What we support

IMPORTANT NOTICE: The Southall Trust no longer accepts uninvited/unsolicited grant applications for work or projects that are delivered outside of the UK.

What We Support

Applicants must:

    • Be based in the UK (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales). 
    • Be a registered charity or charitable organisation, being constituted with specific purposes defined within the laws of England and Wales as charitable, and exclusively for public benefit. (Non-registered UK charities may be considered, but should be clearly constituted for public benefit and have an 'asset lock' within their constitution)
    • Have a primary focus on at least one of the following four categories (please click on a category for more information):
        1. Quaker Work & Witness
        2. Peace & Reconciliation
        3. Environmental Action & Sustainability
        4. Social Action

Favoured organisations will:

    • Have a clearly defined mission and purpose.
    • Communicate a good understanding of the issues they seek to address.
    • Demonstrate how the requested grant will make a meaningful and, where possible, measurable contribution to change - no matter how small.
    • Demonstrate how they are contributing to positive change in ways that reflect an understanding of local needs and broader societal and systemic dynamics.
    • Be bold, creative and innovative in their approach to work (e.g. organisations that experiment with untested approaches in the pursuit of meaningful change).
    • Be involved in identifying and/or tackling the root causes of the issues that the organisation has been established to address.
    • Promote social justice, inclusion and diversity.
    • Challenge structural inequalities and injustice.
    • Demonstrate practices that reflect a commitment to redistributing power (e.g. through leadership and decision-making that actively seeks out and values the perspectives, needs, and contributions of all relevant stakeholders, especially those who might otherwise be overlooked, marginalised, or underrepresented).
    • Demonstrate clear support from and engagement with the communities in which they are based and in which they operate (e.g. through volunteer support, local financial support, local partnership working, representation in leadership and staff teams, beneficiary-led projects etc.).

Operational Criteria

To ensure a fair process, the Southall Trust also expects specific operational criteria to be met by applicants.

Successful organisations will:

    • Have waited at least 12 months from the date of a previous application before applying again. (This applies to successful and unsuccessful applicants who have applied to the Southall Trust before).
    • Have publicly available and independently examined accounts that are no more than 18 months old.
    • Have a financial turnover and/or net assets of less than £1m.
    • Spend more than 80% of their annual expenditure on charitable activities
    • Have a financial reserves policy which states how much the organisation requires to be kept in operational/unrestricted reserve and a clear rationale for this (any deviation from this policy is expected to be addressed in the application).
    • Demonstrate good compliance with their regulator's requirements (i.e. organisations with overdue annual returns are often ineligible)

To Note:

    • Most grants are for between £1,000 to £5,000.
    • We will consider appeals for an organisation's core and capital costs.
    • Multi-year funding (up to three years) may be considered, but only for organisations that the Trust has supported previously.

 

What we do not support

We do not consider appeals for the following:

  • Retrospective costs (i.e. for activities that has already taken place).
  • Replacement funding where statutory support has been withdrawn.
  • Organisations that support the bearing of arms, or the arms trade.
  • Charity lotteries, prize draws and gambling-related activities.
  • The purchase of alcohol (e.g. including at events or conferences).
  • The purchase of fossil fuels.
  • Emergency appeals, or emergency relief work
  • Private schools
  • Medical activities
  • Counselling services
  • Animal welfare
  • The advancement or promotion of a faith group or religion, except for the work of the Religious Society of Friends and organisations that are unambiguously connected to or aligned with it.
  • Organisations that are well-known household names, including ‘umbrella' organisations (i.e. large network organisations with smaller locally-focussed affiliates)
  • Any project or product that is deemed to be at odds with the Southall Trust's four category areas.