FAQs for groups

Charities, including charitable incorporated organisations (CIO), can apply if they have at least 3 unrelated trustees registered with the Charity Commission and can meet the financial and safeguarding requirements below.

Community groups, or unincorporated associations can apply if they have a governing document that includes charitable aims benefitting the wider public. They also need to be run by at least 3 unrelated community members and need to meet the financial and safeguarding requirements below.

If your community group has an annual income regularly over £5,000 a year, you must register with the Charity Commission. We will not be able to fund you if you don’t do this. NCVO has advice on this here.

A community interest company (CIC) is a type of limited company for people who want to establish businesses which trade with a social purpose. They’re often called social enterprises. CICs are different from charities, and so we view them differently when you apply.

CICs registered with Companies House can apply if they:

• are clearly trading, including income from public sector contracts, and not running almost exclusively on grants and donations
• have at least 3 unrelated directors registered with Companies House
• meet the financial and safeguarding requirements below.

We give grants to social enterprises to increase their capacity to earn income from selling services or goods. That means we’ll only give your CIC a grant for:

• start-up costs of a new social enterprise
• growing a social enterprise that that can demonstrate a track record of trading.
• special projects that run alongside the main trading activity.

Private companies cannot normally apply for our funding.

Community Benefit Societies, or cooperatives owned by their members, can apply if they are registered with the Financial Conduct Authority and exist primarily for the benefit of the wider community.

You also need to have at least 3 unrelated directors and meet the financial and safeguarding requirements below.

Social landlords, or housing associations can apply, but across most of our funding programmes we prioritise funding smaller grassroots groups. If you work for a large social landlord, then please contact us first before applying.

You also need to have at least 3 unrelated directors and meet the financial and safeguarding requirements below.

Schools can apply, but we can’t fund your statutory duties. This means we won’t fund things like:

• educational activities for pupils that take place during the school day
• school facilities, classroom equipment or teacher training.

Schools that support more disadvantaged pupils, such as those receiving Free School Meals, are more likely to receive funding.

We prefer Parent Teacher Associations (PTA) to ask us for money, rather than schools, but we know some schools don’t have a PTA.

You also need to have at least 3 unrelated trustees or governors and meet the financial and safeguarding requirements below.

Town and parish councils can apply, but we would only expect them to if there are no suitable community groups in your area.

You also need to have at least 3 unrelated Councillors and meet the financial and safeguarding requirements below.

Faith-based groups, like churches, can apply, but we don’t fund the practice or promotion of religion. This means you can’t use our money for worship or try to convert people to your religion.

Applications from faith-based groups must be for projects that could benefit your whole community. For this to happen, they must be open to people of all faiths and no faith. We expect you to make this clear on your website and promotional materials about the project you’re asking us to fund. For some groups, this may include making a statement about diversity and inclusion. You can read about our approach to diversity, equity and inclusion.

If it isn’t clear to us that the project you’re seeking funding for is open to everyone in your community, we won’t be able to award you any money. This includes repairs to places of worship where there’s no clear evidence they’re used regularly by the wider community.

You also need to have at least 3 unrelated trustees and meet the financial and safeguarding requirements below.

Our priority is to fund smaller grassroots groups based in Somerset. If you’re a national charity providing a very specialist service that can’t reasonably be provided by a small group, then please contact us to discuss your work.

You also need to have at least 3 unrelated directors and meet the financial and safeguarding requirements below.

Keeping children and vulnerable adults safe is important. But it’s nothing to worry about as long as you’ve given it some thought and taken some simple steps.

A good starting point is to consider the following questions for your organisation or group:

1. Do all your trustees, staff and volunteers understand what safeguarding is and why it is relevant for your group and the activities it does?
2. Do they receive safeguarding training appropriate for their role?
3. Do they know what to do and who to tell if abuse is suspected?
4. Do they know what the different types of abuse are and how to recognise them?
5. Does your group carry out appropriate checks before allowing people to work or volunteer with children or vulnerable adults?
6. Does your group have a clear written process for responding to suspected abuse?

If you ask us for money, we need to be confident that you understand your safeguarding responsibilities. We’ll ask you to provide us with your safeguarding policy and procedure to demonstrate this. These may be separate documents, or you may have combined them, but they should provide us with the information we need. 

If we don’t think that you’ve fully considered and understood your safeguarding responsibilities, then we won’t be able to give you any money. Instead, we may suggest some ways to improve your safeguarding arrangements.

What you include in your safeguarding documents will depend on what your group does. But as a minimum, your safeguarding documents  must:

• be dated and have been written or reviewed within the last 12 months
• be appropriate for the groups of people you work with (children, vulnerable adults, or both)
• be in the name of your group, and not solely that of a partner or parent organisation. If you do use documents provided by a parent body, such as a national association, then we need to clearly see how they can be used within your group
• contain accurate and up-to-date information such as contact details and website links   
• outline the definitions you use for terms like ‘abuse’ and ‘neglect’ and explain the different types of abuse people need to be able to recognise signs of
• include the details of a safeguarding lead for the group (sometimes called a Designated Safeguarding Lead or DSL) who understands how to handle and report safeguarding concerns
• include clear steps to take in the event of an incident or concern, including who to contact if the safeguarding lead is not available
• clearly document that staff, volunteers and trustees receive appropriate safeguarding training. For small groups we would expect at least the Designated Safeguarding Lead to have had appropriate training
• confirm that relevant background checks are carried out on people working or volunteering for your group, especially those who may come into contact with children or vulnerable adults.

