NHS Race & Health Observatory – Communities Small Grants Pilot

Register of Interest Guidance

We know that health and wellbeing are shaped by many factors, including community connection, belonging, culture, leadership, advocacy, economic opportunity, access to services and social support. Community organisations play a vital role in addressing these issues. They are often trusted by their communities, understand local needs, provide culturally relevant support and act as bridges between communities and statutory services.

Community-led organisations rooted in racialised communities are trusted voices and crucial partners in tackling structural ethnic and racial inequalities in health. They often act as a bridge between racialised communities and statutory services, holding relationships and community intelligence that the health system cannot replicate from outside. We also recognise that grant-making has too often been part of the problem. Funding processes that are rigid and transactional rather than relational, shaped by funders’ priorities rather than the self-identified needs and vital work grassroots organisations are already doing.

This programme seeks to recognise, resource and learn from that work. Alongside providing funding, the programme aims to test more equitable and relational approaches to grant-making and generate learning that can inform future funding programmes.

Communities Small Grants Pilot

Total funding: £150,000

Grant size: £5,000–£10,000

English Regions: East London, North East and Midlands

The Communities Small Grants Pilot will support community-led action that tackles ethnic and racial inequalities and improves long-term health and wellbeing.

NOTE: The above regions have been prioritised based on evidence of racial health inequities and high levels of deprivation.

Who can apply – core eligibility

To be considered, you must meet all the following eligibility criteria:

• Be a grassroots not-for-profit organisation that is formally constituted (a signed governing document in the group’s name). This includes but not limited to, unincorporated associations, volunteer/community groups, registered Charities, Community Interest Companies, Charitable Incorporated Organisations, and faith groups with a clear community focus where the project does not promote a particular religious view.
• Be led by and for racialised communities. This means the people who lead and make decisions in your organisation, and the beneficiaries that you are accountable to, are predominantly from racially minoritised communities. By which we mean at least 75% of your board or management committee and more than 50% of your senior staff or project team are from the community or communities you serve, with the majority of the people you support from racialised or Black, Asian, and minoritised ethnic communities.
• Have an annual income under £150,000 in the last financial year.
• Serving and seeking to improve the outcomes for racialised communities in the English regions of East London, Midlands and the North East.
• Have an appropriate safeguarding policy in place. This can be proportionate to your size, and we will only ask to see it at the full application or award stage. If you do not yet have one in place, support is available (including a template or an interim policy).
• Be able to use the grant within the 6-month funding period (October 2026 – March 2027) and open to taking part in the programme’s learning and capacity-building support, which is there to support you rather than as a condition of funding or a hoop to jump through.

We know some organisations doing vital work do not describe themselves as “led by & for”, but nonetheless are rooted in, trusted by the communities they serve. For example, by involving people with lived experience and community expertise and by finding ways to reach those that others do not. If that is you, please ensure to use this register of interest to tell us how your organisation is engaged and accountable to the racialised communities you work with. We recognise that words like “racialised” or “led by and for” are not always the words communities use about themselves. What matters to us is that you are rooted in and accountable to your community, not the particular terminology you use.

If you’re not eligible but would like to stay connected, whether to support, learn from, or keep up to date with the programme’s progress, learning and capacity-building activities, we encourage you to complete the registration anyway.

If you’re unsure whether your organisation meets these criteria, please get in touch at grants@future.london. We’d rather help you check than have you rule yourselves out of a programme you may be eligible for.

Why you should apply 

This is flexible funding aimed at building long-term capacity and community infrastructure, not just funding for one-off projects. In addition to individual activities, we encourage the use of funding to strengthen your organisation’s preparedness to support your community. This might include contributions to core costs, staff capacity, leadership development, as well as organisational resilience, partnership development or the wellbeing of the people delivering the work. For example, that could mean training peer supporters, strengthening your safeguarding and/or governance practices, investing in your organisation’s own learning or covering the costs that help prevent volunteer burnout.

As a pilot, the programme also aims to learn how funding can better reach grassroots organisations and the communities they serve. Alongside supporting communities, we want to understand what helps organisations thrive, what barriers they face, and how future funding can be more accessible and responsive.

We also want to be open about how learning and assessment sit together. We’ve deliberately kept this stage light-touch and proportionate, enough to assess alignment and viability, without requiring a fully developed delivery plan. We know many organisations rule themselves out before ever applying, and this process is designed to change that. We’ll use this stage to decide who to invite to a full application. Please tell us what your organisation genuinely needs, rather than what you think a funder wants to hear. Being open about your challenges and gaps will only count positively towards your assessment and will help us understand how to resource this work in the longer term.

Why we’re funding this and the difference we hope to see

Ethnic and racial inequalities continue to affect the health, well-being, and life chances of many communities across England. At the same time, community organisations often lead responses to these inequalities every day through practical support, advocacy, community leadership, cultural activity, education, wellbeing initiatives, and community development.

