The National Lottery will open small grant applications for the Local Connections Fund on 5 January 2021, to help small charities and community organisations in England reduce loneliness. 

Grants from £300-2,500 will be awarded to small organisations with an annual turnover of less than £50,000.

The Winter Support Fund, from St Monica Trust, has grants of up to £1,000 available to charities, community groups and social enterprises that support older people, so that support can continue through the winter months. 

Your organisation may have spotted a specific local need in your community, or you may want the grant to go towards buying equipment so that your activities and services can carry on in the months ahead. 

Future cut-off points for applications are at midday on: 

The Trusthouse Foundation supports projects that address urban and rural deprivation, through its small and major grants programmes.

They have just launched new criteria, focusing on family support for their major grants, which are single or multi-year grants of £10,000-100,000, for core costs, salaries, running costs and project costs. 

This programme is open to UK-based charities with an annual income of less than £1 million, and a focus on one of the following family support areas:

The Resilience & Recovery Loan Fund (RRLF) is a fund for social enterprises and charities that are improving people’s lives across the UK who are experiencing disruption to their normal business model as a result of COVID-19. It has been established to make an existing government scheme (the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme more easily accessible to charities and social enterprises.

The Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) has opened a £20m fund to distribute its share of the government’s coronavirus support package.

Small and medium-sized charities in England have until 10 November to apply to the CAF Resilience Fund for between £10,000 and £100,000. Organisations must have an income of over £50,000 and be able to spend the grant by the end of March 2021.

Quartet Community Foundation is currently considering applications to their Wesleyan Foundation Fund, which will close on 22 October. Grants will be considered from charities and community groups that focus on supporting communities with issues caused by, and intrinsically linked to, the COVID-19 pandemic.

Grants can be awarded for applications demonstrating how the project will provide services and improve outcomes in one or more of the following areas:

As part of a commitment to tackle racial inequality, PwC has launched a small to medium grants programme for social enterprises that are Black-led or charities that benefit ethnic minorities. 

Funding of £2,000-25,000 is available, depending on the scale, activity and impact of your social enterprise or charity's work. 

Small grants are now available for community mental health organisations and mutual aid groups in Bristol to spend on projects that support local people's mental health and wellbeing. The grants have been funded by Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group (BNSSG CCG), through Bristol City Council. 

The Fat Beehive Foundation is offering grants of up to £2,500 to small charities to improve their digital presence. Money can be spent on website development and other digital projects that may be hard to fund but have a genuine social impact.

Priorities for funding are charities that focus on:

The government has launched a Health and Wellbeing Fund to support VCSE organisations working with mothers and babies from Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities or deprived neighbourhoods. 

Money will go towards community projects that improve perinatal mental health, learning and speech and language development or immunisation rates, or projects that prevent low birth weight, obesity and/or smoking. The aim of the funding is to improve health outcomes and reduce health inequalities.