Guidance notes – environmental grants

What are the aims and objectives of your organisation?

Please give us a brief overview of the organisation, why it was set up, what it sets out to achieve and the kind of projects and activities it regularly delivers.

If successful, applicants may be asked to provide copies of the relevant policies and documents as a condition of any offer. 

Which policies are required depends on relevance and proportionality in relation to the type of application, as well as the amount requested. 

This information helps Norwich City Council manage risk, so service users benefit from appropriately trained staff or volunteers, with a fair, equitable and safe service or project delivered.  

The Living Wage is not the minimum wage or the new ‘National Living Wage’ (which works as a higher minimum wage for workers over 25 years old). It is defined as pay for work that should be enough to provide families with the essentials of life. For further information go to www.livingwage.org.uk.   

Norwich City Council, as a Living Wage accredited employer, encourages organisations to pay the current level where it is possible.

This is not a requirement for recipients of grants.

Please describe the project or environmental activity for which you are seeking funding.  As a general guide, you should describe:

• What you want to do.
• How you plan to do it.
• When you plan to do it.
• Where it will happen.
• Why you want to do it - why is it necessary?

For larger grants, you will need to give more detailed information such as a project plan, key milestones for service or project delivery.

If you have successfully delivered this project or service in the past, you may want to include with your application any reports, newspaper articles, photographs or review documents. 

There is a minimum scoring requirement of 2 out of 3 against this priority to successfully receive grant funding.

Please describe how your project or environmental activity will align with the following council corporate priorities set out in We Are Norwich 2024-29. You may wish to use these as sub-headings to structure your response (maximum 500 words):

• C3.1 - A climate responsive Norwich
• C3.2 - A prosperous Norwich
• C3.3 - A fairer Norwich
• C3.4 - A future-proof Norwich

As this is an environmental grants scheme, please note that a higher number of marks are available in relation to the ‘A climate responsive Norwich’ priority. There is also a minimum scoring requirement of 3 out of 5 against this priority to successfully receive grant funding.

Demonstrating how your application meets the following may reflect positively in how your application is scored for this section:

• Support Norwich to achieve net-zero emissions by 2045
• Support nature recovery and access to nature in Norwich
• Invest in people, places, partnerships to respond creatively to the city’s challenges e.g. reducing climate impact, improving health & wellbeing, supporting creative businesses to succeed.
• Enable more diverse and inclusive audiences from Norwich to engage with the environment
• Support Norwich to be a vibrant place of culture and creativity 

Please also explain how will you publicise your project or activity to ensure people can benefit and participate in your work.

(C3.1, 5 marks available)

(C3.2, 3 marks available)

(C3.3, 3 marks available)

(C3.4, 3 marks available)

14 marks available in total

Please state specifically how much grant funding you are applying for from Norwich City Council. The council’s environmental strategy team offers grants up to a maximum amount of £5,000, and organisations may apply for any amount they consider suitable for their project.

As an indicative example, the environmental strategy team’s annual allowance for grants might be disbursed to organisations as follows:

• 4 x £1,000 grants
• 2 x £2,000 grants
• 1 x £3,000 grant
• 1 x £4,000 grant
• 1 x £5,000 grant

Please give a breakdown of items for which you are seeking funding. If you already have this information in a separate document, feel free to append that to your application rather than reproducing it in the application form. Please enter the total cost of the proposal including VAT unless this is not applicable. Marks will be awarded based on the clarity of the proposed budget and value for money.

e.g.:

Item - materials for x 12 costumes

Cost - £144 (12 x £12 costume)

Source - Anglia Fabric

It would help us understand how you intend to fund the proposal if you detail other elements of the project or service that are funded by other means (as above).

For service delivery, typical headings in the ‘Item’ column might include:

• Staffing costs
• Accommodation
• Materials
• Equipment
• Training
• Travel

These headings are suggested as guidelines only – please list your budget breakdown as appropriate to your project.

If you are applying for a grant in kind (e.g. use of council resources at reduced or no cost), either as part of a grant or in isolation, please detail the resource you are seeking in the ‘Item’ column and state ‘Norwich City Council’ in the ‘Source’ column.  Please leave the cost column blank.

Please describe your experience and track record of project or service delivery

This question will help us to understand how successful your project might be, and informs how we measure risk. 

Information we would like to see includes whether you have already delivered this or a similar project before and what evidence of success you have. Or, if it is a new venture, what research you have done to make sure it is a success.

We also want to know how well you communicate and engage with audiences and participants to make sure the proposal meets their needs.

The success of a project or service can only be measured by determining how far the needs of the users of that service or project have been met. The information captured will help the council report back to its residents and elected councillors on how far it has met its agreed outcomes and what benefit has been provided to Norwich communities.

Each application must set out how success will be evaluated including how the priorities and objectives set out in C2 will be measured and reported. Failure to provide these details may mean that we will not consider the application. 

Any offer of grant funding may be conditional on an agreement between the organisation and council regarding how the proposed project or initiative will be evaluated.