Kent Community Foundation Receives Additional Support for Good Causes Affected by the Pandemic

Kent Community Foundation has received £470,000 from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to support organisations across Kent and Medway. This new funding will be used to award grants to those who had previously applied to Kent Community Foundation’s COVID-19 Fund and were initially unsuccessful as the Fund was oversubscribed.

The £470,000 from central government will be awarded by Kent Community Foundation as grants of up to £20,000, to cover essential running costs to organisations with an annual income of less than £1m, who are continuing to support communities affected by the Coronavirus pandemic as they start to recover and rebuild post the crisis.

Josephine McCartney, Chief Executive, Kent Community Foundation, said “This additional funding from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is most welcome and will enable Kent Community Foundation to financially support more of the good causes that originally applied to the COVID-19 Fund.

We are also continuing to support organisations who are reaching people who have lost jobs because of the impact of Coronavirus and are supporting them with either financial/practical/benefits advice or around employability/re-skilling/raising confidence etc. Similarly, we are happy to consider requests for workplace adaptations.

Organisations that have already received emergency funding from Kent Community Foundation are welcome to apply again, but only if they can demonstrate a real need for additional resources to deal with the ongoing impact of the pandemic.

As well as the emergency funding we are still actively awarding grants from our other Funds to help charities and community groups and my team is available to help with advice about the application process.”

Ashford and Tenterden Umbrella is just one of the 400 organisations to have received funding during the pandemic. They were awarded £4,000 from the Kent Community Foundation Coronavirus Emergency Fund to help with the loss of income caused by the closure of their pop up café and to purchase PPE and £6,000 from the Kent Community Foundation COVID-19 Fund to cover core costs.

Eddie Chambers, Chair, Ashford and Tenterden Umbrella, said, “The emergency grants and the tremendous and very friendly support and advice we have received from Kent Community Foundation has been a crucial anchor for the charity and our service users by enabling us to continue to deliver our essential service to our beneficiaries on a sustainable basis.”

About the Distribution of Funding

The funding from DCMS will help front-line organisations with an annual income of less than £1m,  supporting vulnerable communities across Kent and Medway to recover from the effects of the pandemic, and to address the chronic social and health needs which have been exacerbated by the crisis. 

The beneficiaries will include,

  • People experiencing food poverty 
  • People experiencing financial hardship (needing money/debt/employment/benefits advice) 
  • People suffering through isolation 
  • People with mental health needs 
  • Struggling families with dependent children 
  • People experiencing domestic abuse

The Fund will award grants up to £20K to cover essential running costs

Grants will be paid by October, and all monies must be spent by 31st March 2021. 

 

Related posts

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.