London ESF Community Grants

What is the Community Grants Programme

The Community Grants programme will provide grants of up to £12,000 to small voluntary and community organisations to support their capacity to engage with local communities and deliver a range of skills and employment support activities.

 The grants aim to support a quality outreach provision in providing an essential stepping stone for participants to progress onto other provision, with the emphasis being clearly on this progression.

Round 2 launched on 26 June 2009

Funded by the London Development Agency (LDA) and the European Social Fund, this application round will close at 12 noon on 14 September 2009.

The application process is being managed by the Greater London Enterprise (GLE), for full application details please visit the GLE website.

Round 1 Applications

Funded by the London Development Agency (LDA) and the European Social Fund, the applications for round one closed on 19 November 2008. Details of successful applicants will be announced in due course.

Background

The London Development Agency (LDA) is responsible for implementing the new Community Grants programme in London, which builds on the previous European Social Fund (ESF) Objective 3 Global Grants programme.

The London programme will contribute to delivering the Mayor's London Skills and Employment Strategy. It will look to create linkages with existing local and sub-regional infrastructure for tackling worklessness, including Local Strategic Partnerships, City Strategy Pathfinders, and the Personal Best Programme for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and mainstream Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and Learning and Skills Council (LSC) provision.

Budget Available

The budget available to distribute as grants over the period 2008 to 2010 is £5.36 million with 50% contribution from the LDA and 50% from the European Social Fund. This will provide funding to support approximatly 450 small organisations.

A Grant Coordinating Body (GCB), will distribute the funding on behalf of the LDA through a streamlined open and competitive bidding process. The first bidding round is expected to launch in early September 2008 and there will be workshops to help small organisations apply for the grants.

Types of Organisations who can apply for Community Grants

The project will support small third sector organisations who are best placed to reach excluded individuals who face barriers to employment.  Grants cannot be given to individuals.

Under the new programme it will be possible for projects to apply for multi annual grants but the LDA may decide to limit this to no more than two applications. Typical organisations which will be supported to deliver the projects include:

• Social enterprises;
• Registered charities;
• Voluntary and community organisations supporting refugees, women, children, families, disabled and other disadvantaged groups.

Criteria

Oranisations will need to meet the eligibility criteria which will be published in the guidance to applicants. The criteria includes:

• No more than 2 full time paid staff or the equivalent
• Income in the last financial year of no more than £67,000
• The organisation must be fully constituted with a management committee or board of trustees
• The organisation must have a bank account in the organisations name with a minimum of 2 signatories
• Organisations must not have received ESF funding before (except as a previous small grant)

Types of Projects to be Supported

The grants will cover a range of activity to support individual progress to further learning and employment, including:

• initial help with Skills for Life training
• taster work experience including voluntary work
• training advice and counselling
• job search assistance
• soft skills such as confidence building, assertiveness training, presentation skills
• engaging with communities and individuals to provide support to overcome barriers to employment in a relaxed and friendly environment.

Key Target Groups

For projects to be eligible the people you support must be unemployed or economically inactive. The key target groups are:

• people with disabilities and health conditions
• lone parents
• people belonging to ethnic minority groups experiencing most disadvantage in the labour market
• women
• people aged over 50
• young people aged 19 to 24 who are not in education, employment or training