Micro Community Investment Fund

Fund Aims

The fund will provide valuable investment for community initiatives making a difference in towns and villages across Northern Ireland.

The fund will enable those organisations who are making the lives of others in their communities better, by improving their financial, physical, and mental wellbeing.

Community Investments available: Up to £2,000

Applications are sought to support both new and existing activities and projects that enhance the financial, physical and/or mental well being of people in communities.

Community projects should focus on improving at least one of the following:

• Financial wellbeing
• Physical wellbeing
• Mental wellbeing

Applications for funding within one or other of these themes could be to support:

• Projects promoting inclusion and belonging, particularly to enhance the physical and mental well being of the local community
• that strengthen the capacity of individuals to engage with a range of available digital services in order to help manage their money in a digital age
• Projects that enhance people’s financial knowledge through financial education programmes
• Projects promoting physical activity which uses the assets located within the area
• Projects that improve the ability of individuals to access mental health and wellbeing services either i) directly, through the provision of support or ii) indirectly, through education/awareness raising programmes
• Projects that encourage the active participation of individuals in their own mental wellbeing. Projects should aim to promote increased independence/resilience in relation to an individual’s mental health

e want to prioritise projects that:

• Focus on the positive contribution of people within the community
• Enable active participation of a community in decision-making and involvement in making their community a better place to live in F- ocus on the assets within the community which the project will use to make the community a better place to live in
• Help get people engaged in taking community action where it hasn’t happened before to make the community a better place to live in.
• Projects that address more than one particular strand of well being

Please note that the Foundation will not fund organisations or activities which promote causes that are contrary to our purposes. Causes and activities that are contrary to our purposes include, but may not be limited to, those outlined in our investment policy. We will not therefore fund organisations or activities which we determine are linked to the promotion of armaments, alcohol, human rights abuses, tobacco or pornography.

Criteria:

You do not have to have a constitution to apply to this fund. We will discuss your project with you in advance of application if you do not have certain governance requirements for funding in place.

We want to support smaller, grassroots organisations delivering great work. For this reason whilst groups with an income of up to £30,000 per annum are eligible to apply preference will be given to groups with an income of up to £10,000.