Racial equity programme

Registered Charities and CIOs must:

• Be registered as a charity or a charitable incorporated organisation (CIO) with the Charity Commission or the Index for Charities registered in the Isle of Man. We will ask for your charity registration number at the start of your application.  
• Have at least one set of annual accounts showing as ‘received’ on the Charity Commission website, covering a twelve-month operating period. If you are based in the Isle of Man, we will ask you to submit your latest set of accounts.
• Have a Board of at least three trustees in place who are not related to other Board members and have their names appearing on your Charity Commission records.

Or, if you are a Community Interest Company:

• Be Limited by Guarantee or Limited by Shares under Schedule 2 and be registered with Companies House. We will review your Articles of Association that show you have an asset lock in place and that you have named the organisation that will receive the company’s assets on dissolution. If there is no named organisation, this will need to be in place before your application can progress to full assessment.
• Have at least one set of annual accounts filed with Companies House that show a track record of frontline delivery. You must also have filed your CIC Annual Report CIC34 for the last year. We will ask you to submit your profit and loss account for your latest financial year.
• Have at least three unrelated Directors sitting on your Board who are registered with Companies House.
• No Director should hold more than 50% of the company’s voting rights or have the sole right to remove other Directors.

All organisations must:

• Be based and working in England and Wales, outside of London. Most of your organisation’s time and money is spent on activities in England and/or Wales and outside of London and helping people living in England and/or Wales and outside of London.
• Have an annual income of between £25,000 and £500,000 in the last set of published accounts. This is total income and, in the case of consolidated accounts, should cover all entities within those accounts.
• 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 (including directors/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 directors/trustees, and how this is managed.
• Have a track record of delivering services, for at least one year, to people aged 18 and over. You must currently be delivering these services. If your organisation has recently merged, then this must apply to at least one organisation pre-merger.
• Not include religious activity as a part of the services delivered unless the charity has been established to support people specifically of that faith.
• Have a safeguarding policy in place. We will explore what safeguarding means to your organisation, how it fits with your mission and values and your approach to safeguarding across your organisation.
• Have a Designated Safeguarding Lead/ Officer (DSL/O). This person will be accountable for your safeguarding practice and will be appropriately trained. In most cases we expect the DSL/O to have undertaken “Designated Safeguarding Lead training” This may be called as such or may be called Level 3 training in England or Level C training in Wales. 
• Hold Public Liability Insurance.
• Be an independent organisation. We will look at any formal associations you have with other organisations, parent bodies, or group structures. We will check that the Board or Directors of the applicant organisation has full control over its work and any conflicts of interest.
• If you have a live grant with Lloyds Bank Foundation, it must end before 29 May 2026. 

You must meet this programme criteria to be considered for funding. 

Your purpose and how you deliver services: 

• You will be directly delivering services that help people from racially minoritised communities experiencing significant economic disadvantage. You will be delivering services which support people over the long term. You will support people to strengthen their immediate personal or financial circumstances and then support them to make progress towards achieving their employment/career aspirations and ambitions.   

• Your organisation will be led by and working for communities experiencing inequity because of their race or ethnicity. By this, we mean that at least 75% of your Directors/Trustees, and at least 50% of staff self-identify as belonging to the communities you support. 

• People with lived experience of the issues your organisation addresses should be at the centre of designing, developing, and managing the services you provide.  

• You will be delivering culturally appropriate services that are developed in response to community needs. 

You must be delivering your services in the following way: 

• In-depth services:  Your organisation will support people over the long term. It is likely that you deliver a range of services supporting individuals through a structured pathway over a prolonged period. Your services will support people to overcome the initial barriers that stop them from improving their financial position and achieving their ambitions. For example, this could include services to meet immediate needs such as access to food, welfare advice or debt support that leads to longer term support such as CV writing and job interview coaching. Alternatively, you might work with an employer to support people who are under-represented in their sector to build their personal skills and take part in accredited vocational training, work placements or business start-up support.  

• Trusted relationships or partnerships. We know that, as a single organisation or service, you can’t be expected to meet all the needs of the people you support directly. However, you should have trusted relationships with providers or agencies which can help people to overcome the challenges they face and meet their basic needs (like benefits, health care, or domestic abuse services).  

