Fund your idea
Benefits
- Be a change-maker with your project ideas
- Get support for your initiative
- Enhance your project's community impact
Up to £500 to give it a go
Do you have a fantastic idea for a community initiative, but just need the financial support to make it happen? This funding can help you kickstart your project. To be eligible, the project needs to meet the following criteria and must:
- be innovative, either a project start-up or a new activity for an existing scheme
- have a clear local community impact which reaches beyond the University community
- include being in contact and working with a community based organisation unless there are exceptional circumstances which prohibit this (e.g. an entirely new initiative where a Community Partner has yet to emerge)
- involve student or staff volunteers
- be sustainable beyond the period of funding
- be led by students or staff at the University of York
- be not-for-profit whether that be a volunteering project or a social enterprise
Note: The Community Fund is generally unsuitable for supporting academically accredited placements unless these can be linked to long term, sustainable volunteering opportunities for others.
Before applying for £500
We recommend you explore your idea with a member of the Community Engaged Learning Team before making an application to the Community Fund.
Just drop us an email at volunteering
Fund application review process
Upon receipt of a Community Fund application, you will receive an acknowledgement and confimation of the next stage of the application review process. This could include a request for additional information either by email or speaking to a member of the Community Engaged Learning Team as part of a formative process designed to better meet the funds criteria or sharing the application with the Community Volunteering Committee for consideration.
The Community Volunteering Committee have final approval on all applications and the outcome of your application will therefore not be confirmed until their decision has been made.
Until a final decision on your application has been made by the committee, your application will remain in progress.
Other sources of funding
Enterprise
There are a range of funding opportunities and competitions run annually by Enterprise, based in Careers. If you have an idea for a business, freelancing or social enterprise this is the place to look for support, funding and advice.
YuStart
This is the University’s crowdfunding platform. You can fund your projects, your interests, your ambitions be it events, sports, tech, science, community, theatre, art, fashion and more. Funding has even helped send Astroduck to space!
YuFund
YuFund gives grants and funding opportunities to departments, colleges, and student clubs and societies. Applications should support innovative projects that improve opportunities for students and help the University to contribute to the life of the wider community.
The money is donated by alumni and friends of the University who are keen to invest in enhancing opportunities and supporting current students and is distributed twice a year in November and April.
