Social Enterprises offering services in either health or social care are being offered capital grants of between £50,000 and £450,000 from the Social Enterprise Investment Fund until 1st November 2010.

Voluntary Sector providers of Adult Social Care who are involved in the personalisation agenda may find the following Grant Scheme useful. Get Connected offers up to £20,000 for suitable organisations to improve access to ICT for users, carers, staff and visitors. Examples provided by SCIE of the sort of projects they would like to fund include:

• Enabling residents to keep in touch with friends and family by using ICT
• Using ICT to enable staff to keep up to date and engage in training
• Enabling service users to keep in touch with each other

Organisations will need to be registered with Companies House or the Charity Commission.

The Russell Invests Charitable Fund has opened for applications to its 2010 programme. Funding of up to £5,000 (£3,000 is more likely) is potentially availabe to organisations working with young people not in education, employment or training or at risk of being so.

Priority Areas

The fund supports organisations that work with young people not in education, employment or training (NEET), or those at risk of becoming NEET.

Priority Areas:

1. Supporting individuals whose circumstances have changed as a result of the recession
2. Support NEET young people who are not currently being reached/engaged by other statutory/voluntary sector support programmes
3. Working with individuals who have been specifically identified as being at risk of becoming NEET.

Who is eligible?

Voluntary and Community Groups, and Social Enterprises with an income of under £150,000 pa. Priority will be given to organisations with an income of less that £100,000.

Funding Available

The maximum grant is £5,000, however, groups are advised to apply for around £3,000 as few maximum grants will be made.

Exclusions

The grant cannot be used to fund the following:

• conferences/seminars
• film production
• publicity/advertising in the media
• professional clubs/associations
• sports events/tournaments/team sponsorship
• political campaigns or concerns
• religious organisations where the activities benefit only those of a particular faith
• statutory organisations such as Local Authorities, schools and the Police force
• individuals
• spending that has already taken place

Futher information

Further information is available on the Capital Community Foundation website including full guidelines and an application form. The guidelines also include details of the application process and subsequent monitorng process.

Deadline for applications

The deadline for receiving completed applications with all supporting documentation is Friday 2nd July 2010.

Community Builders - a £70 million fund run by Future Builders on behalf of the Adventure Capital Fund - opens for applications on September 7th. The fund will provide a mixture of grants, loans and mentoring support to community-anchor organisations.... read more.

Several lottery programmes have recently announced that they either have closed the programme to new applicants or that they have introduced deadlines.

Details are:

The Hardship Fund for voluntary organisations - that deliver services in health and social care, education and training,  information and guidance, and housing support - but that are themselves facing financial difficulties has opened for applications.

The fund, worth a total of £16.7m will offer grants of between £50,000 and £250,000. Organisations need to have a turnover of at least £200,000 to qualify.