Aims/priorities: Women’s Resource Centre (WRC) is a national charity committed to working towards human-rights by supporting and understanding small specialist women’s groups and charities. Through delivering programmes, creating networking opportunities and by campaigning and influencing decision-makers, the work that WRC does is essential to ensure a diverse and thriving sector that achieves the best outcomes for women.
Ten months on from our last survey and having now endured three national lockdowns, we wanted to see how women’s organisations across the UK were faring. We asked what the respondents considered to be their top three pressing challenges at this point in the pandemic. The top two priorities were related to supporting service users (trying to meet increased demand for services and dealing with their more complex needs) and thirdly, organisational survival, namely funding issues post March 31st.
Black and minoritised women’s organisations reported markedly more demand than other organisations in the following areas: emergency basic services; refuge beds; enquiries/signposting and mental health support. 58% of all organisations who completed the survey are a bit or very worried about surviving this crisis. 14% reported being very worried. Organisations outside of London are worried the most
The grants can be used for work that supports Black and minoritised women and girls to deal with the impact of COVID-19.
Grants can be used for unrestricted costs. Grants are made towards the general running costs of your organisation/group, most often referred to as Core Costs.
Grants can be used towards salaries, rent, utility bills, IT costs, insurance, training, freeing senior staff time to work on strategic developments, developing new programs and services in response to changing context of COVID-19, governance activities and fundraising support for example; essentially to keep applicant organisations working through the pandemic or working toward recovery.
Who can apply? To be eligible for a grant, an organisation must:
Be a Black and minoritised led-by-for women’s organisation, which is at least 75% of your senior team and/or trustees are women from Black and minoritised backgrounds.
- Have an annual turnover of less than £100,000 for £5,000 grants and less than £350,000 for £10,000 grants.
- Directly deliver services to Black and minoritised women and girls.
- Be an organisation impacted by COVID-19.
- Have an organisational bank account, or have a registered charity able to be accountable/hold funds on your behalf, which requires two different/independent people to authorise payments or cheques.
- Be delivering services in England
- Be a charitable organisation or group with written governing document, i.e. constitutions or articles of associations
Grant amount: Each organisation can apply for either a grant of £5,000 or £10,000. An organisation can submit only one application (you cannot apply for both a £5,000 and £10,000 grant) and cannot apply in partnership with another organisation.
Application process: Applications for the Black & Minoritised Women’s Fund are submitted through an online form (via Google forms).
Deadline: £5,000 grants invitations opened 21 June 2021 and applications must be submitted by 3pm on 21 July 2021
If applying for £10,000 grants invitations will open on 1 September 2021 and be submitted by 3pm on 1 October 2021.
Website address: wrc.org.uk