Recent Grants Awarded

Social Change Grants Awarded in 2007

Environmental Awareness

  1. Asthma Support in Rural Scotland (ASIRUS) – GRIP Project
    £15,000 towards the cost of extending the GRIP service to the Tay region.

  2. Botanic Gardens Conservation International
    £7,070 towards the costs of publishing a special edition of their educational review, Roots, looking at how climate change threatens plant diversity and focusing on practical actions to address the threat.

  3. The Conservation Foundation
    £6,000 to support the 25th anniversary edition of their newsletter, Parish Pump News.

  4. Corporate Watch Co-operative
    £5,000 towards the cost of their Food without Oil project, researching the processes used to produce food, and promoting informed consumer choice by providing a guide to the foods which are produced using fossil fuels.

  5. Friends of the Earth Trust
    £15,000 towards the costs of a new programme working with communities in the North-East to enable them to understand and influence the decision-making processes which affect their environment and lives.

  6. Inside Out Trust
    £5,873 towards the costs of a recycling programme based in 40 prisons in the UK, helping 3,000 prisoners to refurbish wheelchairs, computers, hearing aids and spectacles for re-use.

  7. Royal Society of Arts
    £15,000 towards the development of a personal carbon trading marketplace, workshops on carbon-based transport and travel options and a carbon calculator for use in schools.

  8. Sheila McKechnie Foundation
    £18,653 for a Gulbenkian environmental award scheme to offer support and mentoring to environmental campaigners and a seminar for recipients of the awards.

  9. South Yorkshire Forest Environment Trust
    £8,110 towards the cost of one Treecycle Project, which gives people living near a park or woodland where trees are to be felled the skills to make use of the timber made available.

  10. Stop Climate Chaos
    £15,000 towards the development of ICOUNT, a programme which increases awareness of climate change issues, encourages behaviour change and campaigns for governmental action.

  11. Sturminster Newton Community Learning Centre (STUR-IT)
    £10,000 towards the development of a sustainable rural model for community-based learning which will extend the opportunities for older people both as students and volunteer tutors.

  12. Sustainable Communities Initiative – Scotland
    £16,634 towards a year of monthly seminars on green living for families on low incomes.

  13. Swansea Environmental Forum (SEF)
    (The Environment Centre)
    £15,000 towards their Get Sust project, which aims to increase understanding of and personal responsibility for environmental sustainability, leading to greater levels of individual action and more sustainable communities.

  14. Women’s Environmental Network
    £11,338 towards the cost of developing a Carbon Counter Guide and Tracker and trialling it with women’s groups over a six-month period.

Exceptional Projects

  1. National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO)
    £25,000 towards the continuing costs of the Third Sector Foresight programme, which helps the voluntary sector to plan strategically.

  2. Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI)
    £10,000 towards the promotion of a better understanding in schools of how to use public rescue equipment (PRE) through the production of an education resource pack.

  3. Save the Children Fund
    £10,000 towards the cost of their BUMP project which befriends unaccompanied refugee and asylum-seeking minors, specifically for a volunteering scheme that will enable such children to build links with their local communities.

Financial Inclusion

  1. Action for Business (Bradford)
    £14,000 towards the cost of a series of financial planning and literacy classes for Asian women, Asian couples and disabled adults in Bradford and Keighley.

  2. The Big Issue Foundation
    £15,000 towards the costs of a savings incentive scheme to encourage vendors to save some of what they earn, help them to access basic bank accounts and manage their finances.

  3. Cares Sandwell
    £11,640 towards the cost of a series of money management, budgeting information and advice sessions for unpaid family carers and the people they look after within the borough of Sandwell, which is made up of six towns in the West Midlands and is one of the most deprived areas in the country.

  4. Commonside Community Development Trust
    £15,000 towards a financial literacy project and peer mentoring programme for a group of young single mothers, under the umbrella of an existing training and development programme called Aiming High.

  5. Freshwinds
    £10,000 towards the costs of a trial outreach debt-counselling programme for parents of disabled children in a marginalised ward of Birmingham.

  6. Quaker Social Action (BIA)
    £15,000 towards the cost of the Street Cred project aimed at enabling women who are unemployed or on low incomes to access micro-credit schemes and a range of financial literacy support options.

  7. Rainbow Saver Anglia Credit Union
    £15,000 to launch a prepaid Maestro Card in partnership with a Building Society, enabling migrant workers and other financially excluded people to use banking services.

  8. South London Refugee Association
    £15,000 towards a one-year pilot programme, with Citizens Advice Bureaux, Merton and Wandsworth, to train community leaders to give basic financial advice to refugees and asylum-seekers.

  9. Space Counselling Service
    £5,261 towards a pilot programme of one-to-one support by qualified debt counsellors to help clients face and deal with their financial problems.

  10. Unlock (National Association of Reformed Offenders)
    £15,000 towards the cost of a project working with UK banks to provide prisoners nearing release with access to bank accounts.

