FAQs

Common types of organisations we fund include: 

Organisations with charitable purposes such as  

• Registered charities 
• Charities exempt from registration (e.g. universities and housing associations)
• Excepted charities (e.g. Scout and Guide groups, student unions and many churches with income less than £100,000)
• Independent schools, academy or multi-academy trusts, faith or free schools that are charities
• Unincorporated associations (this covers most constituted voluntary organisations that are not companies, where members are personally liable for the organisation’s debts)
• Charitable trusts (where money or property are held by one group of people (trustees) to provide a charitable benefit to another (beneficiaries)
• Charitable Incorporated Organisations (CIOs)
• Companies limited by shares or guarantee with charitable objectives (members of companies have limited liability for the organisation’s debts, unless they act recklessly) 

Non-charity social enterprises  

• Community Interest Companies (CICs) (a type of company whose capital and income benefit the community)
• Other types of limited companies set up for community benefit 

Co-operatives and community benefit societies 

• Credit unions or other mutual organisations with a co-operative registration number from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)
• Membership organisations with a community benefit society registration number from the FCA
• Community Benefit Societies deliver community rather than private benefit, formerly known pre-2014 as Industrial and Provident Societies

Community Amateur Sports Clubs (meet the requirements to benefit from tax relief, similar to charities, because they are not exclusive, professional, or prohibitively expensive)  

Statutory bodies (e.g. local authorities, parish/town councils, NHS trusts (including clinical commissioning groups) and local authority-maintained state schools)  

Income or Size?: By small, we mean those with income up to £1 million, with priority to those with income up to £0.5 million. We will consider applications from larger organisations where they are the best organisation to meet an identified community need.  

Location: By local, we mean organisations based and working in our area of benefit (see ‘which area do we need to be in’ below). Some funds have specific geographical requirements; each Fund has its own objectives which outline any criteria and eligibility. 

Our main area of benefit is Tyne & Wear (Newcastle, Gateshead, North Tyneside, South Tyneside and Sunderland) and Northumberland.

If your work is in Durham, Tees Valley or elsewhere in the UK, please only apply if we have a call for a named Fund listed on our ‘current opportunities’ page that says we will award funding in that area. Otherwise, your application may not be eligible and could be withdrawn.

Our minimum grant is £1,000, and, as a small grants funder we rarely make grants of over £10,000. Our average grant across all programmes is £6,000. 

Some Funds may make larger or multi-year grants. You can find details of those Funds under ‘current opportunities’. 

If you are a first-time applicant, we expect you to complete your first grant and submit all monitoring before reapplying.

If you have held a grant previously, you can have multiple pending applications at the same time. However, please consider your funding needs carefully if you find that you have several live applications at any one time. If you’re unsure, please give us a call.

Please note, if you are submitting more than one application, each should be for a different activity, for example, one for core costs, one for a capital purchase and another for a project. If you do put in multiple applications, we will look at them all and think about how much funding in total we could offer you.

If you are submitting an application, and wish for it to be considered by more than one Fund, please contact grants@communityfoundation.org.uk

We first check that your application is complete and eligible.  

If you have applied to a named Fund through our current opportunities, it will be considered for that Fund. If you apply through our general process, we will see if your application matches any of our available Funds. 

We will then assess applications and may contact you for more information. In most cases, a donor or advisory panel is involved in recommending which applications should be funded. We will decide whether to offer you a grant based on the recommendations from donors and panels. 

If we cannot consider your application at any stage, we will tell you as soon as we can.  

We aim to give you a decision within 12 weeks of receiving all the information we need, this includes your application and all supporting documents.

If we think your application fits one of our Funds but it will take more than 12 weeks to make a decision, we will contact you. 

There are more applications than we have money to support, and the success rate can vary a little year to year depending on what funds we have available. 

If you applied to us and were successful, you can apply again so long as you have sent us any outstanding reports from previous grants.  

If you applied to us and were successful, you can apply again so long as you have sent us any outstanding reports from previous grants.

For organisations receiving their first grant from us, you must submit satisfactory monitoring or a progress report before we will consider further applications.

Yes, and many organisations do go on to get funding from us.  

If we have looked at your application in detail, there may be things we ask you to change or get advice about before you apply for something we’ve previously turned down.  

If your application is successful, we’ll write to:

• Confirm the grant amount we’re offering and which of our Fund(s) it’s coming from.
• Confirm up to three outcomes we’ve agreed to help assess the success of the grant.
• Ask you to accept our standard grant terms and conditions.
• Outline any additional conditions attached to the grant.
• We’ll then ask you to return an acceptance slip to confirm you agree to our offer.

Once we receive your acceptance, and any conditions are closed, we usually pay the grant into your bank account within 14 days. If we don’t hear from you within a month, we’ll assume you no longer wish to proceed and will cancel the offer.

At the end of the grant period (which is usually 12 months unless agreed otherwise) you’ll be asked to: 

• Complete an online monitoring form reporting against the outcomes. outlined and agreed to in your grant offer letter.
• Provide evidence of impact, such as stories, photos, or other materials.
• Provide an accurate breakdown of spend related to the grant.
• Submit interim monitoring if your grant is paid in instalments or spans more than a year.
• Be open to a visit from us to learn more about your work. 

Once we’ve reviewed your final report, we’ll confirm the grant is closed and provide feedback on our view of the success of the grant. This helps us to assess applications and make recommendations in the future. 

Please get in touch with us; either by email or telephone. A member of the team will speak to you about the grant and its progress. We may be able to help, by amending outcomes, connecting you with other support or organisations, or extending the grant period to give you more time. It is rare that we would request to withdraw a grant or ask a grantee to pay back any funding.  

Grants are usually offered for a period of 12 months, but you can choose a shorter or longer duration when applying. We will define the length of your grant using the grant outcomes you choose when applying.

There is a button to ‘reset password’ on the portal. If this doesn’t work, don’t worry, you can call us on 0191 222 0945 and we be able to reset it for you.

Community Foundation North East has an AI statement, available to read here:  

Whilst Community Foundation North East is open to grant applicants using AI tools to assist with drafting applications, we encourage organisations to be mindful of the implications This includes considerations in data security, the environmental impact of using AI, and the importance of verifying the accuracy of AI generated content.  

In regard to assessing applications, we recognise that AI tools can be used to support human decision-making, however human relationships remain at the heart of our work. The way that we assess applications has not changed and no final decisions are made by AI. 

We offer grant funding towards charitable activities. We are able to offer core costs (these are costs affiliated to the running of your organisation day to day) projects costs (this could be a time limited project, a ringfenced activity or a one-off improvement) and capital costs (for example new equipment or building works).  

Regarding organisations that are not registered charities; 

•  we can only offer unrestricted funding to registered charities.
• we cannot fund running costs: we do not normally support CICs and other social enterprises to provide continuing services, as funding for this should come from trading activity 

Yes, we do fund social enterprises, including CICs; however, our funding strategy is to primarily support small, local charities and community organisations. 

For more information, please ensure you read our guidance fully including eligibility and applying as a CIC or other non-charitable social enterprise.

We have further advice on applying for a grant as a CIC or other non-charitable social enterprise which you can read here.