If you use a model policy, then we need to see that your group has properly adapted it for your local use.

We may require extra details from larger groups and those who regularly work with children and vulnerable adults.

As well as the local organisations listed at the top of this page, you can find various online resources below.

National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO)

• The NCVO Safeguarding section provides detailed information on what safeguarding is, and the steps you can take to become a safer organisation or group.
• There are also useful Safeguarding guides for Trustees and Designated Safeguarding Leads.
• NCVO provide specific guidance on Safeguarding and Volunteers including detailed guidance on DBS checks for staff and volunteers.

Charity Commission

• The Charity Commission have published guidance on Safeguarding for Charities and Trustees which we expect all not for profit groups to be working in line with.

The Ann Craft Trust

• The Ann Craft Trust is a leading charity on safeguarding adults. They have a detailed Safeguarding Adults Resources section on their website including a range of e-learning courses.

NSPCC

• The NSPCC provides specific guidance for voluntary and community groups working with children and young people.
• They also offer a wide range of Safeguarding Children and Young People online training courses.

Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS)

The government’s Disclosure and Barring Service provides details on the types of background checks.

We ask all groups to write a report if we give them some money. If you get a smaller grant, then you’ll only need to write a short report. The report is completed online.

When you apply, we ask you to tell us when you think you’ll finish your funding. We use that date to schedule an email, which will tell you when and how to complete your report. We’re usually able to change this date, so if you haven’t spent all the money by that time, please contact us.

The report includes some questions we’d like you to answer and the space to attach documents or photos if you’d like.

For small grants, we want to know how you spent the money, what difference it made, and what you learnt. We also ask you to tell us a story about someone who has benefited from the money. As well as writing about your grant, we’ll ask you to provide some statistics, such as the number of people you worked with.

Completing a report is part of the terms we ask you to agree to when you apply for money from us.

We’ll contact you if you don’t submit a report when we ask you to. If you still don’t do a report, then it’s very unlikely we’ll give you any more money.

We can only give you money for things covered by the objectives included in your governing document.

We’re happy to give you money to run particular projects, to pay for capital costs (like equipment or small building projects) or just towards your ongoing core costs. By core costs (or running costs) we mean things like rent, energy bills or insurance.

We’re happy to consider match funding for other funders. This might include larger applications you’re making to a lottery funder (like the Arts Council) or the Landfill Communities Fund.

If you need over £50,000 in total, and you’re asking us to be the first to contribute, then please contact us first.

Unfortunately, we can’t give you money for something that has happened in the past. Please consider the dates on each funding programme page, which will tell you when we make a decision on your application.

Unfortunately, we can’t give you money for animal welfare, but we can support animal welfare projects that clearly benefit people in the wider community, such as a contribution towards horse therapy. This could also include supported volunteering schemes and other initiatives.

Unfortunately, we can’t give you money for medical research, equipment or treatment.

We don’t support political groups.

It’s unlikely we’ll be able to replace all the funding you previously had from Somerset Council or central Government as our average grant is under £5,000. But we can consider your request.

Groups need to have a bank account in their name that requires at least two unrelated signatories to authorise transactions (an account signatory is an individual who has rights to manage the bank account).

When you apply, we ask you to send us a recent bank statement so we can check your payment details. This must show the account name, number and sort code.

It may be possible for another group, or your town or parish council, to hold a grant on your behalf. This might happen if your group is new and it’s taking a long time to register with the bank. Please contact us if this is the case.

All groups should produce accounts every year showing how much money they received and how much they spent. They should also show how much money they held at the end of the year, and whether that money is restricted or not.

When you apply, we ask you to send us a copy of your most recent accounts. These should be no more than 18 months old.

You can still apply even if your group is new and doesn’t have any accounts yet.

If your group has more than 12 months running costs in free reserves then we won’t give you a grant. That’s unless you have a reserve policy in your account that provides a good reason for doing so.

When we talk about free reserves, we mean the unrestricted and undesignated funds available to your group. This does not include funds not available for spending, such as assets tied up in property.

Our priority is to give money to smaller groups based and working in Somerset. By smaller, we mean groups who normally run on under £500,000 a year. Most of our funding goes to groups who run on under £100,000.

We ask that all groups acknowledge our funding. You can do this by adding our logo to your website and leaflets.

We regularly produce newsletters, reports, impact stories, press releases and other publicity. We often include stories about the groups that get money from us.

We do this because the money we award every year comes from local people, businesses, charitable trusts and public sector partners who give through us or leave us a legacy. It’s important we show how this money is spent in the community.

We’ll always ask you before including your group in our publicity. If you don’t want to be included then please tell us and we’ll find another group to feature in our publicity.

We often include photos and videos from funded groups on our website, social media, newsletters and other publications.

We’ll only use photos and videos from your group in our publicity after we’ve spoken to you and you’ve confirmed we can use them.

We know that in some cases it won’t be appropriate to use photos and videos of the work we’ve funded.

We share information about our grants with 360Giving, a charity that helps organisations publish open, standardised grants data and supports people to use it to improve charitable giving.

You can only opt out of some of our publicity if you’ve a clear reason. This might include work involving very vulnerable people. Please contact us if this is a concern.