It’s early October 2022 and I have submitted a funding application. This one is a bit different, it has a few different stages to get through and is decided by a public vote element.
Hi, I’m Catherine, CEO and therapist at Cup-O-T. Alongside being a therapist in the team, I’m also responsible for writing funding bids and contracts. It’s not an easy task, funding is highly sought after by many incredible organisations. I wanted to share a behind the scenes insight to what this part of my role looks like.
November 2022 arrives and I haven’t heard back about the funding application, so I send an email and it turns out we have made it to the next stage. With this comes the task of developing a media plan, answering more supporting questions and a more in detail financial breakdown on what we would use the funding on. Our team of directors are incredible in supporting me to draw this together for a tight deadline
The waiting begins again.
I have found this is a common feature in funding bids…. write write write, submit application….wait….add some more information…wait…send more policies…wait…and then a decision is made!
This funding application was for The National Lottery Community Fund – The People’s Project:
The People’s Projects
Over £4 million of National Lottery funding is up for grabs and you can decide where this money goes.
Community groups across the UK are competing for a share (up to £70,000) to help improve the lives of people in their local area.
With 95 organisations shortlisted across the UK, vote for the projects you would like to see receive this life-changing amount of money.
January 10th 2023 – we receive an email to say we’ve reached the final stage of the People’s Project application and I’m invited to attend a media training day with ITV. We also have to submit photos that will be used on our Project Profile page when it goes live and confirm our chosen project name. At this point we decided to change our project name, after consulting with our young people, family and teams. Coming up with a project name is one of the hardest parts – just like coming up with a quiz team name! And so we settled on Campfire Community.
The following week I found myself at the beautiful ITV building in Norwich. We had a tour, got to watch the News being live broadcast, and had our media training. It was a really great day, useful and built up the excitement of having our projects filmed. I also got to meet the other organisations who had been short listed and hear about their projects.
Then of course, the waiting begins again. however this time there is a lot of behind the scenes preparation. We were not allowed to tell anyone that we were finalists until it was announced on the 11th May – nearly 5 months of keeping it a secret! In this time we also had to prepare our film footage plan, get young people involved in this and think about how we will get votes from the public. There was a lot to do – but very quietly and secretly!
March – Filming day! What a day this was! It was so exciting to have the ITV presenter and videographer at our woodland site. It was even more exciting to see the mini-bus of incredible young people from a local school join us. We have a fantastic relationship with this school and love to work alongside them to support students. We also had Rocky and Rachel come along who have first hand experience of Cup-O-T’s groups and how we have developed over the last 5 years. We were joined by Willow (Cup-O-T director) and Aimee and Charlotte from Momentum (Voluntary Norfolk) who are wonderful supporters.
Here are some behind the scenes footage on a muddy and drizzly day in the woods!
After the filming day, the waiting began again, waiting to announce that we were finalists on 11th May.
The 11th May came and the announcements went out, press releases were sent, social media posts created, and sharing of our poster and link. But we still needed to wait until the 15th May for voting to open.
Voting is now OPEN! Wooohooo! Until the 26th May voting is open and we are shouting from the roof tops VOTE FOR US!
So what is our Cup-O-T Campfire Community project?
The project aims to improve the mental health and wellbeing of young people in the community by providing regular therapy groups and community workshops in a woodland space. The funding will allow the local community to reconnect with nature and provide a safe space to bring people together.
- Develop strong relationships in our local community
- Improve the mental health of young people
- Help the local community reconnect with nature
We will use the funds to run groups and individual sessions, employing additional staff to do this. We also plan to purchase and install a moveable shelter and lockable storage so that we can run sessions all year round.
Tonight (16th May) ITV will show our film on the ITV Anglia East News at 6pm.
Postal votes close 24th May
Online votes close midday 26th May
And then the waiting begins again … to see how we have done in the public vote!
We really need your support to share our project page as far across the UK as possible – and of course getting everyone in your household, friends, family, work colleagues and neighbours to vote!
Please share this link with everyone you know!
Thank you!
