the Community Foundation for the people of Kirklees.

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Foundation News

THE BRIGHT GREEN COMMUNITY TRUST FUNDING AWARDS

The Bright Green Community Trust (BGCT), was launched to provide grant funding for projects, across the Holme Valley Parish and the Graveship of Holme. This fund has been set up by HoTTWind@Longley Ltd, a community benefit society that operates a wind turbine that supplies green electricity to Longley Farm, near Holmfirth. The fund will ensure that the community wind turbine, whilst having obvious environmental benefits, will also provide significant benefits to local people. The BGCT Fund will be administered by One Community, the Community Foundation for Kirklees.

This year's awards were made to: 

  • Friends of Cinderhills Park received £3,000 to build a play park area and create a community garden.

  • Grow to School CIC received £3,000 to support the development of allotment gardens at a local school.

  • Hade Edge Band received £9,000 for solar panels to be fitted to the practice building and for the replacement of old lighting.

  • Hepworth Junior & Infant School received £1,500 to replace existing lighting with energy-efficient LED lights.

  • Holme Valley Climate Emergency Land Use Group received £5,550 to support work to map the area, producing a carbon baseline, and to identify land area for action.

  • Holmfirth Art and Music Ltd received £2,000 to support a sustainable creative project involving a commitment to educating people about climate change and motivating action.

  • Holmfirth WI received £1,500 to fund a cycling campaign.

  • River Holme Connections received £3,550 for the cost of purchasing native trees and hedge plants, and also make a contribution towards staff time.

  • Upperthong Village Hall received £3,000 for funding towards essential maintenance investment and repairs.

 

We are looking for a Business and Community Connector to join our team. 

Selection will be based on skills, personal attributes and experience relevant to the role. Please include your CV, together with a personal statement outlining your suitability for the position, (no more than 1,200 words). Deadline for applications: Friday, April 23rd 2021 5pm. Email Emma@one-community.org.uk

Reporting To: CEO

Location: Central Huddersfield with travel across Kirklees 

Hours: 24 hours per week (can be worked flexibly over three to five days) 

Salary: £30,000 Pro-rata 

Duration: 2-year contract (Success of this role is likely to make the position permanent). Occasional weekend and evening work may be required. 

 

Purpose of the role

One Community Foundation is a grant-making charity in Kirklees during the past year we have awarded over £1m of funding to local charities. The money we raise from local people and businesses is used to fund all types of community activity across Kirklees. We are committed to connecting people who care about Kirklees with causes that matter in Kirklees.

We run grants programmes that are aimed at enabling community/citizen-led action and we also facilitate and encourage local businesses to support our local charities, by sharing their professional skills. 

This role will develop a network of socially-minded local businesses who are willing to share their professional skills (skills-based volunteering) with Kirklees charities and community groups to overcome operational challenges post covid to strengthen the sector.

Working with the Foundation team on promotional and networking activities, you will understand the foundation's core work and how it operates to complement the foundation's broader development work.

This role will also work on our successful Match It grants programme, which supports local charities' fundraising efforts by matching all donations pound for pound.  

 

Role description 

The role will develop over time but will initially include:

Introduce volunteering as Corporate Social Responsibility to businesses by:

•Identifying and meeting with local businesses, for example, to promote the business benefits of skills-based volunteering, give talks at the company about how people can volunteer, present skills-based opportunities and traditional on-off options. 

•Attending networking events to educate businesses on the benefits of skills-based volunteering. 

•Working with employees to identify which skills they wish to use in their volunteering and if they would like to volunteers as a group/team/department or as individuals.

•Identifing if the business is seeking one-off or longer-term volunteering opportunities and the time commitment they can offer.

•Present 'live' opportunities to businesses.

•Gain feedback from the business/volunteers once they are in a volunteer position. Work with partners/other critical players in the charity and business sectors to make new and build on existing relationships.

 

Meet with the charitable organisation to establish: for example 

• What the role of volunteers is in the charity, and what tasks are volunteers suited to?

• Is the project a one-off project or a longer-term commitment?

• What skills and experience would the organisation like volunteers to bring to its work?

• What will the selection process involve?

• Does the organisation have good volunteer management and policies?

• Establish if the role can be conducted remotely?

• Establish if any local businesses are already supporting the charity to avoid duplication. 

• Source voluntary sector groups who need support and business' to provide that support.

 

Promote the opportunities and success stories for example 

• On occasion, attend the charity when volunteering occurs to gather photos/video and combine the feedback and quotes from the charity and the volunteers to produce case studies – video and written. 

• Promote opportunities and successes via our social media, online channels.  

• Work with local press and networking groups to promote the volunteer/pro bono work of the businesses.

 

You will also introduce charities to sources of funding and support, including the Foundations funds and the Match It program, and external funding sources such as National Lottery Funding opportunities.

You will support the Match It grants programme administration, which will involve supporting charities to apply and processing grant applications.

 

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Responding to a national crisis at a local level.

In March 2020 it became evident that the Coronavirus crisis was beginning to severely impact communities across the UK. One Community Foundation acted quickly with their partners to raise emergency funding for Kirklees.

Within a couple of weeks, One Community had established a local response fund, set up online grant applications, redeployed staff to administer the fund and convened a dedicated grants panel to assess applications. At the beginning of April we awarded the first grants from our Coronavirus Emergency Response Fund. Since then we have awarded over 180 grants totalling over £500,000 to local charitable organisations, who were responding to the immediate needs of people in Kirklees. 

Awards have been made to support a spectrum of needs including the purchase and delivery of essential food and hygiene parcels. Technology requests have enabled services focused on mental health, domestic abuse, dementia and bereavement to continue, by operating from home. Projects focused on the young and older members of our community have been able to continue by allowing participants to engage in social activities, albeit via an online virtual platform.

Our ability to act rapidly coupled with our knowledge of local charitable organisations meant we were able to swiftly award grants at a grassroots level, where they could support the most vulnerable in society and have the greatest impact.

The crisis has required an unprecedented effort from across our community  and One Community Foundation is privileged to have been at the very forefront of this response.

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One Community Appoints CEO 

2020 was a difficult year for everyone as we all have had to adapt to the new realities forced on us by the virus. It has caused real problems on the ground for community groups whose own fundraising activity has been made more difficult by the pandemic.

Our staff and volunteers have worked very hard in partnership with local community organisations to raise and distribute much-needed funds. The pandemic has meant that One Community has had to work in new ways - staff and volunteers working from home, meeting by Zoom and telephone, and using tech to maintain contact with community groups. Apart from our emergency Coronavirus activity, we have maintained our usual grant-making activities with minimal disruption, and are on track to deliver thousands of pounds in this area too.

The changes for One Community haven’t stopped there, we also appointed Emma Woods-Bolger as our first CEO.

 

The Million Pound Drop!

This year marks our 10th Anniversary, over the last ten years we have distributed over £1,000,000 of grants to local organisations and, in spite of the economic impact of the recent coronavirus situation, we still have invested funds of £3 million, which provides a stable income to distribute alongside shorter-term donations and funding.

In 2019/20 we distributed £306,412 (excluding Covid funds) and the number of grants distributed rose from 207 in 2018/19 to 251 in 2019/20, and this reflects a continuing improvement in our core aim of increasing local giving to local organisation

Please take a moment to watch our round-up video.https://youtu.be/dIaewHritrs

 

 

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Get all the latest One Community news on the following pages, details of exciting fundraising events, and information about our current grant programmes. You can also follow the Foundation's activity on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

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