Older People

  1. Age Concern Calderdale
    £16,500 to set up a Meet to Eat project, a befriending programme for older people who do not eat adequately, especially widowers, which will pair them with a volunteer who will help them devise menus, go shopping, cook and eat with them.

  2. Age Concern Lincoln
    £11,750 towards the costs of a one-year pilot of a new telephone befriending service, which will offer regular telephone calls to isolated elderly people.

  3. Age Concern Norfolk
    £14,547 to set up a 'Dementia Cafe' where people with dementia and their families can meet, seek advice and information and receive support on a monthly basis.

  4. Age Concern Oxfordshire
    £16,500 towards the costs of developing a network of Local Link volunteers in rural areas of the county who can help isolated elderly people access Age Concern and other relevant services.

  5. Birmingham Settlement
    £15,000 towards a project to support and involve older people in the multicultural area of Aston and Newtown in Birmingham.

  6. Cara Trust
    £8,270 towards the cost of a pilot project providing peer support for older people suffering isolation because of their HIV/AIDS status.

  7. Cornerstone Vesey Home Link Project
    £11,230 to set up and run the Home Link project for one year, overcoming isolation and loneliness through a befriending service.

  8. From Here To Maturity Dance Company
    £7,000 towards the costs of an organisational development programme for this dance company, which creates opportunities for older people through dance and movement projects.

  9. MECOPP (Minority Ethnic Carers of Older People Project)
    £14,892 to support and develop a programme of outings and discussion groups for older minority ethnic carers, accompanied by the older people they look after.

  10. Royal National Institute of Blind People
    £15,000 towards the costs of developing a Vision Passport for people with dementia, giving a clear pictorial representation of their sensory difficulties and requirements and simple instructions on how to communicate with the individual concerned.

  11. Shared Learning in Action
    £12,510 to run a series of Stay With It 12-week mental health courses for older people in the Manchester area.

  12. Streets Alive!
    £5,930 towards the cost of a project to improve older people’s experience of community events by promoting cross-generational activities and so reduce the feelings of isolation and fear expressed by some older people in their evaluation of previous neighbourhood events.

Director's Grants

  1. The Children’s Society
    £14,500 to help with publication and dissemination costs of the interim launch of the Good Childhood Inquiry 2006-08.

    Social Welfare Grants Awarded in 2006

  2. Alnwick Garden Trust
    £15,000 towards the costs of developing a Routeways vocational training scheme to enable disadvantaged people to work towards a career in the leisure sector.

  3. Asirus, Asthma Support in Rural Scotland
    £13,500 towards the costs of expanding the Grid Reference Identification Project into more remote areas of rural Scotland.

  4. Birmingham Inner Circle Community Credit Union (Circul – 8)
    £7,000 towards the development of a financial advice service for people in inner-city Birmingham.

  5. British Deaf Association
    £5,000 to make financial and money management advice available to deaf people in British Sign Language.

  6. Caravan – National Grocers Benevolent Fund
    £10,000 towards the costs of a programme of financial planning education for people in the grocery trade to enable them to plan successfully for retirement.

  7. The Cornforth Partnership
    £9,780 towards the costs of a Community Learning Project in one of the most deprived places in England.

  8. Coroners’ Courts Support Service
    £9,000 towards a programme of volunteer recruitment and training to help families understand and deal with the court process.

  9. Counsel and Care
    £37,500 to fund a one-year policy research project that will look at three innovative models for delivering better neighbourhood services for older people.

  10. Diss, Thetford and District Citizens Advice Bureau
    £5,000 towards the cost of additional hours for a supervisor in order to provide support for eight Portuguese-speaking advisers, receptionists and volunteers.

  11. Easington Lane Comunity Access Point
    £5,000 towards a project that provides transport to training and employment opportunities for residents in former mining villages.

  12. Educational Shakespeare Company
    £12,500 to fund the filming of an educational production of Macbeth, called Mickey B, adapted by a former prisoner and performed by prisoners in a high-security gaol in Northern Ireland.

  13. Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens – SPAN Partnership
    £12,000 towards the costs of training and advice for pilot groups on the development of neighbourhood strategies for local food production and community involvement.

  14. The Fostering Network
    £3,000 to train 15 young people with experience of the care system to become members of fostering panels.

  15. Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities – The Mental Health Foundation
    £10,000 over two years (£5,000 per annum) towards research into how social services can work with elderly people being cared for by someone with a learning disability.

  16. Groundswell UK
    £10,000 towards a Grant Award scheme for self-help initiatives by homeless people.

  17. Groundwork Southwark and Lambeth
    £10,900 towards the cost of the Elam Street Healthy Living Site project to help the local community with the sustainable regeneration of an urban public space.

  18. Hearing Concern
    £5,588 towards the costs of redesigning and printing the main Hearing Concern leaflets in a size and format more convenient for DL-size dispensers.

