 2023. All DCMS funded activities must have taken place and the expenditure incurred by onward grantees by 31 March 2022 ie onward grantees must have completed DCMS funded activities by 31 March 2022.

Eligibility Criteria

DCMS is inviting grant making organizations such as charitable foundations and philanthropic institutions to apply for funding.

Applicants must be able to bring matched funding on a basis of 1: 1. Applicants must contribute a minimum of £ 300,000 in matched funding
Successful applicants can use their match funds to support onward grantees up until 31 March 2023 when this program will end. ie onward grantees must have completed match funded activities by 31 March 2023
The value of the grant requested must not represent more than 50% of the applicant organization or consortium’s combined annual income for the financial year. Requests of more than 25% of annual income will be subject to additional financial due diligence
Only activities in England are eligible for funding
Applicants will be subject to comprehensive due diligence reviews. Successful applicants will also be responsible for due diligence on onward grantees
Applicants and their onward grantees must comply with the independent process evaluation and feasibility study. This will include sharing a survey with participating volunteers involved in funded activity.