The National Lottery Community Fund has opened a £45 million programme to fund charities community groups and social enterprises across England working with people disproportionately impacted by the coronavirus.
The fund will be distributed through five partnerships:
- Covid-19 Homelessness Response Fund – The funding will provide financial relief to small and medium sized homelessness charities to adapt their service delivery to respond to the crisis and what they have learnt over the last few months about how to deliver services to people experiencing homelessness during a pandemic. A total of £5 million is available.
- COVID-19 Community Led Organisations Recovery Scheme – Power to Change, Locality, The Ubele Initiative and Social Investment Business are delivering this scheme to support community-led organisations in England. Particularly interested in funding BAME-led or BAME-supporting organisations. A total of £10 million is available.
- Community Justice Fund – The funding will support specialist social welfare advice organisations, providing flexible support so that organisations can respond to the challenges in ways that best meet their beneficiaries’ needs but for which they do not currently have the funds. A total of £5 million is available.
- The COVID-19 Social Enterprise Support Fund Partnership – This funding will provide grants to social enterprise organisations that are best placed to support local, vulnerable communities in response to the Covid-19 crisis. A total of £19.7 million is available.
- Barrow Cadbury Trust Covid-19 Support Fund – This funding will specifically target small and medium sized voluntary sector groups supporting migrants and refugees. A total of £5.15 million is available.
The partnerships will focus on supporting organisations that work with those communities that have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. This includes BAME and other communities experiencing health inequalities and people experiencing homelessness. There will also be a focus on getting support to social enterprises.
