Charities

Grants to Charities

The Ironmongers’ Company wishes to support projects that provide opportunities for disadvantaged children and young people to fulfil their potential.

We are looking for projects that deliver clearly defined educational benefits to a specific group of children or young people. Projects could, for example, support special educational needs, or foster social, emotional or life skills. Preference will be given to projects piloting new approaches where the outcomes will be disseminated to a wider audience.

Grants

Grants range from £3,000 up to around £10,000. Preference will be given to requests where the grant would cover a significant element of the project costs (at least 50%) and to applications from smaller charities.
Grants must be spent within twelve months from the date of the award.
Recipients are expected to submit a written evaluation report within three months of the completion of the project.

Eligibility Criteria

Please read the following guidelines and application procedures carefully before applying and please do not apply if you do not meet the criteria. We receive a very high volume of applications and the Company’s funds and administrative resources are limited.

Grants are only given to registered charities. We do not give grants to community interest companies.

All of the criteria must be met. Projects must:

Have a commencement date after 31 October 2025 (Spring 2025 round) or 30 April 2026 (Autumn 2025 round)
Be for children and young people under the age of 25 who are disadvantaged
Consist of educational activities that develop learning, motivation and skills
Have clear aims and objectives to be met within a planned timescale
Be carried out within the UK.

Exclusions

A grant will not be provided for:

General appeals or circulars
Replacement of statutory funding
General running costs (a reasonable proportion of overheads will be accepted as part of project costs)
Medical treatment, healthcare, counselling and therapy
Boxing and martial arts
Course fees for staff or other professionals
Research projects
Bursaries
Schools, unless a registered charity for children/young people with disabilities
Fundraising events and sponsorship
Building work
Holidays
Charities that are newly registered with the Charity Commission and therefore do not have three years of annual accounts
Projects that are mainly carried out online. In-person projects that include an online element may be considered.
Affiliates, subsidiaries or franchises of larger charities
Charities with an annual turnover of over £1,000,000.

Eligibility Checklist

Please use this eligibility checklist to double-check that your project is eligible before applying. If you cannot answer ‘yes’ to every question, your application is not eligible for a grant and we politely request that you do not apply. Ineligible applications cannot be considered for funding.

Are you a registered charity?
Do you have an annual turnover of less than £1,000,000?
Is the project for children and young people under the age of 25 who are disadvantaged?
Does your project consist of educational activities that develop learning, motivation and skills? (Items of equipment will be considered only where a full explanation is given of how they will support this activity.)
Does your project have clear aims and objectives to be met within a planned timescale?
Is your project within the UK?
Will the Company’s support make a recognisable difference? (Preference will be given to requests where the grant would cover a significant element of the cost, and to those from smaller organisations.)
Have you checked that your project does not fall into one of the excluded categories?
Have you checked that the planned start date of your project is after the date of the relevant committee decision (see timetable)? We do not fund retrospectively.

Application Procedure

The Company’s Grant Application Form must be completed. Please note, this form is only available to complete while we are open for applications see grant application timetable). Applications submitted outside the application window will be rejected.

Following the closure of the initial application period, all applications will be assessed and a limited number selected for the second stage of our application process. If your project is selected for the second stage of our application process, we will contact you for further information within two months of the initial application deadline.

Unfortunately, due to the expected volume of applications, we will be unable to provide feedback on applications that are not selected for the second stage of our application process.

Grant Application Timetable

We are open for applications from 15 October to 5pm on 18 November. Applications submitted outside of the timings below will not be considered.

When to apply

Application timetable

Open for submissions – 15 October 2025
Initial Application deadline - 18 November 2025, 5pm
If your project is selected for the second stage of our application process, we will contact you for further information within two months of the initial application deadline.
Committee decision and notification of outcome - end March 2026.

The Committee meets twice a year to review grant applications, in March and November. We do not fund projects that begin before the date of the relevant meeting.

Spring 2026 round

The application timetable for this round of funding will be confirmed in due course.

How to apply

We do not accept grant applications by post. For your application to be eligible, you must apply using The Ironmongers’ Company application form, which should be submitted by email to bettons@ironmongers.org. The form can only be accessed when we are open for submissions. Please do not complete the form if you are applying for one of the Company’s STEM grants.

For any queries, please email charities@ironmongers.org.

Download application form

Exclusions

Grant Application Timetable