Mayor's Community Grants Programme

What is the Mayor's Community Grants Programme?

The council’s vision is to support and invest in a thriving and diverse voluntary and community sector to help it improve the lives of residents.

The Mayor’s Community Grants Programme will provide £11.96m of funding over the course of the programme.

This equals an annual allocation of £3.5 million for voluntary and community sector. This is an increase of £900,000 per year on the previous Local Community Fund.

The funding is for three years and five months. The projects we’ve funded start on 1 November 2023 and finish on 31 March 2027.

What projects have we funded?

The Mayor's Community Grants Programme supports the delivery of the council’s priorities set out in the Strategic Plan 2022-26.

The programme consists of five themes:

Tackling the cost-of-living
Accelerating education
Culture, jobs, business and skills
Investing in public services
Empower communities and fight crime

We received 308 applications from 170 organisations. Organisations applied for over three times the amount of funding we have available, meaning we had to make some difficult decisions.

We have awarded funding to a range of different services and organisations ensuring that all sections of the community benefit.

The council has funded 86 organisations, including a consortium, to deliver 110 projects. This is a significant increase from the 50 projects from 38 organisations which were funded through the Local Community Fund.

View the Award Report including the full list of the projects we have funded.

How were decisions made?

Awards were made following a fair and transparent process, including an external audit of the assessment process. More details are set out in the grants award report.

Organisations submitted an organisation application and project application. Project applications were only assessed if the organisation passed the organisation assessment.

Applications were then assessed by a team of trained assessors, using criteria to provide scores.

Recommendations on which organisations to fund were based on

how they scored
how they met the needs of the theme, schemes and priorities
equalities considerations
geographic spread.

The Chief Executive made the decision on grant awards under decision-making powers from Cabinet.

What other funding sources does the council have for the voluntary and community sector?

The council is launching its Small Grants Programme which provides £800,000 of grant funding per year in January 2024.

The council also has an Emergency Grant Fund to support voluntary and community sector organisation who are at risk of closing.

For more information visit the community grant information page.

Support for unsuccessful organisations

Both successful and unsuccessful organisations will be notified following the call-in period.

Unsuccessful organisations can request feedback on their applications. The team will provide feedback from November onwards.

We are also providing support for unsuccessful organisations through our partner Tower Hamlets Council for Voluntary Services.

The council provides information on external funding through our newsletter and our external funding page.

Get in touch

If you have a question please contact the council’s Voluntary & Community Sector Team by emailing vcs@towerhamlets.gov.uk.