Applying for a grant

Guidelines for applications to the Jill Franklin Trust 

Covid-19.  The trust is using all its income to relieve poverty and distress among its clients (refugees and asylum seekers, mental health group members etc), especially in the North East of England and has no money to spare at least until December 2022 for other groups.  We will update the website when we are ready to receive applications again.

The Jill Franklin Trust is offering grants a few of up to £3,000 a month for a year to charities and other organisations in the North East of England (Northumbria, Tyne-and-Wear, County Durham, Newcastle, Cleveland) for  work with refugees and asylum seekers (including people “with no recourse on public funds”), people with mental health issues and for refuges.  The money is for relief from extreme pressure caused by the corona virus crisis to support these people.

The Jill Franklin Trust was set up in memory of Jill Franklin, 1928-1988, and has about £80,000 a year to spend.  Some this is already committed as a block grant for prisoners’ education that would not be funded by the government and to organisations we have promised grants over a number of years.

The Trust has decided to focus its funding on deprived areas of Great Britain and, looks with particular favour at applications from the North or England and from Wales.

Small charities are preferred, and simply prepared proposals are more likely to be accepted.

Areas the Trust funds:

Grants are typically £1,000 for one to three years (except for church restoration which is normally £500), and the trust has five areas for which it is soliciting grant applications:

    • Self-Help groups to support people with a mental illness or learning difficulties, and their carers (parents etc.),
    • Organisations helping and supporting refugees and asylum-seekers coming to or in the UK,
    • The restoration (not “improvement”) of churches of architectural importance (half a page in Pevsner’s Buildings of its county).  The church should be open to visitors every day,
    • Local schemes to help prisoners to resettle, or to desist from crime,
    • Refuges for survivors of domestic violence

Excluded categories:

    • The Trustees do not look favourably on appeals for building work (other than church restoration), nor for endowment funds,
    • We will not fund to replace the duties of Government, local authorities or the NHS,
    • We are not funding overseas,
    • No grants are given to religious organisations set up for welfare, education etc. of whatever religion, unless the service is open to and used by people from all denominations, and there is no attempt to conduct any creedal propaganda or religious rituals, or require clients to attend religious services,
    • Animal and environmental charities,
    • Students, nor to any individuals nor for overseas travel, and
  • Medical research.

To apply

    • Applicants for a grant should email jft@jill-franklin-trust.org.uk enclosing a budget for the project.  If your accounts are not filed with the Charity Commission or OSCA, please enclose them, or provide a link to them.
    • A preliminary enquiry by email is welcomed, however we are not always able to acknowledge enquiries.
    • The Trustees tend to look more favourably on an appeal which is simply and economically prepared: glossy, “prestige” and Mailsorted brochures do not impress the trustees.
    • We have very little uncommitted cash, so most applications are rejected, for the only reason that we have insufficient money.

Applications will be acknowledged, and are normally considered quarterly, in the last month of the quarter.

Guidelines revised (12/2021)

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