Alternative funding
Finding funding for a project can be daunting, but there are plenty of venues and opportunities. We have gathered some here and hope it is helpful.
The Church of England
The Church of England is a good place to start looking, as it lists the main organisations that help churches not just with their fabric repairs but also the conservation of fixtures and furnishings, monuments, organs and bells and with the creation of new facilities.
The National Churches Trust
The National Churches Trust have introduced four new grant schemes:-
- Preventative Maintenance Micro-Grants – Grants to support the cost of MaintenanceBooker maintenance services.
- Foundation Grants – Small grants to support small, urgent maintenance and repair issues or to carry out small investigative works costing up to £10,000.
- Gateway Grants – To support churches in their project development up to RIBA stage 1; supporting local church trusts; and essential repair projects with estimated costs of between £10,000 and £100,000.
- Cornerstone Grants – For urgent and essential structural repair projects with estimated costs of at least £100,000 that will help places of worship become wind and watertight, and for installing kitchens and toilets with estimated costs of at least £30,000, to improve access for all.
The funding will never be more than 50% of the project costs.
Amey Community Fund
Previously the Donarbon Community Fund, then AmeyCespa Community Fund.
Landfill operators must pay a tax to the Government on every tonne of waste that is sent to landfill. The Landfill Communities Fund (LCF) allows landfill operators to ‘offset’ a percentage of the landfill tax (currently 6% of their liability) and give a proportion of it to organisations who deliver environmental objectives, instead of paying all the landfill tax to the Government.
The principle of the LCF is that it ‘offsets’ some of the negative impacts of living near a landfill site. This is done by allowing landfill operators to pay a proportion of their landfill tax liability to not-for-profit organisations that deliver benefits to the general public, biodiversity or the environment, within a 10 mile radius of a landfill site.
Donarbon Ltd originally set up the Donarbon Community Fund as its LCF. After the takeover by AmeyCespa Group, this is now the Amey Community Fund. Under the LCF regulations, the fund has to be administered by an independent organisation and AmeyCespa have commissioned the Cambridgeshire Community Foundation to manage the Fund.
Other Funding Links
Other national sources of potential funding:
- The National Lottery Heritage Fund gives grants to sustain and transform our heritage
- The Garfield Weston Foundation
- The Wolfson Foundation grants are administered by the Church Buildings Council
- The Headley Trust
- All Churches Trust
- The Veneziana Fund, c/o PWW Solicitors
- The Idlewild Trust
- The Jill Franklin Trust
- The William and James Morris Fund, c/o The Society of Antiquaries of London
- The Glaziers Trust, c/o The Worshipful Company of Glaziers and Painters of Glass
- The Ironmongers’ Company
- The Church and Community Fund
- Mick George Community Fund
- The G C Gibson Trust
The following national sources of funding offer grants for historic church buildings. They do not have websites but can be contacted at the following addresses:
Touche Ross & Co
Blenheim House
Fitzalan Court
Newport Road
Cardiff
CF2 1TS
The Manifold Charitable Trust
Shottesbrooke House
Maidenhead
SL6 3SW