The Community Grants Project supported small community groups in East Brighton giving awards of up to £3000 for groups to run activities of community benefit for East Brighton residents. Groups wishing to access the funds were expected to make additional improvements in either membership or development of their group.
Staff employed by the project received the initial applications and worked with the project to help them identify not only the activities they would run but also the areas of development that best suited them. After this, a panel of East Brighton residents met to consider the funding bids and staff reports, and to allocate funding according to the criteria set by the project. As with all NDC funded projects monitoring and feedback were required to ensure that the project had done what it set out to achieve.
Grant types:
Membership Grant
The Membership Grant focused on membership and project users. The smaller of the two grant types, Membership Grants (for up to £1000) could be used for all activities where members from additionally disadvantaged communities (eg: older people, disabled people, lone parents) were encouraged and engaged to get involved with groups and their local community.
Development Grant
The Development Grant (up to £2500) required the group running the activity to make a commitment to develop some aspect of its work (eg: training, developing policies, recruiting volunteers). All groups were expected to participate in a ‘Health Check’ when applying for this grant, the results of which identified areas that the group could improve upon.
An additional 20% of the total funding ws available to projects to help resource any development activity making a total up to £3000.