Since 1999, the Foundation has donated more than £2 million to 3,000 local projects and good causes across the UK. Previously the Foundation provided support to those who were disadvantaged or in vulnerable circumstances.

The Foundation is run independently by a board of eight trustees, who review the applications every three months.

The Foundation receives funding from Leeds Building Society and from members' donations via the Your Interest in Theirs scheme. Members can opt-in to donate the pence of their interest which is then equally split between Leeds Building Society Foundation and our national charity partner.

2023 review

In 2023, we funded £339,486 in grants and supported 46 charities. Find out how we awarded grants in 2023 and our impact by reading our report.

Criteria themes

Your project must meet our purpose through one or more of the following criteria themes:

Financial stress
Security and refuge
Quality and suitability of housing
Health and wellbeing support for those experiencing homelessness

We welcome applications from those who take a Housing First and/or relationship-based approach. In your application we’d like to see evidence of:

Strength-based practice
Trauma-informed care
Psychologically-informed environments

Exclusions

The Foundation is unfortunately unable to support:

Religious, military, or political projects
Charities or projects based overseas
Individuals (including sponsorship)
Animal welfare projects
Local Scouts, Brownies or Girlguiding groups
Medical research
Retrospective costs (reimbursement for costs already incurred)
Charities and projects that don’t align with our purpose of supporting people in need of a safe and secure home

Our grants

Our grants provide funding to projects that support those in need of a safe and secure home.

View our grant giving guide (PDF, 834KB) for more information, including eligibility and scoring criteria.

You can apply for a small grant or a large grant, depending on how much you want to apply for.

Small grants (up to £1,000)

For our small grants, we only accept requests to fund capital expenditure. This means that we fund the purchase of items used to directly help those in need, rather than contributing to a charity's running costs.

We'll only accept small grant applications from UK registered charities with a turnover of less than £1 million.

Apply for a small grant

Large grants (£25,000-£100,000)

Applicants for large grants can apply for between £25,000 and £100,000. This can be a one year grant, or split across two or three years.

You can apply for core, project and/or capital costs. You can apply for new work or existing work, as long as you’re not requesting retrospective funding. We advise you to apply for what you need the most, in order to support those in need of a safe and secure home.

For our large grants, we’re only accepting grants from organisations based in Yorkshire and/or the North East of England.

We’ll only accept large grant applications from UK registered charities. For large grant applications, we only accept applications from UK registered charities with a turnover of £5 million or less.

Apply for a large grant

After you've applied

Your application will be considered at the next scheduled meeting.

If your application is successful, you’ll be contacted within eight weeks after the meeting date. You’ll need to complete a short impact form at the end of each year of funding.