Merchant Taylors' Foundation Funding Application
Apply for a Grant from Merchant Taylors' Foundation
Tailoring Brighter Futures
Our Small Grants Scheme is for community-based charities who operate exclusively in the London Boroughs of Hackney, Lewisham, Southwark, and Tower Hamlets. We also consider applications from organisations who can demonstrate they deliver most of their charitable activity in one or more of these boroughs. Your organisation must be working with people who are in need due to age, ill health, disability, financial hardship, or any other form of disadvantage. Our Small Grants Scheme FAQs can be found Small Grant Scheme FAQs
Following a recent review, we have identified a gap in applications from organisations supporting aging or older people and we actively encourage these charities to apply. By older people we mean those of retirement age and above. If your project does not work with older people, we still welcome your application.
We award grants for unrestricted use or project funding. Unrestricted funding is more flexible and allows you to use the grant wherever it is needed. This may mean using the funds on training and development, improved governance, running costs, better technology etc – it's up to you. Both types of funding must be used in line with your charitable objectives in your governing document.
Our Small Grant Scheme application window is currently closed.
We will re-open for applications from the 14th of September to the 30th of November 2026 (5pm).
Last year we received 127 applications to our Small Grants Scheme.
We awarded small grants to 35 Charities. This was 27% of all applicants.
89% of the charities that were successful had an annual income of under £1 million.
We have listed all our successful applicants below.
Acheinu Cancer Support
Activiteens
Age UK Lewisham and Southwark
Bede House Association
Bellingham Community Project
Blackfriars Settlement
Blossoms London Ltd
Burgess Sports
Entelechy Arts
Fairbeats Music
Finding Rhythms
Hackney Doorways
Highlights
Laburnum Boat Club
Leaders in Community
Lee Green Lives
Lewisham Churches Care
Link Age Southwark
Nunhead Voice
Paxton green time bank
Pecan
Pembroke College Settlement
Seventh Heaven
SIGNAL Family Support
Social Action for Health
SocietyLinks Tower Hamlets
Spring Community Hub
Sydenham Garden
Team Up for Social Mobility
Teatro Vivo
The Carers Centre
The Feast Youth Project
Tower Hamlets Law Centre
Tutors United
Unite to Ignite
Merchant Taylors’ Foundation Small Grant Scheme Checklist
Before you apply, please check if you are eligible by completing this checklist and reading our Small Grant Scheme FAQs.
Please do not apply if you do not meet the checklist and eligibility criteria explained in the FAQs. Non eligibility will unfortunately result in a rejected application.
Fo queries, please contact charities@merchant-taylors.co.uk
Merchant Taylors in Need
The Foundation also provides limited financial help in appropriate cases to:
- 'Poor Freemen of the Merchant Taylors' Company'
- 'Poor dependants or poor apprentices of Freemen of the Merchant Taylors' Company'
We only have capacity to provide help on a modest financial scale, for example the cost of replacing broken white goods in an emergency for someone who meets the above criteria and is unable to pay for the items due to financial hardship.
Unfortunately we don’t have the financial or staffing resources to provide one-off financial help on a large scale, or to help with longer term or potentially open-ended financial commitments such as:
- Paying school fees to enable a child to continue in their current school
- Subsidising the cost of private sector rental accommodation.
Our staff team is small so unfortunately we aren’t able to provide staff help in kind, for example to find new accommodation or to arrange a nursing home place or a care package.
Please contact us here, with a brief explanation of your circumstances including your connection to Merchant Taylors’ Company.
You can find more about the Foundation here.
