Henry Smith Funding Masterclass

Since 1628, the charity has worked to combat disadvantage and meet both the challenges and opportunities facing people in need throughout the country. One of the largest independent grant makers in the UK, the Henry Smith Charity distributes around £30 million each year to good causes.

This course will take you through the application process, with a particular focus on the Charity’s two flagship funding programmes:
• Improving Lives, which offers grants of between £20,000-£60,000 per year over a maximum of 3 years, covering project and running costs for small and medium sized organisations in the UK (who have an annual income between £50,000 - £2m or in exceptional circumstance up to £5m).
• Strengthening Communities, which also offers grants of between £20,000-£60,000 per year for a maximum of 3 years, covering project and running costs for smaller organisations (who have an annual income between £20,000-£500,000) based and working within the 10% most deprived areas (as per Indices of Multiple Deprivation).

Specifically this course will help you to:
• Gain an overview of Henry Smith grant programmes
• Be clear about the staged application process for Henry Smith grant programmes
• Understand how to design and develop your project ideas
• Understand how to tackle the application questions and make the best possible case for your project
• Understand how to evidence need and develop project outcomes
• Explore methods to develop your project budget
• Explore techniques for writing high quality funding applications, particularly to Improving Lives or Strengthening Communities

This course is aimed at anyone who has already been involved in writing applications to small/medium charitable trusts but is now looking to develop project or revenue bids focused under the Charity’s key priority areas.
All of our funder specific masterclasses have been designed using our in-house experience of working with applicants to prepare and submit successful bids to each funder. This knowledge and experience helped us to secure over £5m of funding for community projects in 2018/19. Where course content includes specific input from the funder it will be explicitly referenced in the course description.