Thank you for your interest in our UK Small Grants programme.
This programme is designed to support excellent local organisations and projects that work with:
It provides grants of up to £10,000, although many grants are smaller than this.
The programme is open to applications at any time. We aim to respond to your application with a final decision within twelve weeks.
We aim to support as many organisations as possible, and therefore are unlikely to fund any organisation in consecutive years. If you have received a grant, please wait at least a year after the completion of your project before reapplying.
If you are unsuccessful, we also ask that you wait at least one year from the date of your application before reapplying.
Every grant we make is intended to support disabled children and children with life-limiting conditions and their families.
We will consider applications from organisations working with children and young people aged from 0 – 25 years.
Projects:
• Activities for disabled children, children with life-limiting conditions and their families.
• Activities which support siblings of disabled children or siblings of children with life-limiting conditions.
• Bereavement support for children and young people and for families bereaved of a child.
• Family support / parent-led peer support for parents of disabled children.
• Respite which supports the whole family.
Equipment and Materials:• Renovation, upgrading and additional equipment for hydrotherapy pools and multi-sensory rooms.
• Minibuses.
• Specialised play equipment / access to play and leisure for disabled children, children with life-limiting conditions and their families.
What sort of organisation do we fund?
• We fund UK registered charitable organisations and CICs delivering projects in the UK.
• We fund organisations whose annual income is less than £350,000.
• We are committed to working towards a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion. We will fund organisations which share our goal and which are open to children and families of all faiths, backgrounds and cultures.
• We are particularly keen to receive applications from organisations which operate in areas of high deprivation.
We regret that we cannot consider applications from the following:
• Organisations which have received a small grant from us within the last 12 months
• Local authorities
• Residential schemes
• Schools
• Condition-specific organisations
• Organisations seeking funding for wish-granting activities or regranting
• Organisations which are registered outside the UK
• Projects taking place outside the UK
• Newly registered organisations which do not yet have a full year of accounts
• Individuals
To apply for a UK Small Grant, please click the following link to complete our online form:
Apply using the online form (opens in a new tab).
Firstly you will need to do a quick eligibility quiz to check you meet our eligibility criteria. Then you will see an overview of the information you need to provide, and you can launch the application form. Please note that once you have begun to fill in the form, it is not possible to save your progress and return to complete it later. We therefore suggest you ensure you have all the information to hand before you begin.
The information you will need to provide is as follows:
• Contact details of organisation and applicant
• Charity or CIC number
• Year organisation was founded
• Aim of organisation and activities/programmes delivered.
• Number of staff and volunteers.
• Financial information (most recent income and expenditure, reserves policy and statutory funding, if applicable
• What you are seeking funds for and the budget for this work
• Information about your service users.
• Details of any fees charged by your organisation
• A description of the geographical area you work in
• Details of any previous funding from True Colours
• Whether or not DBS/PVG/AccessNI checks have been completed by your organisation
• Supporting documents - we require a copy of your latest annual accounts and safeguarding policy. You are welcome to attach a full budget, if you wish.
Please see our Tips document for more guidance on completing the form:
Tips on how to complete the form (PDF - opens in a new tab).
You will receive an automatic acknowledgement email after you submit your application. We aim to respond to your application with a final decision within twelve weeks but at peak times this can be longer – we will keep you informed of timelines. Please be assured that we will contact you if there is any additional information we need to support your application, or if we have any questions. Due to the volume of applications we receive, we are unable to provide individual feedback on applications, but we will always contact you to advise whether or not you have been successful.
If you have any further questions or experience any technical problems with submitting your form, please email us at info@truecolourstrust.org.uk. We can also provide a Microsoft Word form for anyone who may need one.
If you are awarded a grant, we will write to you with details of the grant conditions.
If you would like to proceed with the grant, we ask that you contact us to accept the conditions and let us know when you would like to receive payment. It is very helpful if you could contact us within six weeks of receiving our award letter and we ask that you draw down payment of the grant within 12 months of the award being made.
It is a condition of all our grants that you provide a report on the use of the grant within 12 months of the payment being made.
Organisations in receipt of a grant must adhere to the Trust's safeguarding policy. View the Trust's safeguarding policy.
