York Community Fund

York Community Fund has been set up as a partnership between Two Ridings Community Foundation, City of York Council, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, York CVS and York Together. The fund focuses on strengthening York’s voluntary and community groups with grants that support purposeful community action and create a sense of belonging.

The guidelines for this fund were created by people from the York community through a participatory decision-making process. A participatory approach ensures decisions can be made collectively. It involves people with lived experience of the issues that the Fund tackles, as well as people with practiced and professional experience. The goal is that these shift power away from the funder, create a more equitable process and result in more informed local decision-making due to the range of perspectives in the room. Decisions on which applications will be funded will also be made by this community panel.

Launched in July 2024, the York Community Fund began with a generous donation from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), followed by a significant three-year contribution from York Central Ltd. Since the first round of grants was distributed, the fund has continued to grow, welcoming two new donors, The Shears Foundation and the York Quaker Fund. The fund also benefits from donations generously contributed by private individuals.

Fund priorities

Organisations should be addressing local need in at least one of the following priorities:

Affordability and cost of living 

e.g. taking action to tackle the cost-of-living issues, reducing food and/or fuel poverty, personal budget management

Climate action

e.g. taking action to support environmental improvements, increasing walking and/or cycling for climate and health

Equalities and Human Rights 

e.g. providing culturally appropriate activities & opportunities that promote equality, equity, diversity and inclusion, health and wellbeing, neurodiversity inclusion, providing support for people experiencing disadvantage or discrimination

Health and wellbeing

e.g. counselling, mentoring, befriending and advocacy, parenting support, providing opportunities for social interaction, confidence building and/or skills development

We are particularly interested in:

• supporting leadership time for reflection, learning, planning and ways of working exploration.
• applications where people with lived experience of the issues being addressed are involved with the design of the project and/or the running of the organisation / delivering the project.
• supporting ‘unpopular causes’ (issues or movements that lack widespread support, often facing stigma, negative media attention, or difficulty attracting funding)
• organisations who are dealing with the ‘root causes’ (the fundamental reasons why problems or undesirable events occur) of these issues.