It was an early start with a meeting in Glasgow this week to decide on grants from the Women’s Fund for Scotland. There is a huge amount of work for both of us in early October, to go through 99 applications for large grants totalling £2.5M, in order to get an agreed shortlist of eight applications totalling £192.9K for detailed assessment. It is good to see that all of the shortlisted projects were recommended for funding and we had the funds to meet their requests, thanks to the grant we received from the UK Government distribution of Tampon Tax money.
We also agreed small grants for 17 small projects working with women and girls in different areas of Scotland. Between the large and small grants we have made, we have now helped local projects in almost every local authority in Scotland, which we’re really pleased about. Our challenge now is to keep the money flowing in so that women and girls across Scotland can achieve their potential.
Amidst all the board meetings, strategy meetings and events organisation it is such a joy to be doing something at the heart of the Women’s Fund for Scotland – making grants!
Sifting through the plentiful applications can be an emotional journey; envisaging those in need of support can bring a tear to the eye, but how wonderful it is to discover the myriad of groups and organisations selflessly working in our communities for the benefit of others. It is such a hard job to turn down such worthwhile projects from further assessment – how lovely it would be to fund them all.
The Tampon Tax money gave us an added insight into larger projects through the large grant scheme. I’m immensely proud of the way we easily stepped up a gear to administer both these large multi year grants as well as the increased volume of small grant applications. We had the infrastructure and experience just to get on with it and get the money out there to where it was needed. We received the Tampon Tax money in the summer of 2016 and the large grant money is already all allocated with the remaining small grant money due to be distributed in the third round of grantmaking in March 2017.
