New Winter Wishes Fund for festive fun in your communities
25 October 2024
We’ve launched the Winter Wishes Fund, providing grants of up to £1,000 for community initiatives over the festive period.
For most, the festive period is a time of celebration, but for some it can be a difficult period with additional financial pressures and deepened feelings of social isolation and loneliness. Our Winter Wishes fund will support not-for-profit groups and organisations to deliver projects that help our communities and customers over the festive period.
We will be awarding grants from £300 up to £1,000 for initiatives and projects that actively support the communities we work in. The fund is to support projects that provide vital support to those most vulnerable in our communities, helping to navigate this time of year. Funding can be used in a variety of ways, from providing the local community with a warm nourishing meal, gifting toys and hampers to families in need and providing shelter to people without a safe place to call home at Christmas.
Examples of projects we have funded in the past include:
- Hot meal distribution for socially isolated older people
- Christmas hampers to families in need
- Toy support for children suffering from homelessness or domestic abuse
- Clothes collection/distribution for the homeless
- Local Christmas events designed and run by community members
We will prioritise projects that are clearly working in communities where we operate and can demonstrate that SNG customers will benefit from the project activities.
Who can apply to the Winter Wishes fund?
To apply for this fund, you must be a local not-for-profit group, community organisation, or registered charity and you must be able to demonstrate how your project will benefit SNG customers.
We cannot support individuals, private businesses or organisations set up as trusts. We will also not be able to support national appeals, activities which are of a wholly and exclusively political nature, or retrospective funding of activities, projects or equipment. Examples of projects we cannot support with this fund include commercial events and Christmas parties/events that are not run by community members or specifically targeted at supporting those most in need.
The application process
To apply for funding, organisations will need to register your project on the ActionFunder website. ActionFunder is a digital fundraising platform that connects funding bodies with non-profits with the goal of supporting thriving local communities. By adding their project to ActionFunder, applicants will have the potential to match with multiple different funding pots, not just our Winter Wishes fund.
We need your help!
We need your help to ensure that this fund is supporting the great work happening in our communities over the festive period. Whether that’s to give an extra boost of income to cover increased demand for support over the Christmas break, or to bring some festive joy to people in need at this time of year! Please share the news about this fund with any partners and community groups that you work with or know of that might benefit from applying!
Click here for the full details and application link
We want to make sure all the funding is given out before December so it can be used in time, so applications close at midnight on Wednesday 13 November.
If you have any questions about the application process, please contact the Grants team at grants@sng.org.uk or the community investment team at community.investment@sng.org.uk
