Grants - the bad and the good!

I've had an interesting couple of weeks on the fund-raising front. A fellow scout leader from up-country suggested looking into Grassroots Grants as a possible source of extra funds for my Scout Group. I looked them up, and found that in Sussex they are administered by Sussex Community Foundation (also known as Sussex Giving). As a Scout Group - wholly volunteer run and managed, locally based, income below the maximum allowed, and running for well over a year, it looked like we would tick all the boxes for eligibility. Then I downloaded the detailed list of criteria only to find "Unfortunately
SCF will no longer fund Scout and Guide Groups in Sussex under the Grassroots
Grants programme" - apparently because there are a lot of us! I've emailed the Office of the Third Sector and the Community Development Foundation about this, but a week later have had no reply from them.

On Friday received a begging email from Sussex Community Foundation asking for donations to the Grassroots Grants endowment - as you can imagine I wasn't happy! I've now raised the issue on the Brighton & Hove CVSF emailing list, and had some supportive responses, and emailed the minister for the OTS. It'll be interesting to see what the response is.

Now for the good news - in January we applied for a "Building on Success" grant from Brighton & Hove City Council, for equipment to help us increase rental income for the Scout Hut, thus subsidising the activities we offer our members. Got the results today - the council have approved the application in full, so we'll soon be getting a digital projector, PA system and a printer/scanner/photocopier. The grants officer at the council, Jonathan Best, was really helpful and supportive, and made the application process clear and easy to follow.