Memo from Chris Carman - Funding Adviser DCA:
I went to an update meeting with the Community Foundation for Bournemouth, Dorset & Poole at the end of last week and would like to pass on some important information to you.
This year’s allocation of funds for the shire county of Dorset (that is all of Dorset except Bournemouth & Poole) has been increased to £174,000. £63,000 has already been allocated to projects which were left outstanding from last year’s round of funding but that still leaves a goodly sum to be distributed through Dorset. Any underspend will be returned to central government, which is obviously a situation we need to avoid.
To enable all this year’s grant awards to have time to be spent before 31st March 2011, the grants panel at CFBDP would like to have distributed all the funds by September 2010. That only leaves us with a few months in which to find groups with projects that could be suitable for a Grassroots Grant.
The CFBDP grants panel are considering supporting some Village Hall & Community Association projects this year in an attempt to distribute all the funds, although their main focus will still be on the VH & CA user groups. The CFBDP intend to produce posters and flyers for distribution through the VH & CAs to advertise the grant to their user groups.
The timeframe for decisions on applications is 6 weeks for bids of £5000 (the maximum award) and 2 weeks for bids of £1000.
The guidance notes and application form can be downloaded from www.cfbdp.org if you would like to familiarize yourselves with the paperwork before speaking to any of your groups. (There have been some changes since last year). If you don’t feel you have the capacity to work through applications with groups I will be happy to take any queries if you want to signpost them to me. Or if you want to work with the group but would like me to check through the application before submission, then I’ll be happy to do that, so please let me know.
Best wishes
Chris Carman
FUNDING ADVISER