If your annual accounts are overdue with your regulator when the application is being assessed, the application will be made ineligible. 

If your latest set of annual accounts is over 60 days late, your application will be considered ineligible.

You will not be eligible for funding if you have had regular substantially late fillings over the last four years. 

Trustee/director numbers must align with the minimum/maximum stated in the organisation's governing document as well as the additional criteria below.

Our requirement for trustee/director numbers are at least 3 trustees for a registered charity and 2 directors for companies.

No more than 50% of Trustees/Directors can be related.

We expect all Trustee and Director details to be current on the Charity Commission and Companies House at the time of application.

We expect the annual accounts to be formally formatted and, if relevant, comply with SORP requirements.

Annual accounts are signed by relevant Trustees/Directors

A breakdown of income and expenditure must be included in the accounts that are submitted with the application

The income stated on the application must match the annual income reflected in the annual accounts submitted with the application. Any discrepancies may result in the application being deemed ineligible for funding.

If the annual accounts show a deficit, we expect there to be an explanation either in the application or within the annual accounts. This allows us to assess the financial health of the organisation. If no details are provided, the application may be considered ineligible. 

An assessment of the organisation's online presence will be conducted using all publicly accessible materials. This evaluation aims to ensure that the organisation's application aligns with its ongoing work. If there is no online presence, the application may be rejected, however we are aware that under certain circumstances there may be minimal need for such a presence.

Organisations now apply for funding across a 3 year period. If successful you will be required to receive the grant across a multi-year period. Due to this, we have increased the maximum grant organisations are able to apply for. Organisations are able to receive up to 50% in any one year, meaning that their grant can either be received in two or three payments. If successful, organisations must wait until 12 months have passed from the date the 3rd payment would be paid, even if a 3rd payment is not being received. 

Organisations can apply for up to £50,000 in total for across a 3-year period, dependent on your organisation size. Your request must be no more than 75% of your annual income listed on your most recent set of signed accounts. To find out how much you can apply for, visit our eligibility tracker on our ‘Apply for a Grant’ page.

With the move to multi-year funding, our eligibility criteria has been altered, including changing the route to funding for certain organisation types. We are delighted to be bringing on new funding partners to help support our grant-making, allowing us to benefit from their experience and reach more good causes than ever. If you are not eligible for funding through our main grant programme, please check out our partnership programmes. 

We have made some changes to our application form with the move to multi-year funding for Round 3. This includes some changes to the questions we are asking applicants, alongside changes to our assessment methods. Due to these changes, feedback may not be directly transferable. However, typically our feedback relates to parts of the questions that we felt we needed more information on. Therefore, it is best to read through each question and supporting help-text thoroughly be ensuring that each part of the question is answered.  

If successful, you will be asked how much you are looking to receive in your first year when you complete your funding agreement. You are unable to receive more than 50% of the total grant amount in any one year.

People's Postcode Trust provides flexible, multi-year funding for charities in Scotland. Taking on feedback from good causes and sector research, we have decided to expand our flexible funding to be offered across a multi-year period. As our funding is unrestricted, it means that funding doesn't need to be tied to a specific project or activity. Eligible organisations are able to apply for up to £50,000 over a three-year period.

Organisations with an annual income of between £10,000 and £1,000,000 can apply for funding from People's Postcode Trust. This allows us to concentrate our support on small charities and grassroots initiatives. By doing so, we aim to amplify the impact of our grant funding, enabling community-driven change and empowering smaller organisations that often face greater resource challenges. In the event of an oversubscription of strong applications, we look to prioritise funding to organisations with an annual income of under £250,000.

Our funding themes relate to areas of impact that we are looking to target. These are:  

• Preventing or reducing the impact of poverty
• Improving mental health
• Enabling participation in the arts
• Supporting marginalised groups and/or tackling inequality 

It is important to choose the funding theme most relevant to your organisation, as only one theme can be selected for an application.  

No, we do not have a set number of organisations per theme and base funding decisions on a wide range of factors.

Funding from the trust cannot be spent on any activity included in our ‘we do not fund’ list. If your charitable objectives only include activities we do not fund e.g. the promotion of religion or medical research, the application will be made ineligible. However, if you have additional objectives that focus on other activities alongside what we are not able to fund, you would still be eligible for funding.

