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Funding and Grants for Outdoor Classrooms

A question for you – and that is:

Does your school have sufficient funds in the school budget to pay for your playground/outdoor learning/outdoor classroom projects and if not, do you have enough time to try and source external funding to pay for it?

If the answer to the above is no, then you might want to have a chat with us.

We have invested a lot of our time and energy trying to understand how schools can successfully find alternative ways of paying for our products and it is working as we have helped a lot of schools recently get full funding for their project. We will work alongside you and tell you how we can help you with applying for grants and which grants are applicable to you; we will tell you how you can now potentially lease our products; we will tell you how you might be able to generate extra income by letting out your existing facilities; we will tell you about how to set up a crowdfunding website and approach local companies for sponsorship. And we have a unique PTA fundraising events night which is something no-one else is doing.

We are more than happy to provide testimonials or put you in contact with schools we have worked with on the above.

If you would like to talk further with us about how we can help your school with funding opportunities, then please contact us on 01865 858982 or email info@hideouthouse.com

solar panel and wind turbine system

eco outdoor classroom

 

Tesco Bags of Help Grant Scheme For Schools

The Tesco Bags of Help programme has changed slightly as of this August. Applicants can now apply all year round and they will be making multiple grant awards each month. Application and decision times are therefore hopefully greatly reduced.

However, the amounts they will give out are reduced to either £1000, £2000, or £5000.

Applications are now open and you can apply whether you have been previously funded or not.

Programme Information

The new programme is very similar to the old one. Their aim is to support projects which will “promote community participation in the development and use of outdoor spaces”.

What do they mean by this?

They will fund projects that deliver either a physical environmental improvement or encourage the use and long term sustainability of outdoor spaces.

Any non-profits, including schools, are eligible to apply. Grants can be the full amount a project needs, or can just provide a contribution towards the costs.

As we specialise in supplying products to schools which meet their grant funding criteria, then please do visit our website www.hideouthouse.com to find out a bit more about what we as the Hideout House Company do or give us a call to discuss how we can help you with your application bid.

For further information on the Tesco Bags of Help grant please visit:

https://www.groundwork.org.uk/Sites/tescocommunityscheme/pages/Category/apply-for-a-boh-grant-tes2

The Hideout House Company Ltd

Tel: 01865 858982 or email: info@hideouthouse.com

www.hideouthouse.com

Grants for Schools – Tesco’s Bags of Help Grant

Tescos are currently offering a grant which schools are eligible to apply for and is a funding scheme which is giving grants of £8 – £12,000 for projects which improve green spaces in communities. These may include building new pocket parks, sports facilities, woodland walks, community gardens and school playgrounds.

Basically they want to fund schemes which will get people out and about and enjoying the great outdoors more, by making physical improvements to open spaces. School playgrounds fall therefore within their funding remits.

Outcomes Tesco wishes to achieve:

Projects must lead to: Physical Improvement of an Open Space

Plus at least one (and as many as possible) of the following outcomes:

  • Protecting or improving biodiversity
  • Promoting physical activity
  • Improving wellbeing
  • Increasing community safety
  • Mitigating or adapting to climate change
  • Improving access to open spaces by under-represented groups

They value any volunteering opportunities created by the project and are interested to know how the scheme will be promoted in the community. The scheme has to benefit the wider local community and not just be for the exclusive use of the school.

Things Tesco want applicants to provide: Organisational constitution, photograph of site as it is now, landowner permission form (this is downloadable, and is just signed off by the landowner).

Tesco look like they want to fund the projects mostly themselves. Match funding can be up to £4000. This means that a total project could cost up to £12,000 – 16,000. But no more.

Decisions on grants will be made at the beginning of September, and paid in Mid-November.

This is a great opportunity to get some funding towards this type of project. Approx. 1 in 4 applicants received a grant in the last open window.

How it works is that the applicant has to say how they would spend £8000, £10000, or £12000 to improve their local space. If the project is successful, then it goes into a Tesco store and customer’s votes decides which amount (of those three) it gets.

Information you’ve got to provide includes project information, pictures of the condition of the area currently and information on local community support.

The deadline for applications is June 3rd!

At the Hideout House Company, this is an area we specialise in as we are able to supply products for schools which meet and fulfill the criteria and outcomes of this particular grant.

For further information on our products please visit www.hideouthouse.com and if you would also like further information on this grant and how we can help, please contact us on 01865 858982 or send an email to info@hideouthouse.com

Tesco’s Bags of Help Grant Initiative for Green Spaces

The supermarket chain Tesco has launched a community grant initiative which will fund capital projects for school playgrounds.

