Given the ongoing impact of the pandemic, we are pleased to announce that we have extended the deadline for our Covid-19 Support Fund to 30 June 2021. 

Since its launch in July last year, the Covid-19 Support Fund has awarded approximately £1.05m in grants to 40 local organisations who provide a range of services to communities across Buckinghamshire.

The applications we have received have evidenced the numerous challenges faced by the Buckinghamshire not for profit sector and those they support. We have updated our eligibility criteria and application form a number of times throughout the life of the fund to best accommodate these challenges.

• We now only ask for management accounts from organisations whose annual income exceeds £100k or where the grant requested exceeds £10k.
• We have extended the eligibility criteria to include all formally constituted not for profit organisations, who can evidence an existing presence in Buckinghamshire and whose work benefits local residents.
• We will also accept applications from organisations with an annual income of over £1m, so long as there is sufficient evidence that their income has been negatively impacted by the pandemic. Please note that we will continue to prioritise requests from organisations with annual incomes of less than £1m.

We would particularly like to encourage applications from organisations who work with older residents and those from diverse backgrounds. We will continue to seek out communities we have not worked with before, and would welcome any introductions to organisations who have not previously received our funding.

We continue to work closely with other Buckinghamshire funders and the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) sector to better understand where we can add value to sharing knowledge and learning across the county.

We recently started receiving the final reports from organisations who were awarded grants in the early stages of the fund. We plan to use the insights from these reports to shape our funding approach for the latter part of this year. We look forward to sharing these insights with you over the next few months.

Thank you to all the organisations who have generously offered their time and expertise over the last year. Your experiences and knowledge help us ensure we continue to offer the support most needed in the county.

Visit our Covid-19 Support Fund page to read more about our application criteria and a link to the online application form.