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20/10/2017 - The Henry Smith Charity Re-launches Grants Programmes

The Henry Smith Charity’s Main Grants programme is now open for applications following a review of its guidelines and criteria.

The Henry Smith Charity distributes over £28 million a year in grant programmes designed to reduce social and economic disadvantage in the UK.
Following a review of its grant procedures, the Funder has refined its Main Grant programmes, separating it into two defined funds under the same new strategy that aims to work with people for whom other sources of support have failed, been inappropriate or are simply not available.
This will be achieved through the following priorities:

• Increasing resilience - empowering people, encouraging integration and personal independence, helping people to recover and move on.
• Creating opportunities and life chances - raising aspiration, equipping people with new skills, unlocking and enabling potential, and providing the means to improve life circumstances.
• Empowering communities - strengthening and connecting communities and making people feel valued, providing opportunities for social connections and relationships, encouraging participation and inclusion.

The Charity’s grants programmes now stand as follows:

• The Main Grants: Improving Lives Fund is the largest of the Charity’s funds, and will support the work of established charitable organisations with incomes of up to £2 million. Funding is available for projects that help people when other sources of support have failed, are inappropriate, or are simply not available.
• The Main Grants: Strengthening Communities Fund is designed to support small charitable organisations working at grassroots level in the most disadvantaged areas of the UK.
• The County Grants programme provides grants for smaller organisations working with disadvantaged people and communities in one of eight English counties. Groups should note that funding for Surrey is not available until early 2018.
• The Holiday Grants for Children programme provides grants for recreational trips and holidays for groups of children aged 13 and under in the UK who are disabled or disadvantaged. These are one-off short grants.
• The Christian Projects grant programme awards grants to projects that explicitly promote the Christian faith in the UK.

Grant sizes are generally between £10,000 and £60,000 and are for charities and not-for-profit organisations, including social enterprises that are based and working in the UK.
There are no deadlines. Applications are considered on a regular basis, depending on the fund applied to.