Why do we need this policy?

Manchester Pride is committed to supporting essential LGBTQ+ causes throughout Greater Manchester, all year round. 

We aim to be transparent in our grant making and have created a policy which provides a clear outline of the principles, criteria and processes that inform the approach we take towards distributing grants to the LGBTQ+ communities of Greater Manchester.

We define a grant as a financial award that we make from the Manchester Pride Communities Fund to support our charitable objectives, mission and goals. 

Grant Making Principles

Manchester Pride takes into account the following principles when awarding any grants:

Through our grant making we aim to support sustainable changes that benefit and enrich the LGBTQ+ communities of Greater Manchester.

The trustees have the ultimate responsibility for all grant making decisions made in line with the charitable purpose and objectives of Manchester Pride. 

The trustees will carry out any due diligence to ensure that any applications support the charitable purpose and objective and also meet the priorities for support outlined in this policy. 

The trustees are content to work in partnership with other funding bodies and will consider a request to support partial funding of a project / initiative.

The trustees reserve the right not to approve a grant if they determine that the resulting award would not be charitable, would conflict with the stated policies of Manchester Pride or damage its reputation. Trustees also reserve the right to apply any conditions to a grant award. 

Grant Making Criteria

The trustees wish to make grants to a wide range of groups and organisations. They are particularly keen to help grassroots community groups, small independent LGBTQ+ organisations and local LGBTQ+ and HIV charitable organisations within Greater Manchester. 

As an outcome from the Pride In Our Future report 2022, the trustees are particularly keen to support applications that are focussed on the specific needs of Disabled LGBTQ+ people, Queer and Trans People Of Colour and Wider Trans Communities within Greater Manchester.

As a registered charity, Manchester Pride can only award grants to support activities which are charitable in law. 

All applications must clearly demonstrate their benefit to LGBTQ+ people and should address at least one of the following priorities:

• HIV Stigma
• LGBTQ+ Mental Health
• LGBTQ+ Sexual Health
• LGBTQ+ Wellbeing

The minimum grant request is £250. The maximum grant request is £1000. The grant request limits are outlined in each grant type. 

Grant Making Processes

The Trustees are committed to processes which are transparent, accountable and address the interests of applicants and donors. 

The Trustees have appointed a subgroup; A grant review panel consisting of the Treasurer, two nominated trustees and two external community members to review and consider the distribution of funds through grant making on behalf of Manchester Pride. 

The panel is mandated to make decisions in accordance with the charitable purpose and objectives of Manchester Pride. The panel may agree to fund, not to fund or to partially fund an application. 

The Panel may decide to include conditions as part of the grant award.

All applications go through a three stage process:

• Assessment - Due diligence procedures are carried out by the staff team who ensure all required information and supporting documents have been provided.

• Review - The panel reviews all applications and uses a criteria matrix which reflects the priorities outlined by our communities as outlined in our policy criteria.

• Ratification - Any grants awarded that are over the value of £5,000 must be presented to the Board of Trustees.

Applications for funding to support projects involving young or vulnerable people will require applicants to provide their safe guarding policy. Manchester Pride can offer assistance to applicants do not have a policy in place.

In addition to responding to external grant requests the Trustees may invite proposals for projects / initiatives that meet the objectives of Manchester Pride and the key funding priorities.

Manchester Pride aims to ensure that the application process is easy to understand and designed to capture essential information in relation to the organsiation and project/event/initiative requiring funding. 

A list of all successful and unsuccessful applications will be formally reported to the full Board of Trustees.

All successful applicants will be notified within four weeks of the application deadline.

All grant awards are published on the Manchester Pride website and also with threesixtygiving.org. 

This policy is a working document used to guide the grantmaking by Manchester Pride. The policy is reviewed by the Trustees on an annual basis.