Efficiency North Ltd has announced that its Frameworks 4 Good Fund has this year awarded grants of up to £5k to 21 more community projects working in support of its members’ communities throughout Yorkshire and Humber.
According to Housing News:
The fund originally opened for its first round of applications in 2012. Now completing its 3rd round of applications,it has awarded grants of over £165k to 56 local projects in total, as well as in kind contributions of labour and materials from contractors appointed to Efficiency North’s suite of frameworks for housing maintenance and construction services developed for use by the consortium’s membership.
The funding pot is made up from contributions gathered every year through the frameworksin order to deliver added social value for the communities the housing providers serve, and within which the contractors provide their services.
All projects applying to the fund are sponsored by an organisation which is both a consortium member and user of the consortium’s frameworks.
The fund targets support of local projects that are sustainable, provide local employment opportunities, encourage self-sufficiency and that will also provide long term benefits for the wider local community.
The 4 Good Fund Panel brings together members’ tenant representatives and Efficiency North frameworks’ contractors, who evaluate all applications against an agreed framework reflecting the consortium’s 4 core strategic aims – efficiency, employment and skills, social and economic regeneration and environment and sustainability.
The fund will open for a fourth round of applications in August 2015.
Emma Wilson, co-ordinator of the Doncaster-based Artistic Spectrum ‘Arts for Minds’ project backed in the latest funding round, said: “We are thrilled to be funded by The 4 Good Fund and together we will be able to provide sustainable, long term benefit to people with autism in our community.”
Paul Mitchell, Efficiency North CSR lead, added: “It’s fantastic that, by bringing together contractors, tenants and members through the fund, Efficiency North has been able to support the great work being put in by members’ tenant communities at ground level. We’re now witnessing firsthand the real differences that receiving funding has made to them, how they’re gaining skills and confidence in themselves to create their own opportunities, which otherwise would not have been possible.”