Small community groups make a significant contribution to improving the lives of people and communities in London. They often do this by providing support for people to access their rights and entitlements, and to speak out about issues that directly affect them.
What we'll fund
This programme is for groups with incomes less than £300,000 per year.
The connected communities programme gives priority to:
- Organisations that serve and are led by Black and minoritised groups
- Organisations that serve and are led by Deaf and Disabled people
We can also fund other organisations led by the communities they serve.
When we say ‘led by people from the communities served’, we expect that at least 75% of the managing body and 50% of staff is representative of the group that the organisation supports.
Campaigning
We'll fund groups of people with direct experience of issues that impact communities affected by poverty and inequality. We want to support them to speak out for themselves and campaign for solutions.
We prioritise work on issues relating to our other programme areas, like:
- Housing
- Immigration
- Living standards
We don't general fund work relating to mental health, education and crime.
Advice work
Our priority is to support groups already providing social welfare advice. This means issues more likely to affect people on low incomes such as access to benefits and entitlements. This might also include discrimination, welfare rights, employment, housing, community care and immigration.
We'll ask organisations applying for funding to show that they:
- Intend to improve the quality of the advice they give
- Work in ways that stop problems from becoming more serious
- Support people to take more control over their lives
- Are well connected to other organisations that can send people needing advice to them and to providers of specialist advice when clients need this
