Before putting pen to paper, gather all the information you are going to need to use in your application and read any criteria and instructions available from the funder carefully. The type of information you will need includes:

You are likely to need information from – or to provide a copy of – the following:

• Your constitution (which might be a memorandum and articles for companies, a governing document for charities or rules of association for informal groups and associations)
• Your latest accounts if you are not a new group
• Your latest annual report if you are not a new group
• A balance sheet showing estimated income and expenditure if you are a new group
• Your bank account details
• Information on who has funded you in the past (including any previous contact with the funder you are applying to)
• Details of your current membership and your committee members
• Anything that provides evidence of your track record. This might be information on successful work already undertaken by your group, evidence from any monitoring and evaluation you have done on your work, or reports submitted to funders in the recent past. If you are a new group you might need evidence of the experience and knowledge that your members bring to the work.
• Key policies and procedures – anything that might demonstrate your ability to undertake this particular piece of work, such as your commitment to enabling access to all members of the community, your ability to meet a particular need, or your compliance with relevant health and safety standards. For instance, if you are working with children you will need to have procedures in place that ensure compliance with the Children’s Act, including Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks on all staff and volunteers and a Child Protection Policy and Procedures.

You must to be able to explain why there is a need for your project and demonstrate this need concisely and credibly. Facts and figures might be available through other voluntary or community groups or charities working in the same area, your local authority or a government agency. You might have carried out some survey or research yourselves with your members or target groups and be able to provide information from this. Don’t assume that a funder will recognise there is a need for your project - it’s up to you to tell them why.

Gather any plans and information you have on the activity or work you want to use this funding for. A full project plan will help you decide on all of the resources you will need to run the project or activity such as staff, room hire, activity costs , how long you’re planning the project to run for, how many people will benefit, what equipment you will need etc.

You may have evidence from previous work you have done — or from other agencies — of how the activity or work you propose will help meet a particular need that you have identified. This is called providing evidence of need. You should also spell out here how your proposal fits with the funder’s criteria. Don’t assume that this is obvious — spell it out.

Depending on the activity and the funder, you may need budgets showing the income and expenditure for the whole organisation and for the activity you are asking this funder to support — showing how their support will fit with the support of others or your own resources. You need to ask for a specific amount of money whether that is all the money you need, or a contribution to the whole project. Make sure that this is clear.

Once you have all this information to hand, writing a good funding application is a straight forward task.