COVID-19: Emergency Response Funding

The Clothworkers’ Foundation responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in two phases, awarding more than £3 million in emergency funding. We also awarded additional grants to existing grantees to support them with their own COVID-19 responses.

During the first phase of our funding response, we worked in a coordinated and collaborative way with other funders, and also set up our own Clothworkers’ Emergency Capital Programme (CECP), ensuring funding was distributed quickly to organisations on the front-line responding to the pandemic:

• £1.13 million for the Clothworkers’ Emergency Capital Programme (CECP). You can find out more about this programme from our insights paper and the findings of our CECP grantee survey;
• £500,000 contribution to the National Emergencies Trust appeal;
• £300,000 contribution to the London Community Response fund;
• £170,000 awarded on a case-by-case basis to support existing grantees from our Open, Proactive and Regular Grants Programmes;
• we also funded the development of DigiSafe, a free step-by-step guide to digital safeguarding when designing new services or taking existing ones online.

In the second phase, we awarded strategic funding to support communities experiencing racial inequalities as well as the domestic abuse sector:

• £200,000 to co-fund The Global Majority Fund, managed by Comic Relief, which will work with partners with the expertise, networks and knowledge to distribute funding to support communities experiencing racial inequality affected by COVID-19;
• £100,000 grant to GALOP - the UK's LGBT+ anti-violence charity - to increase the capacity of its Young People's Service (demand on the service has doubled since the outbreak of Covid-19);
• £12,000 towards the secretariat costs of the Funders for Race Equality Alliance, which brings together charitable foundations working towards race equality in the UK;
• £50,000 towards the Ten Years’ Time Racial Justice and Social Transformation: How Funders Can Act on Both research project;
• £100,000 grant towards The Ubele Initiative’s core costs;
• £200,000 grant towards Rosa UK’s delivery of a grants programme to support specialist women’s organisations, particularly those led by and for Black and minoritised women;
• £100,000 grant to Breaking Barriers to support the expansion of its work outside London;
• £200,000 grant towards the development costs of Baobab Foundation.

Our indebtedness to organisations supporting disadvantaged communities and individuals across the country – as well as to the army of staff and volunteers working with and for those organisations – cannot be overestimated. It is they who rose to the enormous challenges presented by COVID-19, adapting services and generally doing whatever they could to support the communities and individuals they serve.

Learning and Evaluation

In September 2020, we published a report on our initial insights into the CECP programme. Download and read our CECP Initial Insights report here (PDF). 

The CECP programme, as a rapid response to a crisis, deviated from our normal grant process in that there were no requirements of grant recipients to provide formal monitoring or post-award reports. However, we did distribute a an optional survey to our CECP grant recipients, receiving a response from 201 (out of 327). 

In April 2021, we published a report on our survey findings. Download and read of CECP Survey Findings report here (PDF). 

Case Study: Claremont Project

In 2020, we award an additional £10,000 grant towards the completion of the original capital project, enabling Claremont to divert its reserves towards its COVID-19 response.

Claremont has been around since 1907. It pioneered many important developments in social care and development including programmes in the 1920’s and 30’s which became models for the Welfare State, one of the first child care services for working women, and even free acting classes as a route out of poverty. Claremont is a founding member of the Flourishing Lives coalition which is united by a shared vision of excellent services for older people, working together to ensure that older people are genuinely valued and empowered to lead healthier, happier, more active and connected lives. It places emphasis on how services are delivered, not just on providing them.

In 2017 we awarded £50,000 to the Claremont Project towards the refurbishment of its building. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, we wrote to existing grantees asking them to contact us if they required additional support with their capital project. Claremont Project was one of the charities that did.

Before COVID, Claremont had been operating throughout the refurbishment and was planning to re-open fully in March. Like many charities, it suffered a significant loss in regular and service income. Although it was able to reduce some costs, because it works with older people, 80% of whom live alone, Claremont decided not to furlough staff as it wanted to be actively engaged in supporting its 1,000+ older people. A grant of £10,000 was awarded.

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