Merchant Taylors' Charity Management Application Form

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We recommend  that a single person  at your organisation completes all of this application, and saves their progress regularly. This is because the first time the form is saved, it requires you to enter your email address and make up a password which you will need again every other time you save and resume the form. In our experience, it is easier for one person to manage this than for several different people to work on the form.  
Charity or Organisation Details


If you do not have a Registered Charity Number, please email charities@merchant-taylors.co.uk and ask for a Unique Reference Number (URN) for your organisation, BEFORE  completing this application form. Once you have received your organisation's URN, please enter it in this field. 








Contact Details of the person completing this application form







About your Charity or Organisation

If your organisation is a registered charity, please type your charitable purpose exactly as it appears in your governing document. If it is not a registered charity, please type the purpose of your organisation exactly as it is worded in your organisation's constitution.

Under The Merchant Taylors' Foundation's Small Grants Scheme, the people your organisation works with must live in the London Boroughs of Hackney, Lewisham, Southwark or Tower Hamlets. If that is the case, please select 'London' in this field. If that is not where they live, please do not proceed with an application to The Merchant Taylors' Foundation Small Grants Scheme as unfortunately you will not be eligible.

To select more than one borough, hold down CTRL as you select the relevant names.

The trustees is the term we use for the board of volunteers who are ultimately in charge of your organisation. In a registered charity they would usually be known as 'the trustees', but in some organisations they might be known by another name, for example 'the board of management', 'the management committee' or just 'the board'. A skills audit of the board means formally checking what skills the trustees have from work or life experience, to identify whether there are key skills which no one has but which would be helpful for governance of your charity. For example, this could be things like fundraising experience, accounts experience, etc. This can help the board identify whether it would be a good idea to recruit new trustees.
Charity or Organisation Bank Details






For example, this could be a paying-in slip, letter from your bank, or bank statement.
Project Details

The Merchant Taylors' Company provides the trustees for more than one grant-making charity. Information about all of these charities can be found on the Company's website.

If funding is sought for your organisation's general running costs instead of a project as such, please put 'General Running Costs' in this box. Please note that to seek funding for general running costs your organisation's charitable objects must align with that of the Small Grants Scheme: "THE RELIEF, FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE PUBLIC, OF THOSE PEOPLE WHO ARE IN NEED BY REASON OF AGE, ILL HEALTH, DISABILITY, FINANCIAL HARDSHIP OR OTHER DISADVANTAGE. IN PARTICULAR, BUT NOT EXCLUSIVELY, BY PROVIDING: GRANTS, ITEMS AND SERVICES TO INDIVIDUALS IN NEED AND/OR CHARITIES OR OTHER ORGANISATIONS." If you do not know if your charitable objects are within these, please contact the Philanthropy Team. 

Some of the charities managed by Merchant Taylors’ Charity Management offer the possibility of funding for more than one year. If you are unsure whether that is the case for the charity to which you are applying, please re-read the guidance notes about that charity on the Merchant Taylors' Company website.


If you are seeking funding in more than one year, please state the amount sought for Year 1 only. This form does not require £ sign or commas – please enter numbers only.

This form does not require £ sign or commas – please enter numbers only.

This form does not require £ sign or commas – please enter numbers only.

Later in the form you will have the opportunity to go into greater detail about the answer you give here. If your application is for general running costs instead of a project, please summarise here what your organisation does.

If your request is for general running costs, please explain what need your organisation meets if it is not obvious from what you have written in your previous answer.

If your request is for general running costs, please put the start date of your organisation's next financial year.

If your request is for general running costs, please put the end date of your organisation's next financial year.

Please make sure you explain all of the following: (1) Who will benefit from the work and how many people do you estimate this to be? (2) Who will be doing the work? (3) Do they have the right skills, experience and enthusiasm to do the work?






Project Budget

If the amount you are applying for is less than the cost of doing the work, please explain where your organisation will get the shortfall from?

If your organisation does not raise enough money to do the work, please explain what would happen. For example, would your organisation cancel the work completely? Or would it carry out the work, but helping fewer people than you had hoped? Etc


Financial Information


This is the part of your Total Funds which your organisation is free to spend on whatever it chooses AND which is not tied up in physical objects like buildings or IT equipment. You can work this figure out by subtracting the following things from the Total Funds: (1) any money which a donor has given to your organisation to spend on a particular purpose ('Restricted Funds') (2) any money which your trustees have chosen to earmark for a particular purpose, eg replacing the radiators in your premises next year ('Designated Funds') (3) the value of any physical assets, eg buildings

This is your organisation's policy on how much the trustees want to have available at all times as unrestricted free reserves - or to put it another way, as money which your organisation could use to meet an emergency. For example, some organisations might have a policy that they would like to have available enough money to pay three months' running costs, so that they have room for manoeuvre if their fundraising income drops unexpectedly. However, it all depends on your organisation's unique circumstances so your organisation's policy may not be anything like that. The  policy is about how much your organisation would like to have, not how much your organisation actually has for this purpose. That's why you should also explain here how much your organisation actually has available for this purpose.
Other Information

Please select the appropriate statements about your charity from the drop-down lists below:





These should be on Monday-Fridays. It’s not essential to choose dates when we could see your charity’s work in action. The people we normally need to meet are your Chief Executive or equivalent, and if you are asking us for funding for a project we also need to meet the project manager.
When you click Submit, you will be prompted to confirm the details you have entered in this form. At the bottom of that page is an option to print your form. Please print a copy or save it electronically, and also save a copy of the documents you have submitted with this form.  This is because, if your application is successful, in the grant-funding report we would ask you to explain, with specific reference to what you wrote in this application form, whether you achieved what you said you would. So you will want to refer back to the exact wording of your application in future.