CAF RESILIENCE FUND PHASE 2: Full application GUIDANCE NOTES

Please use these notes to help you complete your full application during Stage 2 of our application process. They provide further detail on the information we require for your submission and we recommend that you read them fully before applying. Please pay particular attention to the additional supporting documents you are required to submit with your application.

In these notes you will find guidance on how to complete the main application as well as further detail about our tailored support package for successful grant holders.

Please ensure you submit your full application before the following deadlines for Stage 2 applications:

  • 30th September for cause group two (BAME organisations)
  • 7th October (for young adult reskilling).

Forms received after midday on these dates will not be considered.

 

Section 1 - Introduction

1.1 About The CAF Resilience Fund

The funding for the CAF Resilience Fund has been provided by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), as part of its Community Match Challenge, and  matched by the Covid-19 Support Fund, created by the insurance and long-term savings industry.

The CAF Resilience Fund is focused on those communities hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. Phase 1 saw the distribution of £20 million of emergency funding to help organisations survive and deliver rapid relief from the impact of the pandemic. Phase 2 will provide grants that enable organisations to adapt and thrive; to continue to deliver the services that support the needs of beneficiaries whilst also building organisational resilience. 

1.2  The focus of Phase 2 of the CAF Resilience Fund

Congratulations for progressing to the second stage of our application process. After your successful submission of your EOI you will now find further details about the package of support provided in our Fund. It is made up of the following 3 elements:

  • A main grant to enable you to adapt and thrive. This grant can either fund new or existing activities, but there should be a clear link to your organisational aims and sustainability of both your services and your organisation as a whole.
  • An additional resilience support grant of £20,000 to utilise external expertise to help strengthen your sustainability for the future.
  • In addition we will be providing CAF’s tailored support programme to help you achieve your resilience goals. This is designed to enable the staff working on building resilience to be able to make the most of this opportunity and access the resources they need. 
 

The full application form you are about to complete will give you the opportunity to provide us with more detailed information about how you will utilise the funds provided through your main and resilience support grants. 

1.3  Our tailored support package for grant holders 

Alongside the funding you will receive we are providing a tailored support programme to help you reach your resilience building goals. We will ask each successful applicant to put together a roadmap for how they will focus on their challenges and address them, setting themselves targets.

The questions in the application form will be the starting point for this, but as part of the assessment process, CAF will determine the level of support it will provide to each organisation throughout the programme based on your needs and what you have told us in the application. 

For some organisations this may simply be a conversation to discuss their roadmap at the start and invitation to some online events focussed on different aspects of building resilience. Some will be asked to join a facilitated peer support network where they will discuss their challenges and provide support and encouragement to other charities going  through a similar process. Some charities will be offered a much more intensive support with a named support person who will provide regular sessions to help them through the process. 

This tailored support is designed to enable the staff working on building resilience to be able to make the most of this opportunity and access the resources they need.

When writing your application we strongly encourage you to think carefully about where your organisation is now in terms of its development and resilience and where you would like it to be. This is a programme offering a short term opportunity to really focus on your underlying challenges in order to have a long term impact on your ability to adapt and thrive in the future in order to continue to offer the best possible support for those you help.

Opportunities to receive funding to focus on your own organisational sustainability are rare and we would encourage you to talk to staff in a range of roles as well as trustees, volunteers and beneficiaries in order to get the widest possible view of how this time, money and support could be used to best ensure your organisation’s future.  Be ambitious. Don’t just think about a new database, think about capturing and sharing your impact. Don’t just think about revamping your website, think about getting help to understand who your audiences are and how you strategically communicate with them in order to bring in money and volunteers.
 

Ask yourselves, at the end of the programme when the funds and support are finished, how do you want your organisation to be stronger? 

Click to see an overview of the findings from the pilot CAF Resilience programme, which may give you useful additional information.

