The Barclays Community Finance Fund is making £250,000 available to support the delivery of affordable credit to those individuals who may otherwise access high cost credit or resort to taking out illegal loans.
This fund is part of a £0.5m package of support launched in 2009 by Barclays to support the scaling up of the third sector. Barclays has an ongoing commitment to improve financial inclusion, enabling everyone to have access to appropriate and affordable financial services in the UK.
The specific aims of the Barclays Community Finance Fund are:
• To increase the existing community finance providers’ capacity to deliver affordable credit to low income consumers by providing them with short-term direct financial support
• To provide financial support to credit unions and CDFIs, which are starting up in areas where public access to affordable credit is restricted
Transact, the national forum for financial inclusion, is pleased to be managing the delivery of the fund, which is open exclusively to Transact members.
Membership is free and more details of how to join can be found at
The Fund will be divided into several smaller grants (of approximately
£30,000-£50,000) and distributed to those organisations that best demonstrate how its use will help meet one or more of the Fund’s objectives.
It is aimed primarily, but not exclusively, at those areas identified by the
Financial Inclusion Taskforce as having a greater mismatch between demand and supply of affordable credit. Those projects selected will be funded to deliver services over the course of a 12 month period with an additional 3 month lead-in time (15 months in total) between March 2010 and May 2011.
There is flexibility around the type of activities that may be supported. Projects may focus on strengthening the delivery of existing services or could involve new activities that build on or add to existing services. Ways in which this could be achieved may include:
-improvements in efficiency
-improvements and/or innovations in products and services
-increasing the scale of operations (for example, through marketing strategy)
-enabling sustainability of services
In addition to the grant, all projects will be asked to consider the opportunities for receiving extra support from Barclays, either through links made with staff at a local branch level or through receiving assistance from one of Barclays’ specialist central teams.
Nominations Process
Successful projects will be selected via a third party nominations process. The following bodies are able to nominate a project for selection: a provider of in-kind support (for instance, a local authority or housing association);
DWP Financial Inclusion Champions; an existing or previous funder; an external evaluator who has previously evaluated the organisation; a
Barclays employee; selected other agencies (as agreed with the Transact team).
The deadline for receiving initial applications is November 6th 2009. Those projects short listed will be visited by Transact in early January 2010 and will be required to provide more detailed plans by January 20th 2010 for consideration by the decision making panel. Successful projects will be informed at the start of February and will receive funding to begin in March
2010.
For further details on Barclays Community Finance Fund, the nominations process and the information needed to apply, please contact:
Chris Hobson
Transact
28 Commercial Street,
London, E1 6LS
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or call 020 7392 2932
Alternatively, for more information or to download nomination and proposal forms visit www.transact.org.uk/cff