Newport City Council has launched three grant schemes for charities, social enterprises and local community groups (VCSEs) working in the realms of culture, heritage and sports. These grants are part of the UK Government’s Shared Prosperity Fund (SPF) allocations supporting Newport City Council’s future vision of an ‘Ambitious, Fairer, Greener Newport For Everyone’. The council is harnessing whatimpact.com’s modern platform technology for the grant-making operation to ensure a seamless, transparent, and democratic application and evaluation process. The platform gives equal opportunity to different kinds of organisations and projects to apply in a comparable manner – and at no cost allows them to build a mini-website for their project to seek further support from individuals and the private sector.
The UK Government allocated Newport City Council lead grant schemes (SPF grants*) for supporting culture, heritage, and sports-related activities, projects, and social interventions adding over £800,000 to local charities, social enterprises and community groups’ budgets. The UK Shared Prosperity Fund is a central pillar of the UK government’s Levelling Up agenda and provides £2.6 billion of funding for local investment by March 2025. The Fund aims to improve pride in place and increase life chances across the UK investing in communities and places, and supporting local businesses, people and skills. Newport City Council’s focus for these grants is to enhance the social fabric and sense of local pride in Newport. This is done through investment in activities that enhance physical, cultural and social ties and access to amenities. The aim is to target funds to the levelling up interventions that support equal opportunity and build resilient, healthy and safe neighbourhoods.
Newport City Council has taken a new approach to grant-making by harnessing whatimpact.com’s modern platform technology combined with hands-on support to ensure a wide range of organisations to apply for grants from £1,000 to £30,000 per project. The aim is to find and attract a wide range of organisations and groups to deliver innovative, new solutions to tackle societal challenges in Newport through sports, culture, and heritage projects. Grants are available for any organisations whose beneficiaries consist of people living in Newport. Councillor Jane Mudd, leader of the council and cabinet member for economic growth and strategic investment, said: “We are delighted to be able to make these grants available thanks to the Shared Prosperity Fund. We have many fantastic community groups, charities and social enterprises in Newport, and we would love to see as many of them applying for these grants as possible. I am looking forward to seeing the many ideas for projects which celebrate our city’s rich and diverse cultural, heritage and sporting offers.”
whatimpact.com is a nationwide grant and donation platform, which uses Charity Commission, Companies House, and 360Giving data to build VCSE profiles and allows them to present their work, projects, resource requests and case studies in a transparent and equal manner. The process of applying for grants is significantly easier and less time-consuming than traditional grant-making application processes tend to be. Grantees will also use the platform to report on the success of their projects. whatimpact has one-on-one support for all applicants, both online and in-person. Furthermore, whatimpact is collaborating widely with Newport-based VCSE support organisations such as the council’s Community Connectors team, GAVO and Newport Live with regards to promoting the grant programmes and providing additional support for VCSEs e.g. establishing governance or setting up a bank account for new initiatives.
Grants are available for application from 12th February till December 2024. However, the grants are awarded on an ongoing basis for projects, events and activities taking place in 2024 and early 2025, so all interested VCSEs are advised to apply as soon as possible. More on the grants and the innovative whatimpact.com grant-making platform can be found HERE.
whatimpact.com is a social impact start-up backed by the UK GOV (Innovate UK). The company offers comprehensive technology solutions for the public and private sectors to collaborate with VCSEs efficiently. whatimpact.com is the leading Social Value Brokerage in the UK. In addition to the grant-making system, the company offers solutions for social value delivery for public sector procurement.
*SPF
The UK Shared Prosperity Fund is a central pillar of the UK government’s ambitious levelling up agenda and a significant component of its support for places across the UK. It provides £2.6 billion of new funding for local investment by March 2025, with all areas of the UK receiving an allocation from the fund via a funding formula rather than a competition. It will help places right across the country deliver enhanced outcomes and recognises that even the most affluent parts of the UK contain pockets of deprivation and need support.
For more information, visit https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-shared-prosperity-fund-prospectus
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