Community grants application guidance
Our strategy
The early years are a crucial time for all children. For deaf children, this is even more true given the impact deafness can have on language development, communication and social skills.
It’s clear that supporting deaf children during those early years is where we can make the biggest impact and set them up for life. This is the basis of our 2023 to 2028 strategy, Every Moment Counts.
We want to deliver outstanding support in the early years and build communities that unite families.
Find out more about the National Deaf Children’s Society, including our strategy, our vision, mission and values, and read our position statements on topics such as informed choice.
Our grants programme
Through our new grants programme, we’ll partner with established organisations within communities to make sure deaf children and their families can access language in a way that works for them. This includes spoken language, signed language, reading or writing.
We prioritise funding for projects that support language and communication development in deaf children aged 0 to 5 years (up to five years, 11 months). However, we also welcome applications for initiatives that benefit older deaf children.
We can fund activities that parents and carers of deaf children take part in, but the beneficiaries must be deaf children.
We understand that different communities, cultures and groups have unique communication and support needs. We’re committed to supporting projects that help diverse communities, including groups that face barriers when accessing services and support.
How much funding is available?
We typically award grants ranging from £1,000 to £10,000 but will consider larger amounts. If you’re seeking funding over £10,000, please get in touch.
Closing date
The closing date for online applications is Thursday 8 May 2025.
Our priority aims
We’ll support projects that aim to do at least one of the following.
- Increase the overall number of deaf children and families accessing opportunities to develop language and communication in their community setting.
- Reach new people, communities and groups previously excluded from opportunities to develop language and communication.
- Encourage innovative, high quality approaches to developing the language and communication skills of deaf children and their families.
- Encourage partnerships within communities so different groups and sectors work together to provide opportunities to develop language and communication.
- Encourage sustainable models that will continue beyond the period of funding.
- Projects that lead to positive outcomes for deaf children. This could be directly, or through their families. Examples of positive impact could be improvements in language and communication for deaf children, or increased knowledge or confidence in families supporting this for their child.
We’ll prioritise projects that contribute to more than one of our priority aims.
Eligible costs
We’ll only support essential project costs. These could include:
- tutor costs
- venue hire
- essential transport costs
- materials
- communication support, for example, BSL interpreters
- activities for parents and carers that focus on language and development.
We don’t fund
- statutory work
- salaries
- for-profit projects.
Application process
1. Read this guidance in full. Your work must align with at least one of our priority aims to be considered for funding.
2. Complete a few short questions in our eligibility checklist to make sure you’re eligible to apply. This will only take a few minutes.
3. Fill out our online application form. We’ll ask for:
- basic details about your project, to help us assess your application
- the costs of your proposed work
- your organisation’s governance and contact details
- a bank statement.
We’ll also ask you about diversity, equality and inclusion.
4. Your completed application will be assessed by a panel of National Deaf Children’s Society staff.
Top tips
Draft your answers. You can download a Word version of the application form with BSL.
You can use this version to draft your responses to the application questions before entering them into the final online form.
Budget
Fill in your organisation name, list your budget items or activities and the cost, and save it to your device.
When you complete the online application form and reach 'Section 2 – Project costs', click the ‘budget upload’ button and attach your saved budget.
Key dates
- The grants programme opens on Thursday 10 April 2025.
- The closing date for online applications is Thursday 8 May 2025.
- We aim to communicate funding decisions by Friday 27 June 2025.
- We’ll expect you to complete and deliver your project within 12 months, so by the end of July 2026.
- We’ll ask you to complete a monitoring and evaluation report at the end of your project.
Grant payment
Successful applicants will receive 90% of their grant upfront. This will ensure that you’re not out-of-pocket and can start your project as soon as possible. We’ll pay the remaining 10% at the end of your planned project and after receiving a short end-of-project monitoring and evaluation report.
Monitoring and evaluation
We’re keen to understand whether the grants are achieving what we hope they’ll achieve, and to learn as we go. We’ll support opportunities for reflection and provide you with a simple end of project evaluation form for you to complete. We’ll also give you guidance at the start of your project on how to gather what you’ll need to monitor and evaluate your project effectively.
Questions about our application process
We’re here to support you. If you have any questions about our application process, please get in touch with our community grants team at [email protected]. We’ll be happy to help.