Lots of fundraising resources!

There are just a few days left to apply for 'Our Place' funding – the Department of Communities and Local Government flagship programme for investing in neighbourhoods. Two of our partners, Locality and Community Matters are very involved in delivering this programme. DCLG has awarded a consortium led by Locality £4.3m to support at least 100 local neighbourhoods (areas) to work collaboratively with their communities and local partners to address a shared priority or local service, such as adult social care, public realm, services for vulnerable people, improving health or creating employment opportunities. You can apply if you are an incorporated body with a charitable, philanthropic or benevolent primary purpose; a parish or town council; public service provider or local authority in England, and this round of applications closes on 28th February.

There's a funding un-conference taking place in March, for those wanting to develop skills in an informal environment. More details here.

Don't forget, the FbRN funding resource is available online here: http://www.fbrn.org.uk/reading/corporate-fundraising-research-resources-guide.

At the recent excellent Near Neighbours national event John McCallum of the St Philip’s Centre in Leicester presented a series of excellent resources he has produced on fundraising and associated activities.  

There are many other guides and toolkits which you may wish to look at if you are raising funds for your organisation. The Institute of Fundraising’s print guides include the now out-of-print Good Fundraising Guide and the Trustees Guide to Fundraising.  They also produce an excellent series of short video guides on aspects of fundraising

Look out for training based on the Near Neighbours guides which FbRN plan to run in conjunction with John McCallum, St Philip’s Centre and Near Neighbours later in the year. 

Government funding for innovation in children’s services . Seed grants of up to £10,000 are available to help develop innovative proposals that have the potential to transform outcomes for children who need help from social care services and/or be more cost-effective, and that have the potential to be applied widely across the system.  This is a quick turnaround programme - Following a successful bid, the government expect the activity paid for by the seed grant to begin within one month and to finish no later than 17 December 2014.

The FSE Group has launched The Social Impact Accelerator Loan Scheme (‘SIA’), supported by initial investment from Big Society Capital.  Flexibly structured loans of between £250,000 and £1,000,000 will be provided to regulated social sector organisations to support their expansion strategies.