Digital Connectivity for Community Facilities Grants Programme - Round 2 now open!
Round 2 of VOLA’s UKSPF Digital Connectivity for Community Facilities Grants Programme is now open for applications, from Monday 19th June 2023. Applications of between £2,500 and £10,000 are welcomed.
The application deadline is 5pm, Monday 17th July 2023.
All documents relating to the application process will be available on VOLA’s website from 5pm on Monday 19th June. These include:
Application form
Application guidance
FAQs
Link to online map of local digital community facilities - so you can see what’s already in your area.
Supporting, ward-level data on digital exclusion and deprivation - which will help you to understand local need and enable you to assert this in your application.
Slides and recordings from recent online briefing sessions.
Interested applicants that were unable to attend the briefing sessions are strongly urged to look through the slides and watch the recordings before applying. Doing so will massively boost your chances of success! In Round 1, organisations that attended the briefing sessions generally submitted better quality applications than those that didn’t and were more successful in receiving funding, with less ineligible costs removed from their proposed budgets.
In particular, the ‘technical hints and tips’ briefing gives some real food for thought and - as the title says - provides a wealth of extremely useful hints and tips to consider when setting up a community-access computer facility. Follow this advice and you will be able to set up a fit-for-purpose digital facility that will last a long time, reduce ongoing running costs (and IT headaches!) and ensure you cover your legal duty of care requirements.
Background to the fund
Funded through the Government’s UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF), through the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority as the local Lead Authority, the fund support the creation of new, and improvement of existing community facilities where people can go to access computers and get online.
The overall purpose of the grants programme is to support voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise (VCFSE) sector organisations to improve their public-facing IT (i.e. computer drop-in) facilities, and to create new facilities in areas of need, where there may currently be no, or limited provision.
The aim of the grants programme is to provide funding and support to:
Target neighbourhoods where there is currently a lack of community-based digital facilities to help local, VCFSE organisations to set up new computer drop-in facilities;
Upgrade outdated and poor quality digital kit and/or improve broadband connectivity in community facilities, where current equipment &/or connections can be evidenced as being poor; and
Increase capacity, by providing funding to purchase more digital devices, where current facilities are insufficient to meet demand.
Please note: the fund is not about improving organisations’ general IT infrastructure (i.e. it is not for kitting your staff/ volunteers out with new computers), and grants cannot be used to fund technical equipment that is purely aimed at recreational activities, or the direct delivery of digital skills training, other activities, or organisational overheads. It is purely aimed at funding the ‘kit and connectivity’.
Further information is available on VOLA’s website. Please read the document and watch the recordings of the briefing workshops before posting any questions, as the answers to the vast majority of questions people will have will be covered in these.