The National Lottery Community Fund is our main grant funder which allows us to provide an adult and families support service as well as supporting our boat training and our volunteer co-ordination. This grant also assists our emergency foodbank which operates on a Wednesday afternoon for our clients and for individuals and families that live in the Kilnhurst and Swinton area that have been referred by a professional.
We were recently notified that in our final year of funding we could apply for an uplift to our grant. Previously this uplift could be up to 10% of the total grant provided, but the National Lottery Community Fund have acknowledged that due to the cost of living crisis organisations were struggling even more and as such would allow uplift grants up to the value of 25% of the original budget.
We put together our plan and submitted the same and we are grateful to confirm that the National Lottery Community Fund have awarded our uplift grant. This allows for additional cost of living costs that we are incurring, (the 564% increase in utilities in January was somewhat eye-watering as you can imagine), but also allowed us to extend our adult and families support work to include a youth engagement worker linking into this work as another method of referral and support systems.
We are looking forward to delivering this final year of programme funded by the National Lottery Community Fund and thank them for their continued support.