Yes, we have recently published changes that means organisations are able to apply for our flexible funding over a multi-year period. We appreciate that multi-year funding is extremely beneficial for long-term planning and overall stability which has led us to introduce this option. 

We welcome applications aligning with our four funding themes. However, funding rounds are often oversubscribed meaning it is not always possible to fund all strong applications. If you are unsure whether it is worth applying for funding, feel free to reach out to us for a more specific answer

Yes, however, please be aware that future applications must be made at least 12 months after the date your last received a funding award from us. You need to have also returned your funding review form to us at the end of the previous funding period. 

An organisation can apply for any of the trust areas they are based in, however, we only accept one application from an organisation per funding round. This means an organisation may only apply to one of our trusts within any one funding round.  

You can search for which Trust to apply to here.

Enter the postcode where your activities will take place to find the correct trust for your area. 

To be eligible for funding, your organisation must have been operating for at least 1 year and have signed accounts you are able to provide on submission. 

Please note, if your organisation has changed type (eg from a CIC to a Registered Charity) the new entity must have been operating for a minimum of 12 months and be able to produce Accounts for this organisation type.

If you are a registered charity who have become incorporated in the last year, this would be okay. However, this would be based upon whether you can provide documentation from Charities Commission/OSCR confirming this change. If you are unsure about whether you would be eligible, please reach out to the team. 

If you are looking to apply to People's Postcode Trust for funding, please read through our funding guide and FAQs. If you still have questions after this about our application process, you are welcome to contact the trust at info@postcodetrust.org.uk. While we don't generally provide 1-on-1 support to applicants before they submit an application, we aim to provide an accessible application process and are happy to help organisations who require additional support.

Trustees are selected through a robust recruitment process, based on their knowledge, skills and experience of governance, grant making, charities and the voluntary sector. Details of our trustees can be found here.

Our terminology is taken from the DEI Data Standard published by Funders Collaborative Hub which looks to create a national framework for funders to identify and address structural inequalities across the country. More information about this framework can be found here. Under this framework, LGBT+ people reflects "People with gender, sex and relationship diversity including but not limited to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Agender people".

Applications need to provide a strong alignment to one of our four funding themes in order to be eligible to apply. An application does not need to have any of the priorities in order to be considered for funding, but our priorities may be taken into account when funding rounds are oversubscribed. 

Our funding priorities are not eligibility criteria, meaning that groups can apply even if they meet none or only some of the priorities. If your organisation meets multiple funding priorities, this can strengthen your application if we are oversubscribed with strong applications. It is important to note that the strength of an organisation’s overall application is still the primary factor in our decision making.

We will have three funding rounds in 2025. Rounds 1 and 2 were open for 7 days, Round 3 will be open for 12 days. The funding round dates for 2025 are:  

• Round 1: 24th February 9am to 3rd March 12 noon 
• Round 2: 26th May 9am to 2nd June 12 noon 
• Round 3: 25th September 9am to 6th October 12noon

We are only able to accept applications when our funding round is open. Applications can be submitted via the online application form available on the “Apply for a Grant” webpage when the round is open. 

Our funding window will be open for the whole period stated on our funding guide (12 days).

A character count is the total number spaces that can used in an application form. The character count on our forms includes letters, numbers, punctuation and spaces. This is different to a word count which usually does not include spaces and punctuation. The form will feature a real-time character count, providing you with an ongoing tally of remaining characters.

People's Postcode Trust are a real Living Wage funder and fair pay is an important aspect of our equity, diversity and inclusion commitments. Though Real Living Wage accreditation is not a requirement for funding, we encourage all organisations employing staff with our funding to pay the Real Living Wage or above. If your organisation does not pay at this rate, we will ask about this as we work to understand the needs and challenges the groups we support.

Once you submit an application to us, you will receive confirmation via email that this has been received. Please make sure you check junk and spam folders. If you do not receive email confirmation, please contact us at info@postcodetrust.org.uk.

Due to the volume of applications that we receive, we are unable to review external links or extra documents.

