New town council grants process to launch

FROME Town Council is to trial its new grants process in the new year.

The council’s ‘Community Grants Scheme’ will launch in January and run until March, offering organisations grants of up to £3,000 – in previous years, the maximum amount offered was £2,000.

The future of the council’s “large grants” or multi-year agreements, which came to an end in the 2019/20 financial year, has yet to be decided – with “more discussions” needed.

The new ‘Community Grants Scheme’ – which will use the remaining grant funding budget for the 2020/21 financial year of £60,000 – has been described as “not too different” to the previous scheme, however changes to the process, which will be trialled next year, include having residents alongside councillors on the decision-making panel, and giving “live feedback” to applicants.

Reporting to the town council at a recent ‘Town Matters’ committee meeting, community development manager, Kate Hellard, said that it was “important” to open the ‘Community Grants Scheme’ “as soon as possible”.

“We know that many organisations have been really well supported through  Covid emergency funding, but that is coming to an end,” said Kate. “And there are also lots of organisations that have been quiet over the last six months – for whatever reason, they paused their activity – who are now starting to plan for next year.

“Also, for people to have some financial security going into the new financial year, it’s important for us to open the grants scheme.”

The ‘Community Grants Scheme’ will have an emphasis on applications which improve physical, mental, emotional health, and environmental and economic outcomes; directly impact Frome residents; and can demonstrate significant positive impact.

About the process for the town council’s large or multi-year grants, the community development manager described  it as being “up in the air”, and explained that a grants working group had identified that continuing the town council’s  multi-year agreement process was “not feasible”.

“Every organisation in Frome would love to have a multi-year agreement,” said Kate,  “to have the security of year-on-year funding – but with around 120 organisations, that’s potential quite a enormous budget.”

Kate continued, “One thought was that organisations could receive a large grant one year, but not come back to the town council for two or three years – with the expectation that the large grant would see them through those two or three years.”

There was controversy earlier in the year when the council’s multi-year agreements came to an end. 

Frome Festival, whose ‘multi-year agreement’, which guaranteed funding over three years amounting to a total of £30,000, ended in the 2019/20 financial year, said that the potential change in policy was “unsustainable” and could leave the financial future of the festival in doubt.

Further discussions about the town council’s large grant process will be held next year, before being brought to the ‘Town Matters’ committee in February for approval.