Aims/priorities:
Thanks to funding from Rochdale Borough Council Public Health team, Action Together is offering grants of up to £25,000 to help the VCFSE sector to embed preventative support alongside an existing emergency support offer.
The fund priorities have been co-produced by a group of representatives from the Anti-Poverty Network, Welfare Advice Forum, Food Solutions Forum, Ethnic Communities Network and the Digital Inclusion Forum.
The aim of this fund is to embed holistic preventative support in places with existing ‘crisis offers’. Places with a ‘crisis offer’ could be a foodbank, a warm space, a community centre, or anywhere with a track record of providing an emergency support offer to people living in poverty.
The fund is to support these places to offer support to address the root causes of poverty and help people break cycles of poverty. Prevention can include advice, assistance with form filling, increasing digital inclusion, or a whole range of other offers. These are just a few starting points, and we recognise there are many more ways to provide proactive support to help individuals before they reach a crisis.
Demonstrating the impact of prevention can be challenging – it is hard to prove that something didn’t happen because of your support. But we expect organisations to develop ways to measure and track the difference you make.
We welcome applications in collaboration between larger organisations and smaller grassroots groups. Please get in touch if you are interested in a partnership bid and would like support to connect with other local groups.
Funding priorities:
- Embedding Holistic Support and Advice Alongside Crisis Support: Providing advice alongside crisis support such as finances, benefits or housing.
- Form Filling Assistance: Offer support for filling out forms, especially for disability benefits, or train volunteers to assist with form completion.
- Digital Inclusion: Provide digital literacy training, multilingual digital training, or providing access to free Wi-Fi or expanding infrastructure such as Mesh networks.
- Debt Advice, or debt support: Debt Advice is a regulated activity so to complete this you must be FCA-authorised or working with a commissioned FCA approved partner. For Debt Support you could provide wraparound support to help clients outside of the formal debt advice process: e.g. helping them to gather debt information, access credit reports, create budgets etc.
- Other Prevention Support: Implement strategies to prevent individuals from falling into or further into crisis.
Who can apply:
- you are a voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise (VCFSE) group locally rooted or actively working in the borough of Rochdale; and
- you are a member of Action Together CIO (you can register for free to become a member here)
- you are formally constituted.
Grant amount: Grants of up to £25,000 are available
Deadline: Sunday 1st June 2025.
All projects must be complete by June 2026.
Application process:
Please read the guidance notes below thoroughly before completing the application form.
Rochdale Communities Fund - Prevention Fund - Guidance notes.docx (92.52 KB)Rochdale Communities Fund - Prevention - Grants Application Form £25,000.docx (62.96 KB)
There will be an online Meet the Funder session taking place on Tuesday 13th May at 2pm where you will learn more about the fund priorities, the grant amounts, discover the type of projects we might fund and learn more about the application process.
Click here to book your place.
Contact information:
For more information, please either call 0161 339 2345 and ask for Hayley Tomlinson or please email: hayley.tomlinson@actiontogether.org.uk