Nationwide Investor Programme

Overview

The Nationwide Foundation is a registered charity, set up and funded by the Nationwide Building Society. They make grants to other charities across the UK, including Northern Ireland.

They aim to achieve maximum impact with their funds and therefore define their criteria based on research into societal needs and gaps in provision supported by other funders including government.

The Nationwide Foundation has released the grants in response to increased pressure from the recession. Funding will be focused towards organisations who work with survivors of domestic violence or older people, particularly those from disadvantaged or minority backgrounds.

The Investor Programme also has the following priorities:

Joint bids: They will give preference to applications from registered charities which have formed partnerships with other organisations (not necessarily charities e.g. academic bodies, think tanks, researchers, social enterprises etc) to address the issues identified in the objectives; or which intend to form partnerships to do so.

Innovation with regard to funding:

• new work
• pilot projects
• work based on successful pilot projects
• the delivery of existing services in new ways
• work which seeks to develop effective models for replication
• continuation or roll out of existing pioneering work.

Grants are offered for:

• Research
• New projects, pilot projects and existing work (based on previous evidence of need / research)
• Awareness raising / campaigning to promote change
• Priority will be given to applications for work which encompass two or three of these.

They are happy to fund core costs and to contribute towards the salaries of finance staff for the charity.

Partnership

There is a legacy of encouraging charities which work in the same fields to work in partnership with one another in order to:

• share experience and learning
• identify ways of reducing duplication to save valuable charitable resource
• achieve greater outcomes for their beneficiaries

As part of the grant conditions, successful applicants must be prepared and committed to work in partnership with other successful applicants, which the Foundation intends to bring together and is a key part of the Investor Programme. This also involves the partnerships meeting up to twice a year.

Building Resilience

There is a committment to building the resilience of charities funded, to help them become more robust and therefore operate more effectively and to help ensure that they continue successfully after our grant support ends. Therefore the following are eligible:

• Funding core costs
• Giving grants which incorporate Full Cost Recovery
• Offering the deployment of exit strategy consultants during the third year of funding

Support may also be available for :

• Funding of finance staff
• Training for trustees and staff (finance, governance, HR and strategy related)
• Fees of conferences/seminars to 'plug' charities into the networks in the fields in which they operate
• Membership of umbrella support organisations
• Strategy days for trustees, staff and volunteers
• Risk Reviews.

Monitoring

Successful applicants will receive quarterly monitoring and support visits from a dedicated Foundation staff member.

End of Programme Event

The Foundation can consider organising an end of programme event with the charities supported.

All costs associated with these extra conditions will be covered by the Foundation, in addition to the grants available.

How to apply

The application process begins with an expression of interest of no more than one A4 page outlining the main work/services of the charity, if its a joint expression of interest and what the grant is for. Also to be included is where the work will occur, what it will achieve, how this work was identified, total cost and how the project will be monitored as well as including a copy of your latest annual accounts.

More details on the application process are availble on the Nationwide Foundation website.

11 December 2009 - GT Team

The complete application process took six months from April until September 2009.

• They invited Expressions of Interest on one page of A4 during April and May with copies of applicants’ latest annual accounts
• They conducted site visits and detailed interviews to those charities whose Expressions of Interest were successful, during June and July 2009
• A sub-group of Foundation Trustees and staff then met to shortlist those visited. A small number of applicants were then invited to submit detailed funding bids
• Applicants wrote their funding bids, containing clear objectives, outputs and outcomes to be achieved, during August 2009. The charities received assistance from Foundation staff
• The successful funding bids were approved by the full Board of Trustees at their quarterly Board Meeting in mid-September 2009.

The Foundation’s next large grants programme is expected to be open to applicants in 2012.

GT Team 2 August 2010.

Due to a lack of interest and applications, the Nationwide Foundation has closed this programme.