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Need a quicker, simpler way to get funds out to community groups?
With our grant distribution service, you can hand your time-consuming financial processes and admin over to us. Leaving you free to manage your wider grantmaking programme.
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We can help you:
- Get funds to community groups, individuals or projects that don’t have bank accounts or other structures they might typically need
- Find community projects and groups to support
- Deliver and/or design a grantmaking process that’s suitable for community groups and relieves their admin burden
- Deliver and/or design a grantmaking process that requires groups to work together on a collaborative grant
- Support your groups with transparent money management that also facilitates easy financial reporting
Our fee
From 6% on all funds distributed (fees may be higher if extra support is needed or the programme is international). All fees include VAT.
Standard grant distribution
For a 6% fee, we’ll take care of:
- Due diligence
- Onboarding and set-up
- Fund distribution
- Support for ad-hoc financial queries
- Payment processing
This means:
- Processes that are proportionate and suitable for community groups
- Less bureaucracy and hoop-jumping
- Grantees have access to Open Collective, where they can manage their own funding independently and download transaction logs for reporting
- Grantees can use Open Collective beyond your specific grant*
*For other incoming funds, grantees are automatically charged a 5% fee
Extra support
Grant distribution is just one of the ways we can help. Here are some examples of the extra support we can provide (ask us about costs):
- Programme design support– for example, providing input on the application process and helping with decision-making
- Contracting– e.g. drafting grant agreements, hosting drop-in sessions for contract queries
- Reporting – e.g. gathering narrative and financial reports/updates from grantees, hosting learning convenings
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Relevant FAQs
What’s the process?
On average, our Grant Distribution service takes around 3–4 weeks to set up. Get in touch for an introductory chat to explore your needs and see how we can support you.
What is Open Collective?
Open Collective is a platform that allows you to collaboratively and transparently manage your funds. As a fiscal host, we license Open Collective and work together to hold funds on behalf of community groups in a way that allows them to make all the decisions.
Do we have to use Open Collective?
We strongly recommend using the Open Collective platform. It’s the quickest and easiest way to get money to grantees. We can distribute grants outside of the platform, but this may mean additional costs due to the extra admin involved.
If we use Open Collective, can our grantees use their accounts beyond our specific grant?
In most cases, yes. If your grantees have created their own Open Collective account to receive your grant, they can keep using their account to receive and manage other funds. All funds received through the platform are automatically charged a 5% fee to cover admin costs.
Can you grant to people outside of the UK?
Yes, we can. The set-up is different, though, so we’d need to talk you through the process first. Book a meeting with a member of our team to find out how it works.
Success stories
Bristol City Council
The pandemic hit community and voluntary organisations particularly hard.
To aid these groups’ recovery, Bristol City Council (BCC) set up The Community Resilience Fund: a one-off capital grant fund that would help make them more sustainable and enable them to continue their vital work for the long term.
In line with their values, BCC made the fund a participatory grantmaking process (PGM). They invited potential grantees to help design the fund. And they wanted to compensate participants for their time.
In partnership with The Social Change Nest, BCC were able to do this easily through Open Collective, where participants could draw down funds to compensate for their time and involvement.
In total, we were able to pay out more than £8,000 in compensation and expenses – saving BCC considerable time and admin hassle in the process.
The British Science Association
The Ideas Fund is a fund run by the British Science Association and funded by Wellcome, designed to enable communities around the UK to develop and test ideas that address problems related to mental wellbeing, in partnership with academic researchers. So far, we have distributed £225,629 to 10 community projects as part of this fund.
The Barbican
Creative Neighbourhoods is the Barbican’s initiative to help culture and creativity thrive in the City of London. Part of this is The Imagine Fund, a community grant-making and support scheme in which decisions about funding are made by the community themselves, and the Community Impact Collective (CIC), a collective of leaders working with communities in the City of London to strengthen and advocate for values-led community work. We host both initiatives at The Social Change Nest. In the first round of The Imagine Fund, we distributed £12,500 to 10 community projects. We are now in the middle of distributing £50,000 worth of grants to another 22 projects, as part of the second round.
