Application guidance

The application process

The application process is in two stages.

Stage 1: Tell us about your idea and what you want to do.

• Find out if your area is open for applications.
• Check the deadline for your area. See our opening timetable
• Complete the short Stage 1 form. You have four weeks to complete a Stage 1 application form.

If your project is neighbourhood-based, you can apply online. If your project is a community of interest, contact us to request an application form. Find out more.

We will contact you by email within 10 working days after the deadline to let you know if you have got through to Stage 2.

Stage 2: Tell us more about your project, your costs and the funding you need.

• Complete the Stage 2 application form. You have three weeks to complete the Stage 2 application form and the deadline will be in your invitation to apply email.
• We will contact you within 12 weeks after the Stage 2 closing date to let you know if you’ve been successful.

Core criteria

Your project should:

• Be designed and led by local people
• Support their neighbourhood or community to come together to address an issue that is important to them
• Create stronger connections between people by supporting them to meet up regularly (weekly, fortnightly or monthly, for at least one year)

• Be for people who experience greater social and economic disadvantage than people living in other parts of the country

Be either:

• small and local, for example, involving residents living in a few streets, an estate, a small village and working in one or more of our 'fundable neighbourhoods', or
• a community of interest - a group of people who have a shared identity or experiences, and wish to come together to address specific issues that are important to them. They may live across a wider area but they must live close enough to each other to meet up regularly.
  

Key eligibility criteria

• You are a non profit organisation or group. Find out more about eligible organisation types.
• You have unrestricted reserves (savings) of less than six months of your yearly expenditure, after deducting the amount you are thinking of requesting from the Trust.
• Your organisation or group been constituted for at least three months and have a governing document.
• If you are a new organisation, and do not yet have full year accounts, your projected income for a full year is less than £350,000.
• Your total yearly income is less than £350,000, or an average of £350,000 over two years.
• At least 80% of your participants come from fundable neighbourhoods. If you are applying as a community of interest, 80% of participants must come from the fundable neighbourhoods, or be experiencing social and economic disadvantage.

Other criteria

• We support new and existing projects which last between one and two years.
• The minimum grant that you can apply for is £5,000 over one year, £7,500 over 18 months, or £10,000 over two years.
• The maximum amount of funding we will invest in a project is £40,000. We are highly unlikely to fund a grant of £40,000 over one year.
• One organisation can apply for a maximum of two projects in one area that is open for funding.
• Existing Active Communities grant holders can only apply if their current grant ends within twelve months from the closing date of their funding area.

Openings from September 2022: We are particularly interested to hear how your project will respond to the cost of living crisis and rising mental health needs. The Trust may prioritise projects that include cost of living considerations and/or support mental health.

Delivering a project online

The Trust will consider projects with delivery online if applicants can demonstrate:

• there is evidence that participants have asked for it and it works well for them
• there is a way to ensure that 80% of participants are coming from fundable neighbourhoods
• digital exclusion and online safety has been considered
• they meet the core criteria.
  

Completing the Stage 1 application form and criteria

In Stage 1, you need to tell us about your idea and what you want to do. This will enable us to tell you whether you can go forward to a Stage 2 application. It is important that all questions are completed fully. You are asked to do this in step six of the online application in 'Your project details'. You can download a copy of the questions in Step 6 of the online neighbourhood based application to prepare your answers here.

We will assess your Stage 1 and Stage 2 application against the following key criteria:

The project:

• is designed and led by local people
• supports the neighbourhood or community to come together to address an issue that is important to them
• creates stronger connections between people by supporting them to meet up regularly (weekly, fortnightly or monthly for at least one year)
• is clearly explained.

Last year, just over half of Stage 1 applications we received went forward to Stage 2. Around three quarters of Stage 2 applications were subsequently approved for funding by our decision-making panel.

We make decisions on which projects to fund at panels formed of trustees and staff.

Find out more about eligible organisation types.

Find out more about what we don't fund.

Find out more about fundable neighbourhoods

Reporting requirements

If you are awarded a grant from People’s Health Trust you will receive a grant offer email which asks you to submit the following within four weeks:

• A signed grant offer letter
• Documentation to verify your bank account details
• Responses to your terms of grant (which can be found in your offer letter).

Once everything has been signed off and when your project start date is near, you will receive the first payment of your grant.

You will usually need to complete a monitoring report via our online system every six months. Once we received your report the next payment will be made. The reports will ask you about your outcomes, delivery, spend, where you are working (fundable neighbourhoods), project branding, and feedback for us. Sometimes we might ask for an update in-between the six-monthly reports depending on the progress of your project. You will also need to submit an End of Funding report at the end of your project and we will then make your final payment.

We may visit you to carry out a monitoring visit or compliance visit during the lifetime of your grant.

We also ask you to take part in our annual stakeholder survey and we publish a summary of the results on our website each year. Read a summary of the 2021 stakeholder survey.