When you refer someone for support, you maintain your relationship with them and track their progress to ensure their needs are being addressed. 

• Person-centred services and personal plans. We will support charities that structure their support around each individual, focusing on their strengths while meeting their needs and helping them to overcome the barriers they are experiencing.  

You will work together with the people you support to understand the challenges they may be experiencing and agree on how you will help them find a way to overcome them. You will keep written or electronic records or case files of each person you are supporting, noting progress against activities. You might use a tool to help your track progress such as the “The Pathway” outcome star framework. Your charity should be able to demonstrate the difference you are making through these records.  

In addition to the initial eligibility criteria and the programme criteria already outlined, when shortlisting organisations we will consider how well they meet the following prioritisation criteria:

Tackling the root causes of racial injustice  

The main purpose of your work will be directly supporting people in your communities, but we will prioritise applications that can demonstrate how they seek to achieve longer-term change by tackling the root causes of racial injustice. Your organisation will be able to demonstrate how you translate your knowledge of the barriers experienced by the community you represent to advocate for and bring about sustainable change. This might be through your work in the wider community, sector partnerships or campaigns. 

Your approach to equity, diversity and inclusion organisation 

We know that some people face discrimination because of how other people respond to who they are. Alongside a person’s race or ethnicity, this might be in relation to their age, disability, gender reassignment, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, poverty, social class or being rurally isolated.  

We know that we don't all have the same opportunities and therefore organisations need to acknowledge this and adjust support and access to services accordingly. 

We want to partner with charities that show they: 

• understand the makeup (not only in relation to race or ethnicity) of the communities they support and work with. 

• recognise the people in those communities who experience inequity. 

• proactively reach and engage with people to address the inequity they experience. 

• are inclusive and make people feel welcomed, valued and that they belong. 

We are not looking for perfection but want to understand your approach and thinking around ensuring you support people who have faced barriers and inequity.  

We do not provide funding for the following organisations:  

• Organisations based in London. 

• Organisations that are not charities or community interest companies registered in England and Wales.  

• Infrastructure or ‘umbrella’ organisations. 

• Organisations whose primary purpose is to give funds to individuals or other organisations. This means organisations use more than 50% of their annual expenditure as grants.  

• Organisations working predominantly outside England and Wales.  

• Organisations that require people to take part in a religious activity as part of the support provided.  

• Hospitals, health authorities, or hospices. 

• Rescue services.  

• Schools, colleges, or universities. 

We support charities using AI including in the writing of applications. We understand the cost and time pressures that charities are under and so support the adoption of technology that will help charities to focus on their core mission.  

However, we also want to help charities use the technology as best as possible. As such we wanted to share that we are seeing a trend of over-reliance on AI for applications. We read every single application we receive and do not use AI in any part of our decision making. It is very obvious when AI has been over-relied on 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 as such often underrepresent each charities own uniqueness.  

Below we have outlined some of the key things to consider when using AI in grant applications.  

• Avoid generic AI responses: It is really important to us as a funder that we understand you and your unique voice as a charity. In recent grant rounds, we have had a lot of applications that read the same, having been written by AI. This makes it much harder for us to get to know you as a charity. If you are going to use AI in your grant application, we recommend that you use it to write initial drafts and provide grammar checks, but you will still need to tailor the response to make sure you give your unique voice to the application.  

• Looking out for AI hallucinations: AI is a great tool for generating content. However, it can generate inaccurate content also known as hallucinations. We have had a number of applications recently, clearly AI generated, which have had factual inaccuracies in them. Please do make sure you proofread and fact check anything created by AI.  

•  Protecting your data: There are lots of powerful free AI tools out there. Whilst we recognise this is a great resource for charities we want to provide a word of caution. Many of these free models hold the data put into them. Every platform is different but as a rule of thumb we would encourage you not to put confidential or sensitive information into free software. If you are paying for an AI tool we suggest you inquire about their data protection and retention policies to make sure your data is safe.  

We are based in London but we also support people from parts of Essex. Can we apply?