Through this programme, we want to:

• Strengthen community-led action by investing in infrastructure, networks, and trusted organisations that are already making a positive difference.
• Promote equity by improving support for approaches that actively challenge barriers, exclusion and inequality.
• Support community-led action that helps prevent inequalities from persisting and improves long-term health and wellbeing.
• Support prevention and early intervention by helping organisations identify and respond to needs before they reach crisis point.
• Build community voice, leadership and power by recognising and strengthening the knowledge, leadership and expertise that already exist within communities.
• Learn collaboratively about what works, what communities need and how future anti-racist grant funding can become more accessible, equitable and effective.

You do not need to contribute to all these areas. We recognise that organisations will make a positive difference in different ways.

Examples of the kinds of outcomes we hope to see include:

• Improved wellbeing and mental health.
• Increased emotional regulation and relational safety
• Reduced isolation and stronger support networks.
• Increased confidence and resilience.
• A stronger sense of belonging, trust and connection within communities.
• Improved access to culturally appropriate services and support.
• Safe, welcoming spaces where people feel they belong and can seek support.
• Stronger community leadership and greater influence of lived & living experience.
• Increased organisational confidence, capacity and resilience.
• Stronger partnerships and increased sharing of learning, skills and resources.
• Greater trust and collaboration between communities, services that affect them, including commissioners, Integrated Neighbourhood Teams and other funders
• Learning that helps improve future policy, funding, and the planning and delivery of services (sometimes called commissioning).
• Increased support for communities to access funding and to influence the decisions, services and institutions that affect them.

Anti-racist practice

This programme exists to address racial and ethnic inequalities in health and wellbeing experiences and outcomes. By anti-racist practice, we mean actively working alongside communities to understand, challenge and reduce these inequalities – recognising how structural racism and other forms of discrimination can affect people’s lives, health and opportunities.

In practice, this can mean addressing barriers to access, valuing lived experience and community knowledge, sharing power and resources, reviewing organisational practices and culture, taking action to improve equity and building equitable partnerships. We recognise there is no single model of anti-racist practice and that organisations will be at different stages of this work. We welcome organisations that are reflective, committed to learning and to taking meaningful action in ways appropriate to their communities, and have designed this register of interest with that proportionality in mind.

A few things that matter to us

The process matters as much as the outcome. Whilst we don’t expect to get everything right with this pilot, these are the anti-racist priorities guiding us:

• Culturally Rooted Support – We welcome culturally relevant, community-defined approaches that are shaped by and rooted in the communities they serve. This might include community organising, peer support, advocacy, arts and culture, faith-based support, youth work, wellbeing initiatives, community development or other approaches that communities trust and value. You do not need to describe your work using clinical or NHS language to be part of this programme. We recognise that many organisations are already addressing inequalities and improving health and wellbeing in ways that feel right for their communities.

• Community Leadership and Voice – We believe communities are experts in their own experiences. We are interested in organisations where community voices help shape decisions and value lived and living experience as a legitimate form of knowledge and insight – not something we’re collecting, but expertise that we’re learning from. Leadership takes many forms. It may be demonstrated through trustees, staff, volunteers, community leaders, advisory groups, or other means by which people with lived experience influence priorities and decisions. We are not looking for one particular model of leadership but for approaches that do things differently and reimagine what’s possible, rather than replicating what’s come before.

• Equitable Partnerships – We recognise that no single organisation can address these inequalities alone.  We welcome registrations from individual organisations as well as partnerships, including with health services, local authorities or academic institutions, provided a community-led organisation leads the partnership. We are particularly interested in partnerships that are built on trust, shared purpose and mutual respect – where power, resources and learning are genuinely and equitably shared. We value collaboration over competition and want to support organisations that work together.
• Building on What Already Works – You do not need to propose a brand-new project. We recognise that many organisations are already delivering trusted and valued work within their communities. We welcome Registers of Interest that strengthen, sustain or expand existing networks, reach new communities, address unmet needs or test new ideas. We believe innovation is not only about creating something new; it can also mean strengthening cultures, relationships, and practices that are already working and adapting to meet changing community needs, in ways that redress inequalities rather than replicate them.
• Learning Together – This is a pilot, and learning is at the heart of it. Not just what difference funded organisations make, but what we all learn together about reducing ethnic and racial inequalities and making funding fairer. We want this learning to help communities collectively to see their own strengths and decide what comes next, not just measure what changed. That means looking beyond outputs, at things like leadership, trust and belonging. This goes both ways. Funded organisations will help shape what we learn, not just supply it, and we’ll aim to share what we find with you and the wider sector – so this pilot’s insights are useful beyond the programme itself and increase the capacity for others to create change and shift power.