The Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales has today unveiled its new strategy for distributing at least £23m over the next year and what it hopes will be a similar amount each year for the foreseeable future.
The new funding strategy seeks to channel more money into projects run by charities with income of up to £1m a year, that help people facing multiple disadvantage, and to support charities to become more sustainable.
The new strategy has been devised in the wake of the recent signing of a nine-year rolling funding agreement with Lloyds Banking Group.
The Foundation, which was known as the Lloyds TSB Foundation before Lloyds and TSB split apart at the behest of the government last year over concerns about market share, will launch two new funding programmes, along with an optional support programme for successful applicants.
The Invest programme will offer flexible, long-term core funding for organisation delivering clear, targeted outcomes for disadvantaged people, while the Enable programme will be a shorter, smaller grants programme for organisations that have identified clear development needs.
The third programme, Enhance, will work alongside both of these to provide tailored in-kind support to boost the effectiveness of funded projects.
Eligibility criteria for the new programmes and details of how to apply will be published in April, and applications will open then too.
The grants will be available to charities with turnover of £1m or less. The Foundation's chief operating officer Andy Clapham said that going forward the funder would probably award fewer but larger grants and over longer periods, because that's what feedback from charities showed they wanted.
The existing Community Programme will close to new applicants on 14 February although the Foundation will continue to process grant requests that have already been submitted to it, over the next few months.
The Foundation has also announced its intention to partner with other funders - including larger charities - to identify issues and contribute to policy and practices in the voluntary sector, at a national and local level to help effect positive change.
Since it was created, the Foundation has distributed more than £330m in grants to 42,000 charities throughout England and Wales. It is one of four Lloyds Foundations covering England and Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and the Channel Islands, and altogether the four have awarded funds exceeding £500m.
Income is derived solely from the Lloyds Banking Group through a deed of covenant.
Clapham told civilsociety.co.uk that the new funding agreement recenty signed with the Banking Group meant that the Foundations could all count on a minimum level of income of £15m a year going forward, and more - forecast to be in the same region as last year's £24m - provided that the Group's profit targets are met.
"Our funding challenge has been resolved," he said. "Now we have certainty and can be really focused on helping charities."
Clapham paid tribute to the Foundation's chief executive, Paul Streets (pictured), who was installed in the post in May last year. "He's the visionary," Clapham said.
A year ago, the Banking Group won a long-running court battle with the Lloyds Foundation for Scotland over how much of its profits it owed to the Foundation. The decision by the Supreme Court meant that the Banking Group was let off paying over £3.5m to the Scottish foundation.
