Our Grants

We provide around £4m in grants every year to charities working in Scotland. The Trust will consider applications for:

revenue or capital costs
project funding or core funding
one off awards (small and main grants)
multi-year awards for up to 3 years (small* and main grants)

* This is for small, community-led voluntary organisations who want a contribution to running costs.

Small Grants Main Grants Medical Research Grants Strategic Grants

Small Grants

There is no deadline for our small grants programme, and you can apply for up to £20,000 at any time of year. These are assessed on a rolling basis. The programme typically makes awards to support both:

Running costs for small, community based initiatives, often which are volunteer led (can apply for up to £20k in total but no more than £10k per year) and
One-off pieces of work which can help develop a charity, such as the purchase of equipment/infrastructure; the development of partnership work or service evaluation (up to £20k no more than one year).

We are happy to discuss your idea before you apply. The request should still fit within one of our funding themes.

Main Grants

We award our main grants twice a year. These are grants of more than £20,000, and are typically multi-year. For our next round, Autumn 2026, our Trustees will be looking to make 3-year grants of up to £55,000. This means that applicants can split the total request of up to £55,000 over 3 years, e.g. £18,250 per year, if this level of funding is required. We are still very happy to assess grant requests up to this figure, if that is a better fit with your costs/funding profile.

The next deadline for your application depends on the theme of your work.

It is advisable to speak with us before you submit your application, but this is not essential and we are happy to give advice prior to an application by phone or by email.

Medical Research Grants

We accept applications for Scotland-led research into neurological conditions, visual impairment or sight loss. If you’d like to apply for a research grant, we suggest contacting our Director to discuss your ideas.

Scottish Universities can apply for seedcorn for specific academics, research groups or centres who will carry out research in one of our areas of charitable concern.
Charities can apply for specific research projects that have completed a peer review process.

Strategic Grants

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