Frome Town Council’s advice scheme brings in £90,000

A scheme to help local voluntary and community groups write successful grant applications to the national Lottery and grant giving trusts has come up trumps. 

The Town Council has been paying for “Funding for Frome” advice sessions to help local groups find funders and write the perfect grant application. So far not a single group that has had this help has failed – every single application has been successful.

The grants have made a huge difference to a wide range of people including families and children, the elderly and people with disabilities.

Cindy Moxham of the Frome based “Open Story Tellers” told the Frome Times that one of its roles was to help meet the needs of families with children with learning or communication difficulties. Cindy says, “We want to make it easy for families to find the information they need to help their children make choices about what they do when they leave school or college.

“With help from the funding advice scheme we secured a grant of £9,930 to maintain this work. The advisor from a consultancy company called Green Strand “quickly understood what we needed” and helped us find the right funder and write a winning bid.”

This is only one of a dozen successful applications. Another grant award is paying for toilet facilities for Frome’s new out of town allotment site, another for young people’s music workshops and another enabled the opening of a new youth club for children and young people with special needs that meets every Monday in Park Road.

The free advice service is also available for people running sports clubs, arts organisations and people wanting to set up not-for-profit social enterprises.

Cllr Peter Macpadyen says the Council is “investing in the voluntary sector” and “oiling the wheels” at a local level.

“As the advice sessions seem to be bringing in ten times what they cost the Council, it is clearly excellent value for money for the people of Frome,” he said. “The groups also benefit from general advice about how to organise, how to be more effective and communicate successfully and so there will be benefits to the community that go well beyond what can measured in purely cash terms.”

People wanting to book an advice session can go to the Frome Town Council web site and look under “your community” or visit www.greenstrand.co.uk

Cindy Moxham added, “If you’d like to apply for a grant, now is the time, it couldn’t be easier with the support on offer from Frome Town Council.”