 

Section 2 - The Grants Portal

2.1 The application form

The full application form is hosted on our online grant portal and you can click on the button below to log into your account. 

Start the full application form

Use the email address and password you used to create your account on the portal for the EOI and click ‘login’.

If you can’t remember the password, click ‘reset password’.

If you have any difficulties with the online portal, please email us at CAFResilience@cafonline.org

2.2  Helpful tips for using the portal

  • We recommend that you click the 'save' button regularly when working on your application.
  • Use the orange tiles at the top of this page to navigate between the pages. Do not use the 'back' and 'forward' buttons in your browser.
  • Your session will time out after 120 minutes of inactivity at which point any unsaved changes will be lost (you will see a warning 10 minutes before this). We recommend clicking 'save and finish later' before you leave your computer for any period of time.
  • For numeric and currency questions, such as the amount of funding you need, or how many people you will intend to reach, just use whole numbers. Do not use commas, decimal points or any other symbols or punctuation.
  • It may be helpful to gather together information about your organisation's mission, activities, staff/volunteer numbers and beneficiaries before you start, along with a proof of your organisation's bank account, your organisation's governing documents and last reported financial accounts, as this will all be required.
  • For many questions, you can click on the blue 'i' box for additional help and tips on answering the question.

Section 3 - Application form Question Guidance

The following is a copy of the full application questions with additional information and guidance on how to best answer each section. We have also set up a resource page on our website, where you can find all the supporting resources in digital form.

3.1 Organisation details

We already have some of your contact information from your EOI but this section contains additional contact information we need and includes some details that are required as part of our verification processes.

Website – give the address for the website of your organisation if you have one

Social media – give details of any social media accounts that your organisation uses

Additional contact details – please provide details of another senior contact within your organisation who we can contact if we are unable to reach the primary contact you indicated on your EOI.

3.2  Main questions

How much are you applying for?
This should be within our criteria of £50,000 minimum and £350,000 maximum and we are unlikely to fund more than 30% of your last filed income.

You have the opportunity to increase your requested amount by a maximum of 20% from the figure you outlined in your EOI should you wish to include any relevant additional costs that will help you achieve your goals. You can either keep the same requested amount or increase that figure by up to 20% as long as you don’t go over the funding maximum request of £350,000 and the figure does not exceed 30% of your last filed income.

For example if you requested £100,000, you could increase this to a £120,000 request as long as you have a last filed income of £400,000 or above. An area you may want to consider getting extra funding for is releasing time for your senior staff team to free them up from service delivery so they can focus on your organisational resilience goals and engaging with our tailored support programme.

If the CAF team have provided feedback about your EOI budget, please incorporate these changes into your full application request. This may include removing ineligible costs or spending that is unlikely to be able to take place before the end of March 2023.

 

We will not consider funding requests for the following:

  • Rebuilding reserves
  • Retrospective funding, that is expenditure prior to confirmation of your grant award
  • Expenditure taking place after the end of March 2023 – we expect to make awards in the Autumn of 2021
  • Activities that make profits for private gain
  • Campaigning activities
  • The promotion of religion and religious activities
  • Political or lobbying activities
  • Loan or debt repayments
  • Re-granting to another organisation

 

Please provide more detail on how you will use this grant.
This grant can fund either new or existing activities, but there should be a clear link to your organisational aims and the sustainability of both your services and your organisation as a whole. Expand on the answers you gave at EOI stage to give us a fuller picture of what services or activities the main grant will deliver.
  

How will this grant meet the needs of your beneficiaries?
Tell us more about how your grant will support your beneficiaries including any consultation you have undertaken to better understand these needs. Have these needs changed over the course of the pandemic and has this been incorporated into your plans?
  

How many people are likely to benefit from your activities if you receive this grant?
Please include numbers of people who you will directly help or involve in your activities. 

How will the grant make a difference to your organisation’s ability to adapt and thrive?
In what ways will this grant allow you to adapt how you both deliver services and plan for the future? How are you looking at ways to future-proof your operations so that your beneficiaries and your organisation can thrive?


You have explained in your EOI how your organisation and/or beneficiaries have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. How will this grant help you tackle some of the issues that you have described?
Tell us more about the affects the pandemic has had on your organisation and beneficiaries. How have you tracked these changes and your organisation’s response to them? Which changes have allowed you to move forward and how will this grant help you continue to meet these needs?
  

What do you expect the impact of this grant will be and how do you plan to measure and record this impact?
What difference do you hope to make with the activities and services funded by this grant? How will you monitor these changes and evaluate your impact? What methods will you use to collect data? How do you plan to use the data you collect to help you improve the work you are doing?


Tell us about your organisation's approach to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). Let us know if you have a policy and how you put DEI into practice within your organisation and through your work.
Let us know how you ensure your activities are accessible. Do you feel that you have a diverse range of staff, volunteers and trustees? Are there any underrepresented groups that you are working to engage with? Do you monitor EDI within your work?

Financial Information

How much unrestricted reserves did you carry forward at the end of your last financial year? Please give the figure that represents your organisation’s unrestricted funds that are freely available to spend on any of your organisation’s purposes.

If your unrestricted reserves figure has changed significantly in the last six months, please provide an explanation.
Tell us more about how your reserves situation has changed and it may be helpful to comment on your organisations’ reserves policy.

 

Budget Information

Describe how you intend to use the grant and how much you would like to allocate against each category (leave blank any areas that do not apply).

You have the opportunity to increase your requested amount by a maximum of 20% from the figure you outlined in your EOI should you wish to include any relevant additional costs that will help you achieve your goals. You can either keep the same requested amount or increase that figure by up to 20% as long as you don’t go over the funding maximum request of £350,000 and the figure does not exceed 30% of your last filed income. 

For example if you requested £100,000, you could increase this to a £120,000 request as long as you have a last filed income of £400,000 or above. An area you may want to consider getting extra funding for is releasing time for your senior staff team to free them up from service delivery so they can focus on your organisational resilience goals and engaging with our tailored support programme (see section 1.3 guidance notes).

If the CAF team have provided feedback about your EOI budget, please incorporate these changes into your full application request. This may include removing ineligible costs or spending that is unlikely to be able to take place before the end of March 2023. 

If your organisation is to adapt and thrive it’s likely that you will be looking at a number of different areas and your budget should reflect this.

We are expecting both grant budgets to address a number of areas and not be dominated by any one. Taking a strategic approach when putting your request together is likely to strengthen your application. We want to know that you are planning for the long term and are looking at a range of issues within your organisation. Try to give us a clear rationale for how your budget request will help you adapt and thrive.

Please ensure that you provide clear detail of how you have calculated each budget area. For example under staffing costs list each post to be supported along with details of number of hours x cost per hour and details of any oncosts. You can add these details in the narrative box alongside your budget headings.

Staff costs

  • can include pension and NI contributions
  • can include provision for staff directly engaged in fundraising
  • can include training and development costs

Core costs

  • such as rent, insurance, utility costs etc

Activity or project costs

  • must include a clear rationale of how these costs feed into your long term sustainability for service delivery plans

Volunteer costs

  • costs to service the existing volunteer base
  • costs to develop a new volunteer base

Organisational development costs

  • can include digitalisation, IT or communication costs when demonstrated it has an impact on sustainability, such as diversification of income

Equipment costs

  • which are relevant to long term adapt and thrive goals


Capital expenditure

  • this should be reasonable and proportionate and not form the bulk of your funding request

3.3  Resilience questions 

The questions in this section are about your organisation’s resilience. We want to know where you are now, where you want to get to and how you envisage this programme enabling these ambitions.  Please be as open as you feel you can be. We are not looking for perfect organisations, we are looking for those that have challenges which can be addressed.  Based on CAF’s work in the sector, we have identified that most resilience needs come under six headings so we have split the question this way as it can be helpful to consider all the different elements of what makes up resilience. You may find it useful to find out more about these elements in our overview of the findings from the pilot CAF Resilience programme.

You may identify challenges in all six areas or only in some of them. Some areas may feel really well developed and strong, and you can indicate that.  You may have identified weaknesses in all areas but only want to focus on addressing challenges in just some because you feel there is a lot to do on those.  You may feel that over the course of the programme you would be able to work on all six.  Your organisation is unique and this is about what you have identified you need help with and how you anticipate using this Fund to create change.

This additional £20,000 is available to successful applicants to fund external expertise, support and advice to help develop your resilience plans. This will allow you to bring in external specialists, consultants, facilitators or trainers to look at needs you have identified that will boost your organisational resilience. There may also be specific training that you want your staff to access to boost their skills.

We would encourage you to take a holistic approach to organisational resilience and think carefully how you want to utilise these funds. You will also be able to utilise CAF’s tailored support programme to help you achieve you resilience goals. More details of this will be available in our webinar (see guidance notes) and provided at grant award stage.

The questions focus on the following areas:

  1. your organisation’s purpose
  2. the wider environment in which you operate
  3. your organisation’s leadership
  4. your networks and partnerships
  5. your finances and operations
  6. the impact of your organisation

Work through these questions to give an analysis of where your organisation’s strengths and weaknesses are in these areas. Please remember we are not looking for perfect organisations, we want to understand where you are in your journey to building up these areas.

Planning section 

Developing an organisation’s resilience can mean a lot of change takes place in quite a short space of time. How can you demonstrate that your leadership team and your board are committed to this grant programme and to organisational change?
Give us an understanding of what discussions have already taken place within your organisation. How involved will your governing body and leadership team be with this process?

 

Outline of spend section 

Give an outline of how you plan to spend the £20,000 resilience support grant in the following outline areas.
Provide a broad budget breakdown in the 6 areas of resilience building we have identified in the questions above.


Level of support section 

If successful, CAF will assess the level of support you will receive within our tailored support programme. Whilst CAF will make the decision based on a variety of factors including resource, to what extent do you feel support would be useful to you?  

Give us your thoughts on the level of support that you think would work best for your organisation.

Supporting documents

The attachment of your supporting documents is a really important part of the application process. If you fail to submit the correct document, showing the information that has been requested this can mean we don’t have the right information to assess your application and could also mean that we are unable to verify your award.

Please read carefully which documents are required and see the notes about what information needs to be shown. For example, in Phase 1 of the fund we found many applicants had submitted bank statements that didn’t show the key information we had asked for or that information has been redacted.

We need to see a statement from your organisation’s bank account which must be dated within three months of your application and show at least 2 transactions. It must show your organisation name, sort code and bank account number. If you want to submit a screen shot of your online bank statement please ensure that the URL address is showing.

We ask for additional information from organisations that are not registered charities. Again these documents form a vital part of our verification process.

Please follow the guidance in the application form and ensure that you submit all of the information that we need.


Declarations

Please read through the declarations and note that by submitting your applications you will confirm that:

  • you have read and understood the privacy notices as outlined below
  • you are able to sign and confirm commitments on behalf of this organisation
  • ·no controllers/directors of your organisation will receive any direct benefit from this grant
  • you will use the CAF Resilience Fund Phase 2 to support charitable activity in the UK
  • the information you have provided in this application is correct. This particularly relates to:
    • what your organisation does and its current financial situation
    • describing your organisation’s activities and areas of operation
    • how you would use a grant to support your organisation and
    • what will you spend the money on to make it happen


Privacy Notices

If you apply for this programme you will be directed to our carefully selected online service provider, click here to see their privacy policy Blackbaud.

CAF’s privacy notice can be found at CAF Privacy Policy

ABI’s privacy notice at ABI Privacy Policy