Local collaborations programme

Local collaborations or partnerships that are led by small charities can apply for funding.  

We will fund: 

• established collaborations/networks/consortia: you will need to identify which partners of your collaboration will be involved in this work.
• new collaborations where partners have recently come together around a local issue with identified partners.  

Eligibility

The charity that would receive the grant (the applicant organisation) must make the application on behalf of the collaboration and would need to meet the eligibility requirements below. Please take our eligibility quiz before applying to make sure you meet these requirements.  It could save you and your collaboration partners valuable time if you are not eligible to apply.  

Other partners in the collaboration don’t need to meet the same eligibility requirements as the applicant organisation, however we ask who else is involved in the application.  

The applicant organisation must: 

• Be registered as a charity or a charitable incorporated organisation (CIO) with the Charity Commission with an annual income between £25,000 and £1million. 

• Operate mainly in England and Wales. 

• Have at least one set of annual accounts showing as ‘received’ on the Charity Commission website, covering a twelve-month operating period.  

• Have a Board of at least three unrelated trustees in place, with their names appearing on your Charity Commission records. 

• Have a bank account in the name of the organisation with unrelated signatories. If the application is successful, the grant must be paid into this account. 

• The majority of people in positions of power (trustees, the CEO and senior managers) must not be related nor live at the same address. Where there are related parties, we will consider the relationship, conflicts of interest and loyalty, the balance of power of the related trustees, and how this is managed.  

• Have a safeguarding policy and Public Liability Insurance in place.  

• Be an independent organisation. We will look at any formal associations you have with other organisations, parent bodies, or group structures.    

• Not incorporate religious activity as part of your work unless your charity was established to support people of a particular faith. 

• Not be applying for funding to provide frontline/direct support or to pilot new work. 

• Ensure that there are a minimum of three organisations in the collaboration (including your charity).

• Ensure your collaboration’s influencing work aligns with at least one of the influencing priorities: accommodation, social security or support for refugees and asylum seekers. 

The type of work you might undertake may include: 

• supporting people with lived experience of a specific challenge to influence local decision-makers. 

• identifying local stakeholders to engage with, or strategic groups/forums/networks relevant to the work.  

• using evidence, case studies and data about a problem gathered from partner organisations’ frontline services alongside evidence from elsewhere, to engage local decision-makers, making the case for change and developing solutions. 

• presenting information in new or different ways to improve engagement and traction with local decision-makers. 

You might have previously been working on these issues either collectively or individually, with new work planned to build on the impact to date. Or you might be developing new approaches to influencing change around one of the programme’s themes.  

We will want to understand your influencing focus – the change you want to see, who you want to influence and how you will do this.  

We funded 15 collaborations in the first round of this programme. In this round we will not fund collaborations in the same Local Authority/place that are addressing the same key issue, as one we have already funded. 

For example, we funded a collaboration in Gateshead working on improving the appropriateness of support for asylum seekers and refugees.  

If you are seeking to collaborate in Gateshead around this issue you would not be able to apply. We would, however, be happy to connect you so you can find out more about the work already underway. 

Areas we are and are not accepting applications from depending on theme and area of interest.

Theme and key area of interest

Accommodation

Improve the appropriateness of accommodation: We are not accepting applications from charities in:

• Bristol
• Liverpool 
• London (specifically where focus is on the accommodation needs of women experiencing domestic abuse) 

Improve the affordability of accommodation: We are accepting applications from anywhere in England and Wales.

Increase the availability of accommodation: We are not accepting applications from charities in: 

• Greater Manchester 
• Leeds 

Social Security

Ensure benefits are not taken away unfairly: We are accepting applications from anywhere in England and Wales. 

Increase the availability of support for people facing crisis/destitution: We are not accepting applications from charities in: 

• Leicester and Leicestershire 
• Lewes District 
• Middlesbrough  
• The Wirral 
• Wrexham 
• York 

Improve the quality and appropriateness of employment support: We are not accepting applications from charities in: 

• London Borough of Lambeth

Support for refugees and asylum seekers 

Improve the availability of support for asylum seekers and refugees: We are accepting applications from anywhere in England and Wales. 

Improve the appropriateness of support for asylum seekers and refugees:  We are not accepting applications from charities in: 

• Gateshead 
• Greater Manchester 

Improve access to legal support for asylum seekers and refugees: We are not accepting applications from charities in: 

• Sheffield 

You can apply for grants of £100,000 over two years (£50,000 each year) with the opportunity to extend for a further year and additional £50,000. We anticipate making grants to 15 collaborations in this round of funding.  

If you are shortlisted, we will ask for a project budget at the second stage of the application.  

You will be able to apply for all costs relating to the proposed influencing work, to support your collaboration and to support people with lived experience to engage in the work.  This includes staff costs, activity and materials costs and core costs where they are overheads clearly related to the proposed project (e.g. CEO/senior management time, premises, management, finance and administration costs etc). 

