FUNDING:

Digital Mentors, Grants to women in financial need, Info on Literacy and Dyslexia needed

Do you work with people who feel excluded from work or education because of dyslexia or other literacy problems?

John Evans, from local community group Snakes and Ladders Charitable Trust, is applying funding to hold training in this area next year and needs to have evidence of need in Hackney. In particular they are looking for evidence of this from people aged 19 – 24 or over 50. If you know people who face these problems and would like to go on a course to overcome it, please reply to John Evans on 0208 888 4085 or john.f.evans@blueyonder.co.uk

Commissioning

CompeteFor is the chosen site of London 2012 for the publication of Games-related contract opportunities

For all LDA procurement opportunities all potential bidders will need to register on the Compete For system, an online advertising and supplier short-listing tool.

Info: https://www.competefor.com/london2012business/login.jsp

Futurebuilders

The Tender Fund is a new Futurebuilders programme offering interest-free three year loans of between £3,000 and £50,000 to community and voluntary sector organisations who need relatively small sums of money to help them tender successfully for specific public service delivery contracts. Available: £3,000 - £50,000

Please contact: Call 0191 261 5200 or www.futurebuilders-england.org.uk

Digital Mentors: An Invitation to Tender

Communities and Local Government are seeking bids from individual organisations and consortia which have community engagement and media literacy training experience. We envisage the lead organisation as coming from the community and voluntary sector or the commercial sector where there are demonstrable strong community links. Local government partners may also be interested. The successful bidder will be in a co-ordination role, helping shape and lay the foundations for a sustainable and scalable national initiative. The co-ordinator will identify and support a variety of demonstrator projects which can most benefit from access to 'Digital Mentors'. The Department will be hosting a workshop on 19 November 2008, 3-5pm for those interested in tendering.
This will be at the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, 1 Victoria Street, London SW1H 0ET.

Please contact: Varian Kellar on 020 7944 5713 or Varian.Kellar@communities.gsi.gov.uk
and ask for an expenses claim form if you are from a voluntary or community sector organisation. For further information please click here

Funding

BBC Children in Need - November Update

Awards for All is coming to an end

Following a review of the Awards for All England programme, changes are to be made to the small grants scheme's existing format when it comes to an end in March 2009. Currently Awards for All England is a joint Lottery grants programme supported by Arts Council England, Big Lottery Fund, Heritage Lottery Fund and Sport England. From 1 April 2009 each of the lottery distributors supporting the scheme will have their own small grants programmes up and running. Applications can still be made under the current arrangements until 31 March 2009.

Nominet Foundation

A new foundation launching in early 2009, which will have £5 million to support education, research and developments in the Internet industry. The website says information about the application process will appear as it’s available: http://www.nominetfoundation.org.uk/

Society for the Assistance of Ladies in Reduced Circumstances

The Society has been around since 1886, and was set up to make grants to women in financial need, including one-off grants for essential items, and for regular allowances. This will remain the principal activity of the Society but, from 2009, they will also make £50,000 available for grants to organisations. The Trustees will only support projects which are for the exclusive benefit of women in financial need. Applications will be considered for funding towards projects which represent the complete work of a small organisation, or a particular undertaking by a larger one.

Closing date: 15 March 2009.

Please contact: http://www.salrc.org/institutional_grants.htm - online application form

Innovation and Transnationality Fund

The first call for proposals under the Innovation and Transnationality strand of the European Social Fund (ESF) has been launched.

Approximately £28 million is available to support a small number of innovative projects that will develop, test and deliver innovative ways of extending employment opportunities and improving the skills of the workforce.

Projects will need to involve at least one partner from another EU Member State.

Closing date: 4pm on 17 December 2008.

Please contact: http://www.esf.gov.uk/innovation_transnationality/

Access to Justice Foundation

A new Foundation that has been established to receive and distribute financial resources that will help get free of charge (pro bono) legal assistance to those who need it most. The Foundation will distribute money to Regional Legal Support Trusts, to the major pro bono organisations, and to projects. The Regional Legal Support Trusts will in turn distribute to local advice agencies and law centres.

It is a recent change in the law that will provide the Foundation with its available funding. From October 2008 the Courts in England & Wales will have power to order a losing party to make a payment to The Access to Justice Foundation, under section 194 of the Legal Services Act 2007 (a “pro bono costs order”). This will be where a case has been won with pro bono help, and the losing party would otherwise have escaped liability for costs simply because it had lost to a party that had been helped pro bono.