The emphasis of the grant is on providing green spaces and because Tesco is expecting there to be a major demand for grants, the charity Groundwork will assess all of the applications received and then provide a shortlist of the applications received for a Tesco Shortlisting panel who will agree three successful projects to forward to a vote in Tesco stores.

Tesco customers will vote over two weekends in their store for their favourite shortlisted local project.  Grants will then be awarded as follows:

  • 1st place in Tesco customer vote:  £12,000 grant
  • 2nd place in Tesco customer vote: £10,000 grant
  • 3rd place in Tesco customer vote:  £8,000 grant

Round one of funding is now complete but the second round of funding is to open again on Monday 18th April. You don’t need to have any match funding but if you do, this must not be higher than 25% of the overall budget cost.

The lucky winners will need to complete their projects within 12 months of receiving the funding. For further information on this grant and how to apply, please visit:

http://www.groundwork.org.uk/Sites/tescocommunityscheme/pages/large-grants-tes

For further information on our products, please visit www.hideouthouse.com or email info@hideouthouse.com

 

How To Fund Your School Playground Equipment Project

We have worked with numerous schools these past 16 years helping them raise funds for playground equipment projects so as a result of this, we have built up a useful knowledge bank of what works and how you can do this successfully and effectively. But sadly there is no easy magic wand which you can wave to immediately muster up the required pot of gold, these projects do take time and with dollops of determination and true grit on top! You need to think outside of the box as well to better your chances of securing funds faster.

You also need to bear in mind that for all of the options open to you as listed below, it might be a mixture of a few of them which gets you to your designated target so it is always best to initially put out as many rods as possible because you never know which big fish might bite first.

1) School Budget – this may sound completely obvious but if the school can donate any funds from its own budget or devolved capital budget, then this is a good start. It financially and psychologically gets you off the starting blocks but also a lot of funders like to see some sort of match funding (or at least a contribution) from the school.
2) Your LEA – put in a call to your local education authority to see if they are running any specific or relevant grant programmes for schools or initiatives in their area. For example, we sold last year an eco outdoor classroom with a living sedum roof to a school in South West London as there was a grant programme to promote cleaner and healthier air in the Borough.
3) Get your PTA on board – so much of our work nowadays comes directly from the efforts of PTAs, God bless them! If you have an active PTA, give them this as their next major project to raise money for but talk to us first about how we can devise some novel & creative fundraising ideas for you. For example, last year we worked with a primary school on developing a pedal powered eco outdoor classroom – so to raise money for this, we put together a pedal powered disco event where the children and parents had to cycle on these special dynamo bikes to produce enough electricity to power up the disco. If they stopped pedalling, so did the music! But more importantly it raised a lot of money because the event enjoyed a very high attendance (because it was novel and fun) but also the PTA charged for both attendance and got everyone to sponsor a bike rider. Plus the event was very relevant to what they were trying to raise money for.
4) Crowd Funding – this is the way the world is going and you need to be part of it. These websites are an excellent way of spreading the news about your project and message to a far wider audience plus you can constantly update them with news, initiatives, targets reached, videos etc. Have a look at the link below for a school in Norfolk who have done this really well and have actually gone over their target amount.
Crowd Funder Brooke School
There are also some other specialist educational crowd funding websites such as Hubbub.
5) Commercial Sponsorship and Donations – get together a list of potential companies you could approach who might donate some money towards your project. But I have seen so many schools do this really badly and as a result, consequently don’t get anywhere. The most important thing is to put yourselves in the shoes of the person or organisation being approached – how are you going to make them part with some cash to help you? We have actually published a whole paper on this subject matter and how you can do it successfully. Please contact us for further details.
6) Individuals – similar to above. Do you know of any local wealthy or benevolent individual who could help out? If you don’t ask, you don’t get. A school we worked with in Lancashire personally approached the owner and MD of a local oil company with the children listing all of the reasons why this new school playground equipment would benefit them. They were just as surprised as I was when he wrote back with a cheque for £10K attached!
7) Grants – this is a whole big subject worthy of a separate blog but suffice it to say there are numerous grants out there which could possibly fund or partially fund your project. But you have to know where to look for them and you have to know how to apply for them correctly. With the harsh winds of austerity blowing ever more into the educational sector, the competition for these grants has become ever greater. But we have a lot of experience here and without wishing to brag, we took on six school projects earlier this year to see if we could help them access grant money to pay for our products we had quoted for. Five of them we have successfully helped get the required funding for – so not a bad hit rate.

So if you would like any further advice on any of the above or if you have a specific upcoming project in mind, then please contact us as below:

Simon Fearnehough on 01865 858982 or email: simon@hideouthouse.com or visit School Grant Funding