Local Trust’s Post

We’d like to share the news that The Green Estate has joined the Community Wealth Fund Alliance. The CWFA is a group of over 700 civil society, public and private sector organisations who support the Community Wealth Fund campaign. The campaign advocates for funding for neighbourhoods that have missed out on their fair share of funding and lack vital social infrastructure. These are neighbourhoods assessed as having high levels of deprivation that have lost facilities and services including community centres, pubs and transport links, and their residents can often feel forgotten or ‘left behind’. You can find out more about the Community Wealth Fund here: https://lnkd.in/eCKVeKQB

Here’s a useful blog about how we’re refreshing our funding in Wales to focus on our four new missions which are to help #children and #young people thrive, enable people to live #healthier lives, support communities to come together and to be more #environmentally #sustainable.

Well done

🔍 Spot the Difference 🔍 Looking for funding opportunities to support your community through the cost of living crisis? Let's compare two options by side: 🏠 Household Support Fund: Help people in your community with essential household costs to the value of £100. ▶️Who can apply: VCSE orgs & community groups ▶️Application Period: Open until May 31, 2024 ▶️Grant Usage Deadline: Sept 30, 2024 ▶️Maximum Support: £20,000 (£100 per household supported) 💼 Community-Based Hardship Support Fund: Provide support that will result in more money in the pockets of households experiencing financial hardship. ▶️Who can apply: VCSE orgs & community groups ▶️Application Period: Open until May 31, 2024 ▶️Grant Usage Deadline: End of Sept 2024 ▶️Maximum Support: £10,000 to £50,000 Link to grants page here🔗bit.ly/353utZC These opportunities have been offered thanks to funding from Norfolk County Council. #Funding #Norfolk # #Grants #VCSE #ShineBrighter

Today, IFF celebrates the 30th anniversary of the Riegle Community Development Act, a bipartisan piece of legislation that created the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI Fund). Since its creation, the CDFI Fund has awarded more than $7 billion to mission-driven lenders like IFF, providing an indispensable source of funding that enables #CDFIs to raise additional private capital that's reinvested in rural and urban communities across the country to help mitigate and solve local challenges. For IFF, the CDFI Fund has been integral to our ability to provide $1.6 billion in flexible financing to #nonprofits to increase their financial stability and programmatic offerings so that they can strengthen their communities. These investments have leveraged $5.83 billion, catalyzing the creation of more than 16,000 child care slots, 160,900 school seats, 725,500 new patient visits, and 20,500 units of affordable housing in the Midwest. We look forward to the CDFI Fund’s next thirty years and continued investment that builds on the impressive impact achieved since 1994! Learn more about the anniversary and the CDFI Fund's positive impact here: https://lnkd.in/gw-sYVit

Hannah Rignell and I joined the National Lottery Community Fund just before we launched our new strategy in June 2023 - 'It starts with community'.   Lots has changed since then. We've had a change of government here in the UK. Summer saw racist riots across England. America is electing a new president.   But the core tenets of our strategy remain relevant - perhaps more relevant now than ever.   Today, we are starting to talk about what our strategy means for our funding in England. We are responsible for distributing £3 billion of life changing funds over the life time of our strategy and we will need to make changes to what we fund and how we work to make It starts with community real in communities in England.   Community agency, power and control will be at the heart of our England funding portfolio.   We will align all of our funding in England with our community-led missions and equity based approach, starting from spring 2025 – and we’ll partner with others for even greater impact.   Fundamentally, delivering our community-led missions rests on people feeling empowered to make a difference. But not all of us feel we have the power and agency to be part of that change.   That’s why we will increase our investment in the building blocks of community-led change, with a particular focus on communities where people feel least in control. We will commit at least £275m to these ‘building blocks’ of community power, agency and control in the years to come, including:   - a £100 million, ten-year Community Power Fund to help people influence and change the places they live, the services they use, and decisions that affect their lives across England - a new £50 million community leaders programme to support informal community leaders who are making a difference in their area - a new You Decide funding stream, worth at least 5% of all funding in England, where communities will decide which good causes funding should support   We believe in the power of community and connection and are ambitious for its potential. In England, we are dedicating the £3bn we will distribute by 2030 to supporting people and communities to shape the future and lead change.   We will make those changes gradually, over time. Community power might conjure up images of placards, protests, petitions - but the way we will move towards our new portfolio will be evolution, not revolution. We have heard loud and clear how tough it is out there and how any changes we make reverberate. That's why we will be phasing our changes to our funding, starting in spring 2025.   You can find out more about the changes we are making here https://lnkd.in/dmc9yJsR

Thirty years ago today (Sept. 23, 1994), President Bill Clinton signed the Riegle Community Development Regulatory Improvement Act of 1994, which created the Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund. This led to the creation and certification of CDFIs around the country, including First Children’s Finance. The fund was created to promote economic development in distressed urban and rural communities. Banks, credit unions, nonprofit loan funds, microloan funds, and (for-profit and nonprofit) venture capital funds that have a primary mission of promoting community development can be certified as lenders. Since its creation, the CDFI Fund has awarded more than $7 billion to CDFIs and community lenders and $76 billion in tax credits to community development entities. Every dollar the CDFI Fund invests is estimated to catalyze at least eight dollars in private-sector investment, magnifying its impact. 

Voluntary organisations and community groups have another chance to apply for an East Suffolk Council and Suffolk County Council ‘Cost of Living Community Grant’ to support individuals and families in communities throughout the district this winter. The Cost of Living Community Grant fund has already supported 17 projects across East Suffolk in round one, ranging from a network of Warm Rooms in Beccles to the Woodbridge CommuniTEA Chinwag and the Emmaus Felixstowe Community Lunch. Groups can apply for a grant of £500 to £1,500 to run projects between January and March 2025, but are encouraged to get their applications in soon – the second and final round will close on December 16. https://lnkd.in/eEHaP4gZ

Yesterday, our CEO Daniel Brewer joined our housing partner Cyrenians and Scottish Housing Minister Paul McLennan at one of our and Patron Capital’s properties in #Edinburgh that provides safe homes for women fleeing domestic abuse to discuss how impact investing could provide a solution to homelessness. #domesticabuseawareness #survivors #socialimpact #affordablehomes #domesticviolenceawareness #homelessnessawareness #housingmarket #housingcrisis #ukhousing #CostOfLivingCrisis

Expansion Starts Here!