Our first level of research into the Henry Smith Charity is to find out whether we can apply – is our organisation eligible?

We’re looking for:

•Funding priorities

•Overall aim

•Eligible areas of the country

•Eligible types of organisation

Firstly, funding priorities: click on ‘Programme areas’ for the main areas of work that can be funded.

Next the overall aim of the funder. Clicking on ‘Objects of the Charity’ leads to this page which gives the broad aims for the funding which have been expanded to give the funding priorities or programme areas we just looked at.

Eligible areas – this isn’t specifically mentioned other than here on the home page – “a wide range of purposes across the UK.”

The programme areas and objects of the charity have nothing much to say about the types of organisation that can be funded. So we can look at the exclusions by clicking on ‘Not normally considered’ to see if any types will not be funded.

So if you’ve researched this far, and you’re pretty sure you are eligible, you can think about what you could apply to them for. Start of by looking for the size and duration of grants available. Click on ‘Types of grants’.

The same page also has information on whether this funder will pay for revenue or capital costs (or, as in this case, both).

Next, are there specific deadlines? Click on ‘Application process’ to get to this page. Towards the bottom of the page is the information we’re after – trustees meet quarterly in March, June, September and December. Applications due 8 weeks prior to a meeting.

Then finally for deciding what to apply for, check the list of exclusions by clicking ‘not normally considered’. You’re looking for specific work that can’t be considered so you can make sure your application is for something else.

If you’re still here, you should have decided that you are eligible for funding and thought of possible things to apply to the Charity for. The final stage is to build up your research to find out how to apply and how to improve your chances of success

First, we can look for details of previous grants made to get an idea of the likely size of grant they want to give and the sort of work they fund in practice. At the bottom of the ‘Types of grant’ page, there is a link to a PDF report of grants made.

Next, the application guidelines if they have any. Click on ‘application process’. This page tells us that the Charity doesn’t use a specific form and tells you what you should include in an application.

If the funder has produced any research, reports or publications, this can be a good source of clues about the thinking and direction of the funder. In this case, the annual report downloadable from the home page is the most we have to go on.

If you’ve come this far in your research, you are most likely thinking about applying to the funder. If so, you should always check for a frequently asked questions section to see if there is anything you’ve missed before you contact the funder directly.

Finally, if there are any other pages you haven’t yet looked at that might be vaguely relevant, you should have a quick look to make sure you’ve picked up all the bits of information you can. In this case, the only page we haven’t looked at is this short passage of interesting but not especially useful history of the Charity.