You are eligible to apply if the majority of your work takes place outside of London even if your organisation’s registered address is in London. If only some of your work takes place outside of London, then we would consider you to be a London-based organisation and you would not be eligible to apply.  

How will you assess our approach to safeguarding?  

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 do your Trustees, staff, and volunteers undertake? 

• 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. 

Do you fund faith-based charities?  

Yes, we fund many charities that are faith-based and recognise them as a valuable part of society. However, we do not fund organisations where taking part in faith-based activity is part of the services provided, unless the organisation has been set up to support people specifically of that faith.   

Where an organisation is open to people of all faiths and none, we expect that the services are fully accessible to all people, regardless of their beliefs, and would not fund an organisation that refused some or all services to someone because of their race, religion, sexual orientation or other protected characteristics. We will explore your approach to diversity, equity and inclusion with you during the assessment.  

We do not fund organisations that specify that members or volunteers must come from a certain faith background unless there is a genuine occupational requirement, or your organisation is only working with people who share that same faith.  

We had an unusual one-off legacy payment which is reported in our last set of accounts, which takes our income over £500k. As this was a one-off, can we be considered eligible?  

No. We only fund organisations with an annual income of between £25,000 and £500,000 in the last published accounts. 

We are the lead partner in a network/consortium and receive payments on behalf of members of the consortium, which we cannot use for our own purposes. However, this means our income is over £500k. Can we still apply? 

Yes, if your organisation has received funds on behalf of a network of organisations or a consortium, rather than for its own use, we may consider your organisation eligible depending on the details of the arrangement. Please speak to us before applying.  

We have a commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion, but know that we could do better in this. Will this mean that we won’t be funded?  

No. We will partner with charities that can demonstrate that they are committed to ensuring that everyone who could benefit from its services can access them. However, where an organisation understands and recognises that it could have a stronger policy or practice, and demonstrates a commitment to improving in this, we may still consider awarding a grant and would provide development support to enable them to strengthen their practice.  

What do you mean by involving people with lived experience in our services? 

There are different ways to include the people who use your service in decision making. For example, you might invite informal feedback and ideas as well as providing formal questionnaires that are shared with policy makers or used to make improvements to the services you deliver. You might arrange information meetings or set up a client committee which plays a role in supporting the governance of the organisation. Your service might have been designed by people who have experienced the issues your organisation is trying to address.  

We have seven trustees and three senior managers. Four of the trustees are related. Are we eligible?  

No. Given that the trustees are the most accountable people in the organisation, we would consider that if most of the Trustees are related the organisation would not be eligible to apply.  

Our Chair and CEO are related. However, we have seven unrelated trustees and two senior managers. Are we eligible to apply?  

Yes. However, at the assessment, we will review the conflicts of interest and loyalty policy, how this works in practice, and how conflicts are managed.  

Only half of our Board come from the community we’re supporting but all of our staff do. Can we still apply? 

No. The purpose of this funding is to empower communities, and for that reason we ask that at least 75% of those responsible for the organisation’s governance and decision-making are from the community you are supporting. 

We have an asset lock in our CIC’s Articles of Association, but we have not specified who this is. Are we still eligible? 

You will not be able to progress to the next round of assessment until you have a named asset lock in place. As we don’t want to penalise organisations for an oversight on your governing documents, if you have an asset lock in place, we will allow you to update your Articles of Association with an appropriate named charity or CIC by a set deadline.   

We are a CIC limited by shares under Schedule 3. Can we still apply? 

No. We only fund CICs that are limited by guarantee or by shares under schedule 2. This is so that all of the company’s income goes towards delivering its social purpose.  

We have three Directors on our CIC’s board, but the Founding Director holds 75% of the voting rights. Are we eligible for funding? 

No. We state that no one individual should hold more than 50% of the voting rights to ensure transparency and fairness in its operations. 

Your programme closes on 29 May 2025; however, our accounts will not be finalised and published on the charity commission until after then. Can you consider our published accounts posted after the application deadline?  

No.  We need to be consistent and fair to all potential applicants. Therefore, we will use the accounts which are showing on the Charity Commission website, on the date you submit your application form to determine if your organisation is eligible.