The Julia and Hans Rausing Trust has launched a £3.5 million to help food banks across the UK with the cost-of-living crisis.
The new Food Bank Fund is part of a larger £10 million grants programme from the Trust to support charities and food banks across the UK in tackling the growing food poverty crisis, including £3.5 million to the Trussell Trust and £1.7 million to FareShare.
The Fund is open to all food banks across the UK. Applications opened yesterday and will close at 4pm on Sunday 6th December 2022, with grants starting from £500. The Fund hopes to have distributed all funds to successful applicants before Christmas.
Julia and Hans Rausing said:
“Food banks are facing an unprecedented crisis with demand reaching record levels. For the first time, they are giving away more food than they are receiving through donations which shows the gravity of the situation. Furthermore, in many cases, they are seeing significant increases in running costs compared to last year. For this reason we are donating a total of £10 million to food charities of which £3.5 million is via an emergency open application ‘Foodbank Fund’ to help as many food banks as possible support their local communities.”
In addition to the open application and Trussell Trust grants, Julia and Hans Rausing are supporting the following food related charities:
o FareShare: having previously worked with FareShare and their food distribution network, Julia and Hans Rausing are donating £1.7 million to develop new food processing and freezing technologies to enable surplus fresh food to be stored instead of wasted.
o FoodCycle: Julia and Hans Rausing are donating £325,000 to FoodCycle to enable the charity to keep open its welcoming spaces as part of its ‘meet, eat and have conversations’ programme across London & the South East and the West Midlands.
o Feeding Britain: £200,000 will go towards providing urgent support to 20 of its affordable food clubs and pantries across the UK.
Julia and Hans Rausing are also donating a further £775,000 to local food charities in London, Gloucestershire and East Cheshire where they have local connections.
The UK-wide Food Bank Grants, which start at £500, are available to local not-for-profit groups which operate a Food Bank to help meet rising costs and demands over the winter months in the UK. There is no maximum grants award level. However, the Trust is only likely to provide funding towards revenue costs up to 20% of an applying Food Bank’s annual turnover.
Grants must be used within 6 months of an award and can be used to cover to costs the of:
o Food (including other needed household items) purchase.
o Rent.
o Staffing costs for roles required to deliver the foodbank.
o Storage and distribution costs (including existing vehicle maintenance/running costs).
o Utility and insurance costs, and
o Volunteer costs (for example, travel).
Funding is not available for:
o Capital expenditure such as work to buildings or acquisition of new vehicles/equipment.
o Costs already covered from other sources, including other independent funders or Government funding schemes.
o Costs incurred six months after receipt of grant payment.
o Costs related to campaigning or the promotion of political or faith beliefs.
o Costs that do not directly relate to delivery of a foodbank service.
o Entirely new projects/activity that has not previously been delivered as part of the foodbank.
o Fundraising costs.
o Funding for individuals.
o Legal and professional fees.
o Organisational reserves.
o Redundancy costs, or
o Retrospective costs.
Further information, guidelines, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and an online applications form is available on the Julia and Hans Rausing Trust website
The application deadline is 4pm on Tuesday 6th December 2022, with successful applicants expected to be announced in late December.
