Doors open to new bids for share of around £8.4m a year
Ryan Taylor
Shetland Charitable Trust is planning to launch its new-look Main Grant Scheme on Monday with an annual
estimated budget of £8.4 million to spend.
The funds are open to local charities offering projects and services to improve the quality of life in
the isles.
Trustees are keen to support projects which tackle inequality and social isolation.
Local charities have six weeks to submit bids for a share of the funding for 2021 and beyond with no cap on the amount they can apply for.
The fresh approach is part of the new five-year strategy agreed by trustees last September and seeks
to expand and refresh the range of services supported by the grants budget, which has risen from
£7.3m last year.
Applicants will be able to seek funding for up to four years, making it easier to plan for the longer
term.
Trust chairman Dr Andrew Cooper said: “Shetland has an extraordinary network of organisations dedicated to helping others and they are having to evolve continually to meet the changing demands of these turbulent times.
“The trust too needs to be able to respond and adjust its grant funding to best serve the community’s needs. We are optimistic that the groups we fund – and others that we haven’t funded before – will come forward with innovative proposals for making Shetland an even better place to live than it is already.”
The Main Grant Scheme is open to organisations with a turnover of more than £50,000 a year
undertaking charitable activities in the fields of social care and welfare, arts and culture, heritage
and the environment or sport and recreation.
The closing date for applications is 12 noon on Monday 31st August.
The trust says it paid £7.3m towards the running costs of 13 charitable beneficiaries last year, of which £6.7 million went to four major organisations – Shetland Recreational Trust; the rural care model of residential and day care centres; Shetland Amenity Trust and Shetland Arts Development Agency.
Last week the trust also awarded an additional £530,173 to 16 projects to boost services for vulnerable and disadvantaged people during the current financial year.
Peter Hamilton
If “Trustees are keen to support projects which tackle inequality and social isolation” they should consider how to engage directly and systematically with those at the margins of Shetland society. They need to reconsider the this, ethic and structure of the organisation to do this, the better to learn first hand of the difficulties intended beneficiaries face. Partnership and power sharing are lacking. Without them paternalism will continue.