  19. Help the Aged
    £15,000 towards the cost of evaluating a pilot scheme for Neighbourhood Wardens.

  20. Kingsley Organisation
    £9,200 towards the costs of a worker spending two days per week exploring ways of developing a supported volunteer project which will enable disabled people to find volunteer or work placements in the community.

  21. Latin American Elderly Project
    £5,000 towards the cost of promoting LAEP’s services, which assist elderly Spanish-speaking people to access benefits and combat isolation.

  22. London Civic Forum
    £15,000 towards the costs of a supported learning programme for emerging community leaders from disadvantaged communities to enable them to participate in the regeneration of their local area.

  23. London Musicians’ Collective – Resonance FM
    £10,000 towards the costs of 52 weekly radio programmes on the subject of climate change.

  24. London Sustainability Exchange – Forum for the Future
    £14,000 towards the costs of a programme to train environmental awareness champions from the black, asian and ethnic minority (BAME) communities across London.

  25. National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux
    £10,000 towards the cost of a six-month pilot with eight bureaux to test a new way of working with clients.

  26. National Centre for Citizenship and the Law (NCCL)
    £25,000 towards the costs of a new crime prevention initiative called Not a Police Station aimed at diverting young people away from crime and anti-social behaviour.

  27. National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO)
    £20,000 towards the second year of the Third Sector Foresight project.

  28. Nature's World – The Botanic Centre in Middlesbrough
    £15,000 towards the cost of promoting a range of original initiatives to encourage better understanding about sustainability.

  29. New Economics Foundation
    £15,000 for a resource centre to support initiatives which attract investment and the flow of finance to areas of deprivation.

  30. Optua
    £10,000 towards the cost of a debt counselling service for disabled people in Mid-Suffolk and the wider community.

  31. Personal Support Unit, Royal Courts of Justice
    £25,000 to carry out a feasibility pilot on expanding the PSU’s service into the London County Courts.

  32. Rethink
    £14,255 to fund the analysis of research into users’ perceptions of mental health services and the publication and dissemination of the outcomes together with recommendations for service improvements.

  33. The Royal National Institute for Deaf People
    £10,000 for a research project to develop an understanding of the problems faced by people who are deaf or hard of hearing in their daily lives, and to develop appropriate services and technology to counter them.

  34. Scottish Education and Action for Development
    £10,000 towards a programme of community education about the causes of climate change and what can be done to tackle it.

  35. Scottish National Council of YMCAs
    £15,000 to explore new approaches to community regeneration and capacity building.

  36. Shelter
    £15,000 towards research into whether the private rented sector offers a long-term solution to housing need or contributes to the incidence of homelessness.

  37. Somerset Rural Youth Project
    £15,000 towards a drama-based consultation to evaluate the needs of rural young people and develop a strategy for addressing them.

  38. STEER Mental Health
    £5,000 towards the costs of a user-led financial literacy support project in Derry for people with long-term mental health difficulties.

  39. Toynbee Hall
    £14,985 towards the cost of a research project to see whether vulnerable clients who were helped to get appropriate banking products are still using them and are less financially excluded one year on.

  40. University of Strathclyde – CADISPA
    £9,600 towards the costs of CADISPA roadshows and information events to encourage a wider understanding of personal responsibility as regards sustainability.

  41. University of York, Centre for Tactile Images
    £5,000 to develop the appearance of and add re-recordable sound to tactile guides for the visually impaired.

  42. Women’s Aid
    £2,500 towards the costs of arts workshops for up to 1,500 women and their children in refuges throughout Dublin.

  43. Women’s Design Service
    £2,000 towards participants’ costs in attending meetings and training sessions in order to set up a new WDS group in Manchester.

  44. YouthNet UK
    £15,000 to develop for young people a viral game based on making good financial decisions.

Director's Grants

  1. Artangel
    £7,000 towards the costs of strengthening the legacy of the Margate Exodus project.

  2. Association of Charitable Foundations – Centris
    £10,000 towards a collaborative project with other funders for an inquiry into the role of an independent Voluntary and Community Sector in civil society in the future.

  3. Demos
    £5,000 for their new publication and for dissemination of Not a Sideshow: Institutional Value and Cultural Leadership.

  4. The Institute for Public Policy Research
    £25,000 to research new strategies to inform policy for young people.

  5. The National Trust
    £15,000 as a lead gift for the Peak District programme, which aims to engage disadvantaged communities with the natural environment.

  6. Personal Support Unit, Royal Courts of Justice
    £15,000 to enable this organisation to commission research on its effectiveness and to undertake long-term business planning.

  7. Ruskin Today
    (The Ruskin Foundation)
    £4,000 towards the publication of conference papers from There Is No Wealth But Life: Ruskin in the 21st Century.

Grid Reference Identification Project, Asirus, 2006