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Hearing Voices Groups can, and often are, run on a shoe string budget. Many groups rely on the dedication and passion of people who are willing to contribute their time to help one another, or helpful organisations able to provide the necessary resources (a room, for example). Whilst running a group with little or no funding is feasible, having some cash for the basics (room hire, publicity, refreshments and facilitators expenses etc) can really help.

We hope that the following information helps you find enough funds to either get a group started or keep your existing one afloat in these challenging financial times. If you have any ideas for funding, please add them to the bottom of this page (as a comment).

Search For Funding Opportunities

There are lots of small grants available for community groups – the challenge is knowing where to look. The following websites can be used to look for information on fundraising opportunities.

Covid-19 Funding: If you are looking for funding to support your group or develop a new initiative in response to Covid-19, please see this page.

Funding Central

www.fundingcentral.org.uk

Funding Central is a free website for charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises – providing access to thousands of funding and finance opportunities, plus a wealth of tools and resources supporting organisations to develop sustainable income strategies appropriate to their needs.

Local Voluntary Action

Your local voluntary action organisation may be able to support you in finding suitable funding opportunities. Just google ‘Voluntary Action’ and your county/city.

Voluntary Action Leicestershire has a great funding toolkit that is useful for other areas in england too. You can search their database for a range of funding opportunities www.open4community.info/leicestershire/

Small Grants

The following is a selection of small grant opportunities that may be useful to you. It’s meant as an indicator of what’s available, rather than a complete list. Do check out the ‘search for funding’ sites above for a more comprehensive picture.

Awards For All

www.awardsforall.org.uk

Awards for All England is a simple small grants scheme making awards of between £300 and £10,000. The Awards for All programme aims to help improve local communities and the lives of people most in need. To do this we want to fund projects that meet one or more of the following outcomes:

  • People have better chances in life – with better access to training and development to improve their life skills.
  • Stronger communities – with more active citizens working together to tackle their problems.
  • Improved rural and urban environments – which communities are better able to access and enjoy.
  • Healthier and more active people and communities.

The application form is short and simple. Email us the completed form. You will find out if you are successful within six weeks.

There are similar programmes for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. See their website for more information.

Co-operative Community Fund Grants

www.co-operative.coop/membership/local-communities/community-fund/

Community Fund grants, between £100 and £2,000 are awarded to community, voluntary, or self-help groups to run projects that meet the following criteria. To be successful, a group must:

Carry out positive work in the community

and a project must:

  • address a community issue
  • provide a good long-term benefit to the community
  • support co-operative values and principles
  • ideally be innovative in its approach

Hearing Voices Network Cymru: Resource Pack Fund

www.hearingvoicescymru.org/awards/resource-pack-fund

The Hearing Voices Resource Pack fund was established by Hywel Davies and the Hearing Voices Network Cymru in 2011. The Fund is intended to ensure information about the hearing voices approach is more widely available throughout the world.

The main priority of the Fund is to encourage the development of active hearing voices initiatives at a national and local level. The fund is available to groups and individuals who support the work of the hearing voice movement.

The fund will enable over 100 Resource Packs to be disseminated each year that the fund will run (initially two years).

Donations & Sponsored Events

Some groups rely completely on donations from members of the public, and those kind people who are willing to do something amazing to raise funds for them. This can include sponsored head-shaves, gigs, the ‘three peaks challenge’ and a ‘fun run’/marathon. If you’d like to explore this further, check out How 2 Fundraise (www.how2fundraise.org)

Coming Soon

There are many more options available. Over the coming months we will be bringing together some examples of these, along with real life experiences of groups finding the funds they need to keep going.