Supporting the lives of older people in Bristol and the surrounding area has been part of the vision for St Monica Trust since it began 100 years ago. Today our Community Giving team helps tackle a variety of issues by distributing hundreds of thousands of pounds to individuals, families and organisations across the region. We provide gifts and grants that go directly to those who will benefit the most and we are committed to helping more people by increasing our giving over the next few years.
We are pleased to launch our Winter Support Fund, providing grants of up to £1,000 to charities, community groups and social enterprises to help them in continuing their support of older people during the winter months.
The Winter Support Fund can support organisations to purchase equipment needed to safely deliver activities and services. It may also be used to help you reimagine a previously much loved activity. If the older people you are working with have identified a specific local need, then the Winter Support Fund could help you to address this. We want to support projects that are clearly needed and that continue to empower older people in the region.
The Winter Support Fund will be running for the rest of this year and in order to provide funds quickly and efficiently we will be reviewing bids on a fortnightly basis. Any bids received by 12 Noon, on the 16th October will be considered in the following week and the future cut off points will be:
Please read our application guidelines and complete our application form before returning the completed form to us via email on communityimpact@stmonicatrust.org.uk.
Application GuidelinesApplication Form
If you have any questions regarding the Winter Support Fund, please email Angelina Shoemake, Community Giving Manager at angelina.shoemake@stmonicatrust.org.uk.
Our aim is to help you live independently in your own community for as long as possible. We do this by helping you with items that you need, or by supporting you through a financial crisis.
We help people who satisfy the following criteria:
We help in two ways: we might provide you with a gift or we may offer you a short-term grant of monthly financial support to help you through a crisis. Whichever way we help, it will not affect your benefits, tax credits or tax.
A gift is a one-off item that we provide to you. We can help with a range of items, including:
This list doesn’t cover everything. We will always consider helping with anything that is going to make a positive difference to your everyday life.
Unfortunately, there are things which we can’t help with. These include:
A short-term grant is a monthly payment that is designed to help you through a crisis. The average grant is £110 per month, for an average of three to six months.
The kinds of issues we provide grants for are:
This is not an exhaustive list. Unfortunately, we cannot help with ongoing daily living costs.
We ask everyone who wants our help to fill in an application form. You can either complete the form online or contact us to request a paper copy in the post. If you have any difficulties filling it in, please contact the community fund team on 0117 949 4003 and we will be happy to assist.
Please note that due to an increase in demand our turn-around for individual giving is approximately four weeks.
The most common reason we turn down applications is because people do not meet our criteria. Please make sure that you check our criteria before you apply. If you are not sure whether to apply, please contact the community fund team to discuss your situation and we will be happy to advise you.
Speak to a member of our team
Make a funding application for individual giving online
If you have any questions or would like to talk to us, you can contact the Community Giving team on 0117 949 4003 or email communityimpact@stmonicatrust.org.uk
