Barrow Cadbury Trust Open for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Grants (England)

Funding to support changes to the social investment process, making it more accessible to under-served groups.

The Connect Fund is administered by the Barrow Cadbury Trust, in partnership with Access – the Foundation for Social Investment. The idea behind the fund is to facilitate the development of a strong, sustainable, collaborative community of social investment providers that work together to build a better market.

With the lifetime of the Fund extended to May 2024, there is an opportunity to apply to a stream of funding within the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion strand focused on direct support to implement procedural and system changes.

Under this strand, The Connect Fund will provide one-off grants to social investors and fund managers in England that are looking to implement changes to their existing processes or systems to increase their accessibility to those often excluded from investment.

Projects funded should achieve one or more of the following outcomes:

  • More open, diverse and transparent access to social investment.
  • Investment flows particularly to organisations led by under-represented groups.
  • Action taken to address the barriers faced by organisations led by under-served groups in accessing social investment.
  • Greater board and investment committee diversity, ensuring a diverse range of voices is included at every stage of the social investment journey from fund design and application to decision making and delivery.

Applications from frontline charities or social enterprises involved in direct service delivery will not be accepted.

The deadline to apply is 30 June 2023.

(This report was the subject of a GRANTfinder Newsflash.)