Third Sector Policy and Grants

The Manchester Fund was launched on 1 March 2007 with the transfer of 70 previously dormant funds held by Manchester City Council.  Many of the funds had been set up in previous centuries to benefit specific causes which become obsolete over time and funds remained unspent.  Through the Community Foundation, the Manchester Fund was set up, investing the funds as an endowment, with the interest spent on grant making each year.

The key aim of the fund is to encourage and support education and grass-root community activity in Manchester. To remain as true to the individual funds' original purposes as possible the Fund has a number of key priorities:

Support for young people and youth projects
Early years projects
School based projects including health and healthy living
Support for young families and parents
Educational attainment projects including lifelong learning
Educational inclusion projects

There are two categories of grants available:
Up to £250 for informal unconstituted groups
Up to £1,500 for groups with constitutions or rules of association

The Manchester Fund can support applications from either schools or small, community-based and locally controlled groups that manage themselves, encourage active participation from volunteers, usually have minimal cash reserves and limited access to funding support.

Further fund criteria can be found in the Manchester Fund Guidelines which are available on the Community Foundation for Manchester website along with the appropriate application form and application monitoring form.

Link to: Community Foundation for Greater Manchester website

If you want to talk to someone about applying, please contact Community  Foundation for Greater Manchester on 0161 214 0940.

To see which dormant funds have been released to form the Manchester Fund, please click here.