Alongside its open grants programmes, Allchurches Trust currently provides an annual grant to dioceses and cathedrals across the UK and Ireland.
In recent years, our annual grants have helped support a range of activities that are focused on social action, enhancing community engagement, ministry, mission, musical and schools outreach and much more.
In the Diocese of Coventry for example, our recurrent grant is funding a Director of Regeneration, Jet Jones, to spearhead a range of social impact projects making a huge difference to disadvantaged communities through Together for Change Coventry and Warwickshire (TfC) – a partnership between the diocese and Church Urban Fund (CUF).
In January 2020, Jet’s most recent project came to fruition with the opening of phase one of Saints – a landmark building in Nuneaton that is being transformed to provide a range of support to families and young people, particularly those struggling to make ends meet, and remove barriers to them building a brighter future. The ground floor has now opened as a new Enterprise and Equip Centre, and there are exciting plans for the rest of the building.
Other dioceses and cathedrals spend their annual grant on capital projects or equipment and the Trust particularly welcomes its grant being used to fund work that will improve accessibility and encourage community use of buildings, but also to support environmental projects that improve energy efficiency and help to combat the effects of climate change.
St Paul’s Cathedral is using its Allchurches’ annual grant to help fund the construction of a permanent, accessible, ramped entrance to the north side that will make the cathedral more accessible and be built with the same stone originally used by Sir Christopher Wren to build ‘the new’ St Paul’s.
In 2019, Norwich Cathedral used its grant to organise regular school visits and produce resources for every key stage. These were sent to all schools in Norfolk and the Diocese of Norwich and were closely matched to the national curriculum – to be delivered by staff in the cathedral, at home or at school. The cathedral has also developed a programme of teacher training activities. They have big plans for their 2020 funding too with plans to grow their music outreach.
Our annual grants to dioceses are allocated based on population and the degree of deprivation in the area, with the aim of ensuring that more money goes to those areas that need it most.
Each year, both dioceses and cathedrals are required to report back on how they have spent their recurrent grant and the impact it has had, and tell us how they intend to spend the next year’s funding.
In 2020, the Trust made arrangements to bring forward the first payment of its recurrent grants from September to June, recognising the hardship many dioceses and cathedrals are facing in light of the Coronavirus pandemic. You can read more about our Coronavirus response here.