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Resources: Accessing Funding for Community Transport
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Accessing Funding for Community Transport
Funding is more important than ever for community transport providers, especially as they continue to recover from the effects of lock-down and begin to re-start their services. These are challenging times, so it’s become even more important than normal to review your funding streams and consider looking for new opportunities to bring money into your organisation to diversify your income over the coming months.
These resources have been put together as part of the Connecting Communities in Wales project run by the Community Transport Association. The project is funded through the Welsh Government Rural Communities Rural Development Programme 2014-2020, which is funded by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development and the Welsh Government, and aims to support community transport in Wales through creating new partnerships, bringing funding into the sector and creating new transport networks. In some instances, the resources below might reference information specific to members in Wales.
Contents
- Who is funding Community Transport?
- Top Tips on Funding
- Presentations
- Articles
- How-To Guides
- Example Applications
- Where else can you find support?
Who is funding community transport?
Throughout Covid-19, we know that at least £750,000 of grant funding has been given to community transport operators to help mitigate against the loss of income, make adaptions to vehicles and to continuing providing essential services. More than half of this funding has come from Community Foundations (find your local Community Foundation, here). Vital support has also been received from the National Lottery Community Fund and a number of trusts and foundations. You can find a list of funds which are currently open and some suggestions about where else you can find funding to apply for, here.
Top Tips for Funding
Our Top Tips are “bitesize” resources which highlight some useful points to consider on a range of topics. They also aim to help you to generate some ideas before you start addressing a particular issue or area of work.
- Top Tips 1: Who can do fundraising in our organisation?
- Top Tips 2: Elevator Pitch
- Top Tips 3: Developing a project proposal
- Top Tips 4: Gap analysis and needs assessment
- Top Tips 5: Community consultation and engagement
- Top Tips 6: Compelling case studies
- Top Tips 7: Setting clear outcomes
- Top Tips 8: Monitoring and evaluation
- Top Tips 9: Building relationships with funders
- Top Tips 10: Increasing unrestricted income
- Top Tips 11: Calculating the cost effectiveness of fundraising
- Top Tips 12: Understanding your legal requirements
- Top Tips 13: Searching for Funds
- Top Tips 14: Improving your funding know how
Presentations
Developed as a visual aid and a guide to support some of our other resources, these presentations highlight useful tips and points to consider in a more interactive way. These can be used as a guide before deciding on a way forward, or you can use them with your trustees or staff team to help bring clarity to what can sometimes be difficult issues. They are meant to provide some information to consider when addressing a particular issue, helping to generate ideas and build confidence.
- Presentation 1:What to consider before approaching a funder
- Presentation 2: Developing a case for support
- Presentation 3: Developing a fundraising strategy
Articles
Here, we’ll share any articles we’ve published about what to consider when applying for funding.
How-To Guides
Our ‘how to’ guides are designed to take you step-by-step through the process involved when undertaking a new project or task. They provide a helpful overview of a topic to support you in developing your idea/plan, and signpost you to other useful resources.
Example Funding Applications
We’ve put together some example funding applications designed to support you when developing an application yourself. Applying for funding can often be a daunting prospect, so seeing an example of a completed application, tailored towards the community transport sector, and being able to adapt the sample text to suit your own organisation, may give a confidence boost when embarking on developing a bid.
We also have templates available for the following funders, which you can access by emailing advice@ctauk.org:
- Template 2: National Lottery Community Fund Awards for All grant application
- Template 3: National Lottery Community Fund People and Places grant application (Wales Only)
- Template 4: Garfield Weston Foundation grant application
- Template 5: Morrisons Foundation grant application
Where else can you find support?
As we continue to develop this suite of resources, please let us know at advice@ctauk.org if there is any other aspect of fundraising which you would like us to focus on. Below are links to some external websites and resources which may be useful.
- NCVO – knowhow.ncvo.org.uk/funding/fundraising
- WCVA – wcva.cymru/resources/
- NICVA – nicva.org/services/fundraising
- SCVO – scvo.org.uk/support/running-your-organisation/funding
- Institute of Fundraising – institute-of-fundraising.org.uk/home/
- Charities Aid Foundation – cafonline.org/charities/fundraising
- Fundraising Everywhere – fundraisingeverywhere.com/
- Showcase of fundraising innovation and inspiration – sofii.org/
- Go Fund Me – gofundme.com/c/blog/topic/fundraising-strategy
More information
CTA Advice Service: The CTA team are currently working remotely, so to ensure you speak to the right person first time, please email advice@ctauk.org to receive a call back for advice and support. Our advice service operates 10-4pm Monday-Friday.
Advice Service Drop-in: we’re still holding our weekly coronavirus online drop-in where members can join a video call to talk to the team and each other about the latest guidance and ask any questions. If you want to get involved, just email our advice team.
If you feel like this page is missing something, or if there’s something you’d like to see, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the CTA advice service and let us know!
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