Community grants

Partnerships for People and Place Grants Programme

Partnerships for People and Place is a pilot programme.

Its aim is to test collaboration between the central government and local places.

The programme will learn from projects in 13 local areas across England, focusing on different local challenges.

Hackney is one of the pilot areas chosen.

In Hackney, the Partnerships for People and Place initiative will focus on helping people age well in the Hackney Marshes neighbourhood.

The programme aims to enable local and national government departments to learn together by:

• analysing what funding already comes into the area, how it is used and the outcomes it seeks to achieve
• testing – identify a small set of outcomes and work together to identify and assess interventions that address local challenges and improve outcomes through better coordination
• connecting – establish systems that enable greater coordination between central and local government services
• learning from best practice and develop resources to share learning
• proposing new and better ways of working

Up to £85,000 is available to issue in this financial year in total.

Made up of £70,000 from Hackney Partnerships for People and Place and £15,000 from King’s Park Moving Together.

The use of the King’s Park Moving Together funding will provide up to £3,000 per project.

This is for projects that include opportunities for older people to take part in some form of physical activity.

Applicants can apply for grants of up to £10,000.

If you are applying as the lead organisation along with other organisations you may apply for up to £15,000.

This is to allow you to cover any necessary administration or management costs.

Unconstituted groups , such as structured groups of residents can apply for grants of up to £3,000.

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2023 to 2026 Person Centred Advice grant programme

We are delighted to launch our Person Centred Advice Grant Programme for grants that will commence on 01 April 2023.

This funding programme wants to fund an advice system in Hackney.

The Council is committed to providing grant investment that continues to improve the lives of Hackney residents by supporting organisations with appropriately qualified advisors that openly apply and undertake a systems thinking approach to improving the way their advice services are delivered.

The Council wants to ensure that any resident can get the support they need.

This funding programme is shaped by the overriding principle that advice services should understand a resident’s demand in context and deliver what matters to them.

The Council wants to fund organisations committed to preventative support that extends beyond their level of expertise or specialism to ensure that when someone walks through their doors they have the confidence, knowledge, skills and capacity that enables them to help address the full range of life issues affecting each resident.

This grant programme wants to support organisations committed to go beyond traditional models for delivering output-focused advice (for example debt, benefits, immigration), recognising the importance of partnership working with other organisations driven by what matters to residents, going beyond just dealing with the presenting ‘advice’ issue.

See our Advice Grants guidance document for more detailed information and application guidance.

You can find out more about the Advice Grants by attending our online Advice Grants information session on Wednesday 24 August at 11am.  Visit eventbrite to sign up.

Apply now

Continue application

2022/23 grants programme

Hackney Council is committed to providing grant investment that continues to increase opportunities for Hackney residents and delivers services which make a difference to people’s lives. The grants programme focuses on one of Hackney Council’s Equality Objectives which is:

• to deliver actions which aim to narrow the gap in outcomes between certain disadvantaged groups and the wider community

We consider the grants programme to be a strong means for achieving this equality objective and every grant-funded project is expected to contribute towards this. Building on the known strengths of the sector and its ability to deliver borough-wide priorities, strategic priorities were introduced in 2016/17 as a focus for open grants. The 2022/23 grant programme will continue to focus on these two priorities:

• to promote social inclusion, encourage independence and develop personal resilience
• to build positive relations between different groups and communities that will maintain the high levels of community cohesion in Hackney

Due to the ongoing impact of Covid-19, as well as the Grants Review currently taking place, there have been changes to the previous Grants Programme. There will be three programmes which will be taking place this year. This will run as an interim year as we continue to review our grants schemes and processes in collaboration with the VCS.

The following 3 grants schemes will be open for applications this year.

See further details about each scheme:

For more information about all of these programmes please see our 2022/23 VCS Prospectus. You can also watch our video of the A Place for Everyone – Hackney VCS Grants 2022/23 launch:

Community Chest – 2022/23 grants programme

Grants for up to £1,000 for up to 12 months will be awarded to deliver short term or one-off activities which contribute to the programme’s priorities.

Community Chest grants are focused towards grassroots organisations and groups of Hackney residents with an annual income of less than £10,000 per year.

There will be 4 rounds of funding taking place throughout the year.

See our Community Chest 2022/23 guidance document for more detailed information and application guidance.

Apply now Continue your application

You can find out more about the Community Chest Grants by watching our video of our information session:

Project Grants (including Children & Young People’s Fund) – 2022/23 grants programme

Grants of between £1,001 – £10,000/£20,000 for up to 12 months will be awarded to projects which contribute to the programme’s priorities.

There will be a separate Children & Young People’s Fund strand which is specifically for projects targeting children and young people including Holiday Playschemes.

Project Grants (including Children & Young People’s Fund) are focused towards organisations with an annual income of between £10,000 – £1,000,000 per year.

There will be 1 round of funding taking place this year, the deadline for this round was 25 April 2022 at 5pm. Announcements on the funding decisions will be made in late May 2022.

See our Project Grants 2022/23 guidance document for more detailed information and application guidance.

You can find out more about the Project Grants by watching our video of the information session:

You can find out more about the Children & Young People’s fund by watching the video of our information session:

Community Infrastructure Grants – 2022/23 grants programme

Grants of up to £45,000 for 12 months for organisations who:

• play a role in communities that extend beyond the services they deliver
• work collaboratively with other VCS partners and Hackney Council to find creative ways to deliver what matters to residents
• share knowledge and resources to ensure continuous learning and improvement within systems of support for residents
• place combatting inequality at the centre of everything they do, particularly racism

There will be 1 round of funding taking place this year. Expressions of interest have now closed, funding decisions will be made in late July 2022.

See our Community Infrastructure Grants 2022/23 guidance document for more detailed information and application guidance.

You can find out more about the Community Infrastructure Grants by watching the video of our information session:

Who can apply

Organisations must be not-for-profit, value-driven and principally reinvest their surpluses to further social, environmental or cultural objectives. These are typically the following organisations:

• registered charity or Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO)
• charitable company or Social Enterprise (companies must have asset locks, be wholly not-for-profit and without share capital)
• community Interest Company (CIC)
• company limited by guarantee (companies must have asset locks, be wholly not-for-profit and without share capital)
• cooperative and Community Benefit Society
• unregistered community group
• structured group of residents (Community Chest only)

Please note that private businesses and individuals are not eligible to apply for grant funding from this programme.

At least 80% of the people benefiting from the funding request must be Hackney residents.

Further information and guidance documents can be found on our FAQs and key documents page.

Mailing list

If you’d like to be notified when the next round of grants opens and receive other key updates, please subscribe to our mailing list:

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Coronavirus funding response

The Council supports the voluntary and community sector (VCS) in Hackney every year through a dedicated grants programme. For 2020/21, most of the grants budget had been committed prior to the Covid-19 crisis. We became a signatory of the London Funders pledge and have worked flexibly with our grantee partners to ensure they can do the best to serve their communities throughout this time. This included allowing grantees to change how the funding is used, extending deadlines and reducing the information we collect at reporting.

As part of a package of support for VCS organisations, funding that hadn’t been committed in 2020/21 was converted to emergency funding, alongside our small reserves, to support organisations working with communities and people directly impacted by the pandemic. You can see who we have funded during the pandemic in the following data: