Keystone Fund

At stage 1, we ask what your organisation’s expenditure on core staff and overheads was in your last annual financial accounts, and what you expect it to be in the current financial year. We will also ask how much you would like to apply for.

If you are invited to apply to Stage 2, you will be invited to apply for one of 3 tiers of funding.

• Tier 1: £5,000-£10,000
• Tier 2: £10,001-£25,000
• Tier 3: £25,001-£50,000

You can apply for any amount within that tier. In order to balance the Fund across a wide range of selected organisations, if a grant is awarded we may offer less than the amount that you have applied for, but it will be within the range of the tier.

We want to hear about the ways that you have responded to the challenges facing your community over the last 3 years. Tell us about breadth or depth of your work and the positive differences that it has made for the people you serve. What are you most proud of having achieved?

We would like to support organisations which are deeply embedded within their local (eg towns/district) or regional (eg county or 2-3 county areas) geographic area and have a strong understanding of needs and solutions for the community they serve.

This fund will support charities in the UK which work with refugees who are already in the UK. We are not able to fund organisations whose focus is primarily overseas.

The standard characterisation of a small charity is one with annual income of £1 million or less. We do not have a hard cut off, but will prioritise smaller charities for this fund.

We would prefer to hear from single non-federated charities which do not have organisational support from a national head office.

You need to apply through an organisation which has been registered as charitable before 1 January 2020. We will not provide funding to individuals.

We recognise the powerful wave of community activity which supported people throughout the pandemic and that in many situations is continuing now. However, we wish to prioritise those organisations which have already taken some steps to build their governance and structure over a longer time period and can articulate their future needs.

Organisations which have been invited to Stage 2 are invited to a webinar on Tuesday 20 December. It will cover broad questions about Stage 2, but we will not be able to discuss individual queries. This will be recorded and added to this page after the event. In addition, we can answer queries related to the Fund, the online application portal, and reporting requirements via the contact details below. 

Applications, along with supporting documentation and reporting, must be in English. Online translation tools can be used if needed to prepare your application and documentation.

Please be reassured that your application is not assessed on your English fluency.

The Keystone Fund decision making is structured over two stages, with the intention of reducing the time and costs involved for small charities to apply for funds. We will select charitable organisations that most clearly meet the aims and priorities of the Fund. The decision making process draws on expertise in social equity and grant making. 

We anticipate high numbers of applications and regret that not all eligible organisations will be able to be supported. 

If your organisation is selected, we will then ask you for documentation to complete our due diligence and verification checks. This is to ensure the grants meet legal requirements on charitable donations. You must complete this stage before funds can be confirmed. Documents may include a copy of your organisation’s governing document, your most recent annual financial accounts, a transactional bank statement from the last 3 months as proof of your organisation’s bank account, and details of your Trustees/Directors’ full names, residential addresses and dates of birth. Further information or restriction on the use of the grant may be required in some cases.

Your governing document is the document that sets out the rules of your organisation. It could be your constitution, articles of association, bylaws, statutes, trust deed, articles of incorporation, or other legal document explaining the purpose of your organisation and how it works. It must include a charitable dissolution clause (ie, what would happen to your assets if your organisation closes down).

CAF understands that charities are best placed to decide on how funds can be utilised to strengthen support their communities. Funds must be spent on your charitable purpose, but an unrestricted grant allows you to be flexible and agile, to adapt to new realities and to develop greater resilience.

As part of the application process we will ask you how you intend to use the grant. We will select organisations which can articulate how they want to adapt their ways of working and/or bolster your core building blocks, rather than organisations which are seeking funds towards direct service provision or capital projects.

Grants awarded to Community Interest Companies, and other non-registered charities, will be subject to some restriction of the grant use towards specific charitable activities, services or outcomes.

We seek to provide trust-based grantmaking and to hear from our grant holders about the challenges they face and solutions that they build.

After the funds have been spent, we will ask you to send us your annual report or a general report which describes how your organisation has developed. We will ask you about the challenges and successes during the grant period, what you have learned and what steps you hope to take in the future. We will ask you to provide an image of your work, and a quote from somebody from the community you work with describing the impact that your organisation has had on them. We would like to use the information to help share the story of your work more widely.

We aim to provide useful resources for the charities that we support, and we have expertise to share in strategic planning, diversifying income and charity governance, as well as opportunities for online networking. As part of the application form, we ask you what webinars, toolkits or online networking would be most useful to you, to help us prepare.

CAF is able to open the Keystone Fund thanks to a generous donation from a corporate donor in the communications sector.

A ‘Keystone’ is the ‘central principle or part of a system on which all else depends’. It is considered essential to maintaining optimum structure and is a hallmark of strength. Social equity is at the heart of solutions to the challenges facing society today. Unrestricted grant making, backed up by advice webinars and toolkits, is a core method through which CAF can support its mission to accelerate progress towards a fair and sustainable future for all.