Decolonising Economics
Decolonising Economics (DE) is run by Noni Makuyana and Guppi Bola, who’ve been organising together for 6 years.
The duo build power and resource for BIPOC (black, indigenous, and other people of colour) communities in the solidarity economy, to help bring about a just transition rooted in principles of racial justice.
In 2021, DE were offered funding to support their transformation into a worker cooperative. However, the opportunity was only open to registered entities, which they were not. So they contacted us to explore fiscal hosting as a solution.
Since early 2022, DE have tripled their income. And, thanks to the security we offer, they’ve been able to obtain core funding that wouldn’t have been accessible otherwise.
“The process and anticipated operational demands for running our own organisation (as two part-time organisers) felt overwhelming, and the legal responsibilities to Companies House and the Financial Conduct Authority felt in conflict with our own principles. With SCN, we gain insights into managing our budget and have accountability on our spend but are relieved of a lot of governance bull**** that is expected from funders because they are regulated by the Charity Commission, who do not want radicals to succeed… Thank you SCN for always being a massive support to us.”
Oxford Mutual Aid
Oxford Mutual Aid is a grassroots community support group and action network. Every week, they provide 330 households with food and baby supplies, deliver 300–500 emergency food parcels and cook over 650 meals.
“SCN’s support has been instrumental in helping our organisation get started,” said Lia den Daas of Oxford Mutual Aid.
“Their work removed some difficult practical obstacles which meant we were able to do really important work with our community right from the start. Without their help, we could not have grown and flourished as an organisation.”
Trans Aid Cymru
Trans Aid Cymru started as a local mutual aid group in Cardiff in 2020. They aim to help transgender, non-binary and intersex (TIN) people through mutual aid support.
The project is run by TIN people for TIN people, making it inclusive and understanding of the community’s needs. They’ve provided support through their meal share scheme and the development of a trans-friendly GP map of Wales, among other initiatives.
To date, Trans Aid Cymru have raised over £45,000 on Open Collective as part of SCN.
Melanin Health & Wellness
Melanin Health & Wellness was born out of the need to provide nutritional, culturally appropriate meals to people from marginalised ethnic groups.
The initial focus was on delivering meals to children in receipt of free school meals during the school holidays. But the project evolved into providing training and support around food management, budgeting, and nutritional advice. It also addressed the relationship between food and mental health for low-income families from marginalised backgrounds.
Melanin Health & Wellness have now secured a 5-year lease on a community hub to expand their activities. We’ve helped them through seed funding, admin support and capacity building. All of which has enabled them to develop a sustainable structure and develop processes for a thriving community organisation.
Changing Ideas
Changing Ideas is a supporter and funder of ideas which can achieve lasting social change. Founded by philanthropist and photographer David Graham, the charity backs people, movements and organisations to challenge the status quo and make a positive difference. From funding legal activism against big tech to providing infrastructure support to the UK’s mutual aid movement, they support organisations who believe they can make a difference. Together with The Social Change Nest, they launched the Changing Ideas Mutual Aid Fund, aimed to support the next iteration of the mutual aid movement in the UK post-pandemic.
Urban Movement Innovation Fund
The Urban Movement Innovation Fund (UMI Fund) works to connect, align and strengthen people power for a more socially just, zero-carbon future.
UMI amplifies the efforts of NGOs working on technical solutions, or with policy makers. And it unites them with those of campaign or grassroots groups and movements seeking to increase citizen engagement and activity.
In 2021, they partnered with The Social Change Nest to deliver the Youth Climate Fund. Together, we distributed £155,500 to 69 grantees across 28 countries. In 2022, this grew to over £500,000. And we continue to grow our partnership each year.
Uplift
Uplift put equity and justice at the heart of everything they do. Their mission is to support and energise the movement for a fair, fossil fuel-free UK.
Their work sees them strategically source, connect, and elevate ideas to set in motion a just transition away from fossil fuel production. One that measures up to the full scale of the climate crisis.
Over the 18 last months, we’ve supported Uplift in receiving and managing over £2 million in funding from multiple funders.