The Make it Happen Fund – Application Guidelines

The Make It Happen fund is an Islington residents’ small grants scheme of up to £500 for local people to act on the things that they care about. The purpose of the fund is to bring people together and do something that makes them feel proud of where they live.

Social housing landlords Peabody, Hyde, Clarion and Southern Housing Group alongside Islington Giving and other local voluntary organisations in Islington decided to work together with communities to build individual and community resilience and support innovation. We know that people can find grants hard to apply for or don’t know who to ask for help spending it. Sometimes our processes can be a bit complicated or slow. The Make It Happen resident’s fund aims to help overcome these challenges.

Please note the closing date is Monday 30th October 2023, 10am.

Aims

Projects must align with one of the following aims:

• Healthy– helping people with their physical and mental wellbeing
• Happy– helping people make the most out of their lives through active citizenship, volunteering and community involvement
• Connected – putting people at the centre of grants, exploring what is important to them

Grant size

Grants are up to £500 and you will have 3 months to begin spending your grant and 6 months to complete the project. We will also ask you to (1) explain how you plan to keep everyone doing the activity safe and (2) share what you’ve achieved – for example through pictures or asking people what they think about the project.

What we are looking for – our criteria

The fund is to support activities and events that meet our aims and supports local people to act on the things that they care about.

• The people who benefit must live in Islington
• Projects must be free or offered at a significant subsidy
• You need to show how what you plan to do supports the wider community. For example, if you want to buy gardening equipment it should be available to others to use, such as a local gardening club.
• Applications can be made by local community groups without paid staff (such as tenants and residents associations, parent-teacher associations, mutual aid groups or friends of parks groups) or groups of three or more residents who will work together to run a project or event. All residents named in the application and/or management committee members/Directors must be individuals will be supported by an established voluntary or community sector organisation, who will hold the grant on your behalf – if you are not in contact with a local group that could do this for you then we will try to help with this.
• We cannot fund groups and organisations with an annual income of more than £50,000

We have limited funds but we will try to fund your project if it meets our criteria and our aims of helping people to lead happy, healthy and more connected lives. Some examples include:

• Activities that bring the community together – this could be your neighbours or another community such as people that enjoy playing music together.
• Projects that seek to improve health and wellbeing – this could be anything from a keep-fit class to a workshop on managing stress to a knitting club aimed at helping people relax.
• Something that explores what’s important to you and your community – this could be developing an art project to be displayed where you live, an open day to introduce children to nature or a summer party in your communal garden.

We can’t accept applications from groups or individuals who are still running their projects from an earlier application or if you applied in the previous Make It Happen funding round (March 2023). You can apply again if you had funding in 2022, your project is complete and you have sent us some feedback on how it went.

Timeline

• Monday 18^th September: Fund opens for applications
• Monday 30^th October at 10am: Deadline for applying – this is the last day you can apply!
• Week beginning 13^th November: We will let you know if your application has been successful
• July 2024: you will have spent your grant by now and will share how it went with us.

Apply Now

Please click the link below to download a copy of the form. If you have any questions before you apply, you don’t have internet access, or would like to discuss your idea before making an application, then please contact Islington Giving on 020 7288 6948 or email us at patrick.jones@cripplegate.org.uk.

Completed forms to be returned to: Patrick Jones, Programme Manager at: patrick.jones@cripplegate.org.uk

The closing date is Monday 30th October, 10am. We will let you know if your application is successful by the week beginning 13th November 2023.

Apply now 

If you would like a physical copy of the form, or physical flyers to help us spread the word about this funding opportunity, then please get in touch at mail@islingtongiving.org.uk.