This could include: 

• Additional capacity for existing or new roles such as to co-ordinate the collaboration; engage with stakeholders and those you are trying to influence; support people with lived experience. 
• Costs of bringing the collaboration together, and meetings with stakeholders. 
• Backfill of roles or payments to support smaller organisations to be involved. 
• Support for people with lived experience to be involved e.g. direct payments, wellbeing support, training and development, activity to engage with your local community and those you’re seeking to influence to make a case for change. 
• Capacity or expertise to support your influencing activity, e.g. to conduct research or analyse data, shape influencing or communications plans. 

We are also happy to consider adding our funding to support you have secured from others, or to build on or extend existing work. However, we would want to understand how our funding adds value to the existing work or support. 

What we mean by ‘a collaboration’

For the purposes of this programme we are defining a local collaboration as:

“A collaboration started and led by small and local charities in order to influence, shape and change local or regional practice, policy and/or systems”.

We will support collaborations that:

• are led by small and local charities.
• have at least three organisations in the partnership.
• want to influence an issue/challenge locally that aligns to our influencing themes.
• support and enable people with direct experience of the issue to influence change.
• challenge discrimination and inequalities.
• are in a defined local or regional geography that makes sense for the work (town/city, local authority, across counties, region).

We expect a local collaboration to include a range of partner organisations or at least the desire and ambition to engage a range of other organisations (these do not need to be charities and could be community groups, infrastructure organisations, Community Interest Companies, local agencies, etc.) to be able to influence at a local level and that you have or are developing relationships with local decision-makers. 

What we mean by ‘led by a small charity’

To apply for this funding, the charity leading the local collaboration must have an income between £25,000 and £1m per year.

We’ll want to understand how small charities play a key role in a collaboration.  They are likely to be original partners and have taken on a key role for example in convening and chairing partnership/sub-group meetings.  We will not fund collaborations or partnerships led by local authorities or statutory agencies. 

What we mean by ‘local’

We’ll fund collaborations within a defined geography that makes sense to the local/regional change they are seeking to achieve. This could be at a local authority level (which could also be part of a town/city), across counties or across a region/combined authority, for example.  We will only fund collaborations based in England and Wales. We will not fund collaborations working at a national level however we are open to supporting collaborations seeking to influence the practice of relevant national agencies as they operate and implement at a local level.

We understand that AI tools can help charities save time on writing applications and we support charities using these technologies. However, we want to help charities use this technology as best as possible. We are seeing an increase in AI-generated applications, and in many cases, this is not giving charities the best chance of success. These applications are often generic, do not give a clear voice to the charity and do not highlight the unique strengths of the charity.

Please ensure that you are not relying on AI to fully respond to questions within the application and that you only use it for preparing a first draft, formatting, and spell checking.

We read every single application we receive and do not use AI in any part of our decision making. We want to hear your unique voice so please use your time to tailor your responses to add context and details specific to your charity and collaboration and to convey your organisation's story or approach.

Who applies - is it an individual charity or the collaboration? 

The applicant organisation will need to be a small charity (with an annual income of under £1m) applying on behalf of the collaboration. 

Is it only charities that make the application? 

Yes, but the collaboration may include different types of organisations and is not limited to charities. 

We are an existing collaboration/consortium/network – can we apply? 

Yes, but you will need to identify partners within your existing consortium etc and develop a separate collaboration agreement for this work. 

How will you assess our approach to safeguarding?   

Safeguarding is a term used to denote measures to protect the health, well-being and human rights of individuals. It is the arrangements organisations have which are aimed at preventing and responding to all forms of harm, abuse, and exploitation.   

You must have a safeguarding policy in place. In addition to this, during the assessment conversation, we will also ask you about how this works in practice. For example,   

• what safeguarding training your Trustees, staff, and volunteers undertake   

• What safeguarding training your designated safeguarding lead has undertaken and when  

• when you last recorded a safeguarding incident   

• the process you underwent to manage your last safeguarding incident   

We are also interested in how you safeguard people either as paid staff or volunteers who may have care and support needs themselves.   

Will you fund core costs?  

We can cover some core costs but only those that relate directly to your influencing work and the collaboration. For example, if you were recruiting a co-ordinator for the collaboration we would fund the costs relating to this role eg management time, contribution to overheads etc. 

What do you mean by ‘cannot be used to pay for direct delivery of support or services’  

This funding is to support your collaboration in its influencing work which might include costs of engaging with your local community and decision-makers, support for people with direct experience to be involved, and supporting the collaboration (eg convening, co-ordination).  We will not fund the support you provide directly to the people you work with eg advice, advocacy, access to services, well-being and employability support etc.  

Can the charity applying pass on the grant funding to partner organisations? 

Yes, the grant can be passed to other organisations within the collaboration to cover the costs of the influencing work. 

We already have a grant from the Foundation - can we apply? 

Yes, if you have a live Foundation grant for your charity you can apply to this programme on behalf of your local collaboration. We won’t fund local collaborations that currently have a grant from us. 

We are a collaboration in one of the LocalMotion or Foundation’s People and Communities’ locations – can we apply? 

Yes, but we’d appreciate it if you emailed us first (collaboratons@lloydbankfoundtion.org.uk) so we can make sure we can connect you with the work already going on in these places.  

Our influencing work is at a national level but we work with local organisations – can we apply?  

No, this programme focussed on supporting influencing work by organisations operating at a local or regional level.  Our National Influencing Programme, is funding work to support work at a national level.