Funding

General Funding Information is available on the Girlguiding UK and LaSER websites to registered members (once signed in, LaSER shows a very good list of funding sources); the information here is more specific to Surrey East, or the county of Surrey generally.

High Sheriff Youth Awards - The High Sheriff Youth Awards scheme gives financial support to young people in Surrey who want to help reduce or prevent crime – and make their communities stronger and safer. They present awards to groups of young people who need funding for these projects. HSYA also welcomes applications from individual adults or organisations working with young people in this way. You may need help with the start-up costs of a new scheme. Or if you have an existing project that needs further support, tell them about it. They try to fund any project where young people, normally between the ages of 9 and 18, are actively involved in planning and running it.

Surrey Community Action As well as the general website, it's possible to sign up for funding alerts from this organisation which is a countywide charity offering advice, support and information to both voluntary and community groups. If they don’t know the answer to your question, they say they know someone who does. Complete a form and SCA will search for funding of the type you need.

Surrey Youth Focus (formerly Surrey CVYS) has a complete section on the grants it gives itself, and others available to Surrey. Have a look at the SYF website which has a good range of information pages relevant to voluntary youth organisations in Surrey and their meeting places.

Phil the Bag - a commercial operation that pays you for collecting textiles and shoes. At least 75% of textiles we throw away are recyclable. However, we only recycle around 25% and textiles still make up 12% of landfill sites. The main aims of the 'Phil' the Bag™ Scheme are to increase textile recycling rates, reduce landfill and to offer a financial reward to those participating in our project. 'Phil' the Bag™ now works with over 10,000 schools, PTA's, Clubs & Charities including Scouts & Guides. Lower Kingswood Brownies collected and said "we got an email in June telling us 'your weight for your textiles was 109.3kg and shoes 11.2kg which equates to £50.69. Well Done'. So just goes to show every little bit does help and our 25 bags of textile recycling really did raise some funds for our unit." And 1st Weybridge Scouts raised over £1,000! Telephone 01795 424404 or email.

Matched Funding - You might have heard about Matched Funding – the scheme that some employers run whereby they match money raised by their employees for charitable causes. Banks are quite good at running such schemes, and our local Units have received donations from Lloyds TSB in the past. Looking through some fundraising ideas the other day I came across a rather interesting use of the scheme – one which I hadn’t thought of before, but it sounded useful and worth passing on in case it applies to an adult in YOUR Unit.

The Matched Funding scheme usually means that an employee raises, say, £500, for a charity (such as Girlguiding) and the employer matches that amount, thus doubling the total. Only some employers run Matched Funding – from the information I’ve found on the Internet I’d say all the big banks, Asda, Tesco, BT, M&S etc – it’s quite a list, but looks like any big company who has a wish to be seen as ‘socially responsible’? There’s usually a limit to the employer’s donation, and perhaps other conditions too. Best advice is to ask your employer if they run a Matched Funding scheme, and what the conditions are.

The ‘twist’ I came across (on a Scout Group website) is that your contribution doesn’t have to be ‘real’ money. You don’t have to raise money from a sponsored walk, cake sale, or anything else. You’re already putting value into your Unit simply by volunteering to help or run it each week. Say two hours a week at minimum wage – that’s £500 a year! So that’s your contribution to the Unit, your ‘contribution to charity’, and it may be worth approaching your employer to see if their scheme (if they have one) will allow Matched Funding against your contribution. Times are hard – but surely it’s worth asking? Let me know how you get on.

In March 2011 - I'm sure you're aware (!!) but there will be changes in Gift Aid rules in 2013 specifically affecting small donation (such as Text Giving).

From April 2013 charities and community amateur sports clubs that receive small donations of £10 or less will be able to apply for a Gift Aid style repayment without the need to obtain Gift Aid declarations for those donations. The amount of small donations on which the new repayment can be claimed will be capped at £5,000 per year, per charity. In order to qualify for this new repayment, charities will need to have been recognised by HMRC for Gift Aid purposes for at least three years, have been operating Gift Aid successfully throughout that time and have a good tax compliance record. The Government will be consulting with charity representatives on the details of the new scheme over the summer 2011.

Robin Gould - Webmaster - July 2011