Grant Process
Before you make your initial enquiry to Sunrise, please check your organisation is eligible to apply and you meet our grant making criteria.
Please use our email address info@sunrisefoundation.org.uk for all correspondence.
Eligibility
You can enquire to Sunrise Foundation if you are a:
- Voluntary, Community or Charity organisation
- School
- Church
- Health body
Enquiries which the Trustees will not normally support are:
- Contributions to general appeals or circulars
- Religious activity which is not for wider public benefit
- Public bodies to carry out their statutory obligations
- Activities which solely support animal welfare
- Activities which have already taken place
- Grant making by other organisations
- Privately owned and profit-distributing companies or limited partnerships
Criteria
Sunrise will always undertake initial research on an organisation via the Charity Commission website as well as their own website. Trustees will consider the relevant organisation’s reputation, previous achievements, facilities, organisation structure and governance, as well as whether there are adequate systems in place to monitor the use of the funds. We will look at three years published Annual Report & Accounts to gain an understanding of the level of Income & Expenditure, as well as the available Reserves.
The Foundation has a scoring system which helps during each stage of the decision-making process. More points are given to applications that:
- Show strong evidence of need
- Seek to involve as wide a range of people as possible
- Meet more of the Foundation’s outcomes
- Where organisations provide measurable outcomes on the end user beneficiaries
- Are from organisations with a smaller annual income which could gain maximum benefit for their project from funding
- Are for smaller projects where Sunrise could achieve a substantial impact to those in need and really make a difference
- Where organisations are a grassroots charity/community/voluntary group in the Bristol/South West region where Sunrise can easily visit to make meaningful assessments and evaluations
There is no guarantee funding will be approved as Sunrise consider all enquiries and applications in competition with each other in a fair and consistent manner by way of a scoring system to facilitate evaluation process. We seldom have enough funds to support all the applications we would like to.
During our assessment we will look at the following factors to help us reach a decision: The need for your project:
- Who will benefit and how many would directly benefit from a Sunrise grant?
- How you achieve our outcomes
- If we have funded you before
- Your organisation’s income
- Will it make a substantial contribution to those in need and really make a difference
- The total project cost
If you are unsuccessful with either your Enquiry or Grant Application, we will always provide you with feedback.
Should you be successful in being invited to apply for a grant, we will send you a Grant Application Form, together with Grant Application Guidelines. You will be given a date by when you should submit your application in order that it may be considered at the next Trustees meeting.
If you are successful with your Grant Application we will agree with you on how and when you will report on the progress.
You would be provided with Terms & Conditions of the Grant and need to sign a Grant Agreement.
When everything is in order Sunrise will transfer your grant and you will be able to start your project.
In line with our strategic planning, the Trustees have implemented a Multi-Year Grant Application process for some existing beneficiaries. Multi-Year Grants are a big commitment to organisations to not only help them become more sustainable in the future, but also fundamentally ensures continuity of vital support. We believe this facilitates fostering close relationships and enables the Foundation to fully understand the work the charities are doing. By offering repeat support or on-going funding we make the grant giving more effective and efficient.