The Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund for adults was established in October 2021 and to date has distributed around £51 million to community initiatives supporting mental health and wellbeing across Scotland, just over £250,000 of which has supported projects and activities in Orkney. Funding for a fourth year was announced in March 2024 and Orkney will again have £75,000 to disburse.
In Round 3, we received applications totalling £182,000 and so the demand for funding was very much higher than the amount we had to disburse. We anticipate the requests being high again this year and have therefore made the decision to reduce the maximum grant level that organisations can apply for, from £10,000 to £7,500. A maximum of £5,000 of any application can be requested towards capital items such as equipment and furniture. There is no minimum level that organisations can apply for, and in previous rounds the smallest grants allocated have been around £400.
- The Fund will be launched on Monday 16 September, when the application forms and guidance will be available from the VAO website.
- The closing date for applications will be 5pm on Friday 11 October.
For those organisations that have applied previously, please note the shorter turnaround times for getting your applications in. This is because we expect to receive a very high number of applications as we did in Round 3, and we want to ensure that officers can assess applications in a timely manner. We aim to confirm successful applications before Christmas and successful organisations will receive their funding early in the New Year. This round covers projects taking place from 1 March 2025 to 28 February 2026.
The fund will again have a priority to support those adults and communities impacted by the cost of living crisis, as well as projects that support individual and community wellbeing, that support social inclusion and suicide prevention. The key priorities of the fund are to support projects that promote prevention and early intervention.
As always, VAO staff from the Community Development team will be happy to support you to develop your project idea and pull your application together if you need or want that support. You do not have to be constituted in order to apply but you will need to be working towards being constituted as a part of the award.