You will need to submit your most recent signed accounts, regardless if new ones are due to be published after the application deadline. The oldest annual accounts we are able to accept are for year ending October 2023. Please submit your signed accounts with your application, as it will be ineligible otherwise.  If your end date of accounts is before July 2024, you will be asked to upload management or draft accounts/an explanation for the interim period so we can understand the current financial health of the organisation. 

We require your organisation to hold an account with a UK registered bank. A UK bank account is different from a money transfer service. We are not able to pay grants into money transfer services such as Wise, Anna, Moneycorp or Tide. Please check if your account is a UK registered bank account, and not a money transfer service before applying.  

Your organisation will receive a decision within 4/5 weeks of the application deadline. You can find the expected decision date for each round below: 

• Round 1: 28th April
• Round 2: 29th July
• Round 3: 5th November

19% of applications received by the People's Postcode Trust were successful in 2024. Please note, this is not guaranteed to be the same in 2025.

You will not normally be contacted during the decision-making process, however our assessment team and due diligence partners may contact you if we have further questions about your governing and/or financial documents you have submitted as part of your application.

Referees will be contacted if we require any further information about your organisation between two and four weeks following the application submission deadline. 

Successful applicants will be paid approximately eight to twelve weeks after the funding application deadline. Release of funds is dependent on all Funding Agreement paperwork being submitted on time and with the required detail and supporting documents.

If you are successful in your application, we will send you a Funding Agreement to complete and sign that confirms the funding offer. Once you complete and return the Agreement to us, you will receive a second email asking you to verify your signature. Please ensure that this is completed and check any junk and spam folders in case your confirmation has gone into one of these. 

It is important that the bank account name you type into your Funding Agreement is worded and spelt exactly the same as your bank statement and paying in slip, so please take special care completing the Agreement.  

If you are having difficulties with your Funding Agreement, please contact the trust helpdesk at info@postcodetrust.org.uk or phone 0131 322 9377.

For more information on acknowledging an award from People's Postcode Trust, please see our Communications Toolkit available here.

People's Postcode Trust understands that circumstances may arise which could impact the deadline. If you require an extension on your deadline, please contact us via email at info@postcodetrust.org.uk.

An organisation that has received funding from us may apply for funding again 12 months from the date their last award was paid into their bank account. This requires they meet the eligibility criteria for when they reapply, and they have returned their Funding Review form at the end of their previous funding period.

We appreciate the invitation to your event. Due to the size of our staff team we are not able to accept all invitations but please let us know and we will see if a Trust representative can come along. 

Organisations can apply to People's Postcode Trust twice per year. We have three funding rounds in the year for the trust. Our round dates for 2025 are: 

Round 1: 24th March 9am to 31st March 12 noon

Round 2: 24th June 9am to 1st July 12 noon

Round 3: 25th September 9am to 6th October 12 noon

If an organisation is in receipt of an individual grant (not multi-year) then they are eligible to apply 12 months after the payment date of the grant if their review form has also been submitted.

If successful with multi-year funding, organisations must wait until 12 months have passed from the date the 3rd payment would be paid, even if a 3rd payment is not being received.

Applicants will receive feedback on areas where they can strengthen their application. However, it’s important to note that taking on feedback doesn't guarantee success in future applications. Some very strong applications are still unfortunately unsuccessful to the high volume of applications we receive.

We provide feedback on areas of an application that could be improved. Sometimes this results in strong applications receiving no feedback about their written answers, however you will receive a note from the assessor to let you know your application was strong but due to the level of demand we were unable to fund your organisation. We are often oversubscribed with high quality applications, meaning that you may be unsuccessful even if your application was strong. We appreciate this may be frustrating. How we prioritise applications when oversubscribed is explained on our funding guide. 

We appreciate that it can be disappointing to receive the news that your application was unsuccessful. If you have a question that you feel was not answered by the FAQs, you can contact us via email at info@postcodetrust.org.uk.

All applications are initially assessed by our staff team. Applications then go through our due diligence assessment which is mainly carried out by our due diligence partner. Once this has been completed, applications are reviewed by a trustee funding panel who then approve which organisations will receive funding. All funding decisions are final.