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.

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.

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. We will support new or existing community initiatives that have a particular focus on addressing the challenges people are facing around the rising cost of living.

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
Projects 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

We want to prioritise projects that:

Focus on the positive contribution of people within the community and support the challenges that people face in light of the rising cost of living
Enable active participation of a community in decision-making and involvement in making their community a better place to live in
Focus 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 wellbeing

For more information and to apply, please visit Micro Community Investment Fund - Community Foundation Northern Ireland (communityfoundationni.org)