This is a new Foundation, so there are still lots of details to be worked out - we’ll report back when there is more news. For now, more information on all this is available on here: http://www.accesstojusticefoundation.org.uk/

Parent Participation Grants

Parents groups across England are invited to bid for a share of £3 million to help them become more involved in planning and delivering services for disabled children. As part of the Government’s Aiming High for Disabled Children programme, Parent Participation Grants are available to enable parents groups to have a stronger influence on developing services for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

Funding is available for partnership projects involving parent groups and other organisations, such as local authorities, Primary Care Trusts, voluntary groups and parent partnership services.

Grants will be available in two separate funding rounds. Phase One, which is currently underway, can offer support of up to £3,330 per local authority area. Phase Two, which will be open to applications between January and April next year, will be able to provide up to £10,000 per local authority.

Only one grant can be made in each local authority, so interested groups are asked to prepare partnership applications where possible.

The scheme is being run by the Together for Disabled Children group, a partnership between the Contact a Family charity and advisory firm Serco.

Closing date: 21 November

Please contact: http://www.togetherfdc.org/Topics/PPFundingandGrants.aspx

Reminder: Parenting Fund Round 3 ..More

£16 million in funding available now for parenting projects.
The key features of the third round of the Parenting Fund are:

- Promoting social inclusion and improving access to services and support for less well-served communities will remain a cornerstone of the fund. In Round 3 there is no separate criteria for working with Teenage Parents.
Working with this group of parents is implicit across the criteria and applications from organisations will be considered accordingly.

- As in Parenting Fund Round 2, the grant will be focused on 23 localities including Hackney. Funded projects are expected to deliver learning and outcomes that can be picked up nationally. Also, organisations would be able to apply to work in and across a number of localities, as was the case with Rounds 1 and 2.

Closing date: 12 December 2008

Please contact: http://www.familyandparenting.org/ParentingFund3

Does your organisation have an average income of less than £20,000?

You could apply for Grassroots Grant of up to £5,000! Find out more here

Awards for All is coming to an end

Following a review of the Awards for All England programme, changes are to be made to the small grants scheme's existing format when it comes to an end in March 2009.

Currently Awards for All England is a joint Lottery grants
programme supported by Arts
Council England, Big
Lottery Fund, Heritage
Lottery Fund and Sport
England. From 1 April
2009 each of the lottery
distributors supporting the scheme will have their own small grants programmes up and running. Applications can still be made under the current arrangements until 31 March 2009.

The change will mean that each distributor can better address the needs of their applicants and the themes they support. Overall, across all the distributors, it is anticipated that new money available for small grants in 2009-10 will be comparable to money that was available to community groups through Awards for All in 2008-2009.

To ensure this change will be as seamless as possible, the distributors will each run their own small grants programme as follows:

Big Lottery Fund will launch a new small grants programme on 1 April 2009 awarding grants of £300 to £10,000 to local communities in 2009-2010.

Sport England will provide small grants for sports ranging from £300 - £10,000 from 1 April 2009.

Arts Council England will provide small grants through their existing 'Grants for the arts' programme, supporting awards between £1,000 and £100,000.

Heritage Lottery Fund small grants will be provided through the existing 'Your Heritage' (£3,000 to £50,000) and 'Young Roots' (£3,000 to £25,000) schemes.

More detailed information on the new schemes will be released soon. In the meantime, if you have any further queries, please email general.enquiries@awardsforall.org.uk

HCVS Information Service

Hackney Council for Voluntary Service

E: gillian@hcvs.org.uk

T: 020 7923 1962

W: www.hcvs.org.uk

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HCVS is Hackney's leading voluntary and community sector support agency and your local CVS. We provide hundreds of local voluntary and community organisations with the key skills, knowledge and resources to respond to the needs of local people, especially those most in need.

Visit www.hcvs.org.uk to find out more.

HCVS is supported by Big Lottery Fund, Capacity Builders, Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC), City & Hackney Health & Social Care Forum, City Bridge Trust, Home Office’s Connecting Communities Fund programmes, London Borough of Hackney, Office of Third Sector, Team Hackney and The Learning Trust.

Hackney Council for Voluntary
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for Voluntary Organisations.