Capital Grant Scheme

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Please note: this grant scheme is now closed.

We define capital expenditure as an amount spent to acquire or improve a long-term asset such as equipment or buildings. Through the Capital Grant scheme, the programme aims to equip local organisation’s and communities by ensuring they have the right buildings, spaces, infrastructure, assets, and/or equipment to deliver their vision and work to contribute towards a more inclusive and fairer East London. Within this we also include green and blue assets, those that are nature-based features but situated and form part of the urban landscape. Often, they will be either vegetation (green) or water (blue) based such as green roofs and walls, rivers or ponds.

We encourage applicants to explore other avenues of funding to match our funding and enhance the project outputs and outcomes, but it is not essential for our funding scheme. Examples of capital projects are:

• A building project as defined by any type of capital work that is required to comply with statutory approvals such as building or planning regulations and you must demonstrate security of tenure and all statutory approvals have been applied for.
• The RIBA Plan of Work organises the process of briefing, designing, constructing and operating building projects into eight stages and explains the stage outcomes, core tasks and information exchanges required at each stage. If you are following the RIBA design stages, your project must be developed to at least RIBA Work Stage 3.
• Small organisations do not need to adhere to RIBA but will be asked to produce plans that have sustainable development goals
• Buying assets such as furniture, equipment, instruments and vehicles, where these will support the delivery of activities that contribute towards outcomes listed within this guide
• Improving existing facilities to enhance accessibility
• Building work to improve an existing community/ cultural building, provided all relevant statutory approvals (e.g., full planning permission, listed building consent, outline planning permission with full reserved matters resolved, etc) have been applied for at the time of approach
• Installing new technologies and upgrading buildings to facilitate activities that will deliver on outcomes listed within this guide
• Purchasing or developing management systems to enhance engagement and organisational growth for activities that will deliver on outcomes listed within this guide
• Environmental sustainability costs including installing or retrofitting sustainable technologies or upgrading existing building fabric
• Professional fees (that do not exceed 65% of the requested funding) associated with capital spending on your project, provided the appointments have been made in accordance with meeting outcomes listed within this guide, for example using local or new start up suppliers and contractors
• New placemaking community infrastructure installations such as signage, community sensory gardens, environmental or sustainable resources etc.

Activity stemming from capital grant investments

Our Fund is about creating inclusive and sustainable opportunity — we are keen to back a range of activities and innovative ideas that drive the proposed outcomes. The Foundation for Future London is a strong advocate for the ability of creativity to enable levelling up opportunities and to be a strong contributor to the London economy.  Therefore, we are keen to fund capital projects that has origins in and/or will stimulate activity and subsequent outcomes in:

• Arts, Culture, Heritage
• Skills & Jobs
• Business & Start Up
• Community
• Creative ideas
• Digital
• Collaboration
• Diversity & Inclusion
• Intergenerational
• Health, wellbeing & environment
• Education
• Creative, inclusive public realm and/or placemaking
• Covid-19 recovery

Funding Themes

Any Capital Grant Scheme submission, regardless of size of funding request must have at the heart a core commitment to one or more of the following:

• Employment opportunities — Will a capital investment mean employment opportunities for local people, including access to paid work experience / internships, access to apprenticeships or gaining access to jobs can be achieved?
• Learning opportunities — Will a capital investment mean that ladders of opportunity through learning and training opportunities for local residents in one or more of the local boroughs, including accessing lifelong learning opportunities from early learning, schools through to late career and post retirement and/or bespoke career and higher education path support, training and secondments be achieved?
• Young people —Will a capital investment allow for a young person led approach with particular provision for local young people leading for them to access broader skills development opportunities, careers workshops and related learning and/or one to one coaching and mentoring? Or would a capital investment generate intergenerational activities that allows younger and older people to work together to create inclusive places and spaces?
• Business and entrepreneur support — Will a capital investment provide local people with the opportunity to have business and/or entrepreneur support including freelance, business and entrepreneur set up, development and training?

Outcomes

All Capital Grant Scheme applications will need to be linked to project outcomes from our list of 13 short, medium and long-term outcomes.

We know that these may not be instantly achievable from a capital grant, so whilst discussing your capital project, the team will ask you to identify outcomes that you expect a capital investment will lead to and a potential timeline for this. The number of outcomes expected will be based on the amount of capital funding being asked for.

To see the full list of project outcomes, see our Capital Grant Scheme guidance.

Audiences