Bidding to help more - The Worcester Observer

Bidding to help more

Worcester Editorial 19th Jul, 2019   0

A COUNTY social entrepreneur, whose work with community groups has generated grants totalling more than £1.2million, has urged city causes in need of a financial boost to make a bid for funding.

Keith Slater delivered the rallying call to community groups to discover the financial avenues open to them after recently securing a staggering £500,000 for a charity based in Derbyshire

For Keith, this award is the single largest he has ever been able to generate.

Keith set up Community Boost, a CIC designed to help small community based organisations access funding, in 2015.




To date Keith has generated grants totalling £1,270,000 and comments that he would love to get as close as possible to £2million before he calls it a day.

At least 50 per cent of this £1,270,000 has been on projects in Worcestershire; churches, schools, charities, voluntary groups and small CICs have all benefitted.


Keith admitted he enjoyed helping very small organisations, quite often one-man-band operations or projects with very small budgets, obtain their initial funding to address a problem in their local community.

“Choirs, lunch clubs, community buskers, arts and crafts projects, charity shops, awards ceremonies, poetry workshops, youth work, fashion shows for physically disabled teenage girls, essential equipment for a centre or church and food redistribution are just some of the ideas which have come to life thanks to grant funding,” Keith said.

“Sadly it has taken a large part of my working life for me to realise £10,000 to a small project can often stretch much further than £10,000 to bigger and more heavily staffed organisations.”

However a single award of £500k represents an all-time high to Keith in his work in this area.

“Gaining this type of large grant is not easy. It can take several months with many questions to prepare and then answer,” he said.

“It would be lovely to think within Worcester and certainly within the county there are organisations which are strong enough to consider a similar level of application.”

“Grants are definitely not a way of trying to cover current running costs. At the start of every proposal I always ask the question ‘will this project improve the quality of life for all those involved?’

“The answer to this question always determines if it is worthwhile for an application to be made,” he added.

E-mail [email protected] for more.

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