Community grants

2024 to 2025 grants programme

We’re committed to providing grant investment. It continues to increase opportunities for Hackney residents and delivers services that make a difference to people’s lives. We also support the local Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS). A number of strands make up the Grants Programme.

The Grants Programme is one way we aim to work with the voluntary and community sector. It helps us meet our objectives of Working Together for a Better Hackney. The Grants Programme will focus on the following priorities from Hackney’s Strategic Plan, and expects any grants within the programme to contribute to one or both of the following:

  • promoting prosperity and wellbeing with targeted, positive action when needed
  • building strong, cohesive communities that are part of the solution

The following grants schemes will be open for applications this year:

Project Grant Schemes online information sessions

We launched our programme and held online information sessions for our Project Grant Schemes in February 2024.  Watch a recording of the sessions:

Community Chest Grant online information session

We held an online information session on Thursday, 8 February, 2pm to 3pm. Watch a recording of the session:

For more information about these programmes, see Hackney VCS Grants Prospectus 2024/25 (google doc).

Who can apply for community grants

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)

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 can be found in our Hackney VCS Grants Prospectus 2023/24 (google doc). Also, refer to our Grants FAQs and key documents page.

Join our 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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Support for the Voluntary and Community Sector

Further support is available for the voluntary sector through a number of organisations who can provide support and development on a variety of topics. We have created a document support for VCS organisations (google doc) with an overview of support available. We will continue to keep this updated. There are also a number of organisations within Hackney able to provide assistance through a variety of programmes. 

If you feel that there is further support that your organisation needs, that is not available via the organisations listed in the document, contact us to arrange a conversation to discuss further. We are not always able to help organisations overcome every issue, however, our officers are happy to have a conversation with you to understand your organisation’s needs and see if there is any further support available.

Hackney CVS

Hackney CVS is an independent voluntary organisation which provides a range of information, advice and support to VCS organisations in Hackney. 

The organisational development support team can provide help and guidance to organisations applying for the Hackney VCS grants programme, regardless of whether they are a Hackney CVS member or not. To book a session with them, visit HCVS – organisational development.

VCS organisations can also sign up to Hackney CVS’s weekly newsletter to receive updates on training and events, funding opportunities, community news and local politics.

Previous grants awarded

Using the 360Giving data standard, our awarded grants since March 2020 are available as Excel spreadsheets (listed by year the project started):

This work is licensed under the Open Government License v3.0. This means the data is freely accessible to anyone to be used and shared as they wish. The data must be attributed to the London Borough of Hackney.

GrantNav is a free-to-use platform that brings together grant data published using the 360Giving Standard, making it easy to view and explore. The tool enables users to search and report in detail on who, where and how much is given through thousands of grants from a wide range of UK grantmakers, with further data being added as new publishers share their grants openly.

View Hackney’s GrantNav page.

2018/19 grants programme outcomes report

Over the 2018/19 year, we strengthened our commitment to the voluntary and community sector by successfully delivering our ‘A Place for Everyone’ Hackney voluntary and community sector grants programme:

See 2018/19 outcomes report (PDF 2mb)

Page updated on: 28 February 2024

Community Investment and Partnerships Team

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