We only accept applications online via our grants management system.
Before you set up an account, please check whether you are eligible to apply for funding. See the What we fund and Eligibility pages, paying particular attention to the general exclusions.
You must have an account for our grants management system in order to be able to make an application - for account registration and application deadlines, please see the When to apply page. Please do not register for an account if you are not eligible.
You will need to know whether you intend to apply for a grant as an individual or an organisation as the registration process is different.
Individuals
If you intend to apply to JRCT as an individual, with any resulting grant being paid directly to you, please email the JRCT office at enquiries@jrct.org.uk in order to register. Please type the words registration request in the email subject line.
Organisations
If you intend to apply to JRCT as an organisation, with any resulting grant being paid directly to the organisation, to register go to:
https://jrct.smartsimpleuk.com/s_Login.jsp
Click on Register Here and complete the registration form. This asks for basic contact details to enable us to set you up with a user account.
After registering you will be sent an account activation email from donotreply@jrct.org.uk. Please note that this is not an automated process and that the email may take up to 3 working days to arrive. If you do not receive the email after 3 days please do not re-register – first check your spam and then contact enquiries@jrct.org.uk. Please activate your account as soon as possible after you receive the activation email, as for security reasons the link will expire after 72 hours. You will be asked to set your password when you first log in.
A list of our programme areas and deadlines will be displayed in the Funding Rounds section of your portal.
To open the application form, click on the blue Apply Now button next to the programme area you are applying to.
You do not have to complete your application form in one session. Ensure you click on Save Draft before logging out. When you log back in, your draft application will be in the 'Draft' area of the 'My Applications' section.
You will need the following documents when making your application, which must be in PDF format.
- Narrative proposal
- Budgets
- Accounts
- Governing document (non-charities only)
- Early closing report (existing grantees only)
Guidance about each of these stages can be found here:
There is no form for this, but please set out your proposal on no more than four sides of A4, typed in font no smaller than 12 point.
Please tell us what you want to do - not what you think we want to hear. Describe your proposal in whatever way you think is most helpful.
The questions below may act as a useful prompt, but they do not need to be followed rigidly.
In no more than a few sentences, set out who you are. Organisations might include founding date, size, legal status and primary activities. Individuals might mention current employment position and relevant interests or voluntary positions.
The main part of the application will detail the work you want us to fund. This may be the core work of the organisation, or a particular project.
What work do you want to do? How does it fit within JRCT's priorities? What charitable purposes will your work promote? It is important to give a clear sense of the goals and the process. What are you hoping to achieve? What will you actually be doing? What is the timescale? Is the work new, or a development, expansion or continuation of existing work?
What led you to want to do this work? Why is this work particularly needed at this time? How does it fit in with the rest of the organisation’s work? How does it relate to other work that is being done in the field? Why are you passionate about it?
Who will do the work? This might be you, existing staff in the organisation or a new recruit. What skills, experience, knowledge and networks will they need? Are these already in place and, if not, what training will be required? Who will be providing line-management, supervision and/or support? Who is ultimately responsible for the work?
How will the work be documented and evaluated? How will you share the lessons learnt from your work with others? What difference will the work make?
Are there any significant risks associated with the proposed work? If there are, please explain these briefly and indicate how you plan to manage them. Please use an appendix to provide more detail if necessary.
It should be clear how much the work will cost in total and how much you are requesting from JRCT. Please list any other existing or anticipated sources of income for the work, including any pending applications with other funding bodies. On the expenditure side, as far as possible, show us the actual costs of doing the work in the way that it needs to be done, over the time that it is likely to take. You don’t need to detail every item, but you should put costs under clear headings, and include brief notes to explain how you have calculated the figures, where necessary. If you are applying for funding for more than one year, your budget should cover the entire period. The budget should be in your local currency.
If you are applying for an unrestricted grant, then you should submit a budget for the whole organisation. If you are applying for a particular project or programme, or specific parts of your work, then you should include a budget for that work and a budget for the whole organisation.
We do not need to know about your living expenses or financial circumstances. If you are asking for funding for your time, simply include this as a salary figure or reimbursement. We ask applicants to consider honestly and seriously what level of income is appropriate to request.
Ask for what you need, but be realistic. We expect that you will have thought carefully about other sources of possible funding and, if applicable, how the work will be sustained over the longer term.
JRCT usually makes around 100-120 grants per year. In the last five years annual grant spend has been between £10m and £16.4m. Actual grants range from a few thousand pounds to £100,000+ and may be single payments or spread over a number of years. Both large and small grants are important, but JRCT usually makes its largest grants for work that is at the core of the Trust’s concerns and where other sources of funding are very difficult to access.
We will need a copy of your organisation's most recent annual audited or examined accounts. If these are more than 12 months old, or are not available for any reason, please send us recent management accounts or some other indication of the current financial position of the organisation.
If you are applying as an individual we do not require accounts.
For organisations which are not charities, we will need a copy of your organisation's governing document.
If you apply for further funding from the Trust before your current grant comes to an end you will need to submit an early closing report on that grant, alongside your new application. This enables us to consider a new request in the context of the work undertaken over the course of the current grant so far. We understand that the report will necessarily only be partial, as the full term is not complete and you are welcome to indicate where future key activities are planned.
The early closing report form can be downloaded here.
When you have finalised the document, please save it as a PDF and upload it with your other application documents through your online portal.
To ensure that you receive all our emails please add the following email addresses donotreply@jrct.org.uk and donotreply@jrct.com to your contacts/ list of approved senders.
If you do not receive emails from us, please check your spam.
If you need assistance at any time please contact enquiries@jrct.org.uk or 01904 627810.