Please read this page fully before getting in touch with us. It will take you only a few minutes and it might save weeks or months on the time for us to help you.

What Kinds of Things Do We Support?

Our primary motivation is to support the work of local (to the Atherton area) charities, community groups, and other good causes that benefit the local community.

Click around this site to see the kinds of things we have supported already. We can help you buy essential equipment for your organisation, assist local and community events, contribute towards larger projects, help your organisation attend one-off events and opportunities, and more.

We support registered charities and local community organisations. We can add-on to your own fundraising. We can contribute towards projects to which other organisations have already pledged support. We can be the sole source of funding. Ever request is different and we deal with each request on its own merits. We support groups that work with all age ranges.

Are You Eligible

Before getting in touch it’s worth doing a quick check to see if you are eligible for help from the trust. We do not publish hard and fast rules for this but broadly speaking here are some guidelines:

• The trust does not support political, commercial, or for-profit organisations
• The trust tries to keep support local; if you are beyond 20km from Atherton it is unlikely that we will help, not impossible but unlikely
• The trust almost never supports national type charities (think of the big names you see everywhere) unless they bring a specific benefit to the local community

The gist is that the more benefit you bring to the local community without taking a profit yourselves, the more likely we are to help you.

The Process

The process of asking for help follows the following steps:

1. First check that you are eligible for help from the trust (above). If you are in any doubt it’s best to get in touch at this stage before progressing a full request
2. Follow the How To Apply guidelines below to produce an application
3. Provide as much detail as possible
4. Email your application to askforhelp@bnbct.org
5. We add your request to our agenda for our next trustees’ meeting
6. If we think we need more information we will get in touch, work through what we need, and then add your request back in to the agenda for our next trustees’ meeting
7. If we have everything that we need the trustees will determine if we can fund your request and how much we can contribute
8. We will let you know the outcome

From the above you can see that it is really important to give us as much information as you can as soon as you can.

How To Get In Touch and Make An Application

To ask for help from the trust please send your request by email to askforhelp@bnbct.org

In your email please include the following details. The more you include the more likely we are to be able to evaluate your request the first time we see it.

• Your organisation details – Tell us in a few paragraphs about your organisation; who you are, what you do, how long you have been around, the benefits you bring either as a charity or to the local community if you are a community organisation.
• Do you allow publicity – Tell us now if you wish your request to remain anonymous. If you do not we will assume that you are OK with us publishing the details as part of our outreach to show where the trust sends the money it raises. It is helpful for the trust to have your OK to publish these things. Tell us also if you are happy to help with some publicity. We love organisations who will do us a write-up for this blog and send a photo of two of the donation in action. Seriously, we love this.
• Details of your request – Tell us what you are fundraising for, how this benefits your charity or organisation or the local community. Tell us what fundraising you have already completed towards your request. Tell us what additional fundraising you have planned for the future. Tell us the timeline for your request and especially if there are any hard and fast end dates. Tell us everything.
• Details of the whole product – Tell us about the budget for the whole project. Include full details of all costs incurred as well as your plan for how the whole project will be funded. This is especially important if you are asking us to help with part-funding a large project.
• Previous requests – Please tell us about any previous requests for help that you have made to the trust, whatever the outcome.
• Your location – Please tell us where your organisation is based.
• Your contact details – Include the name and address of your organisation, a named contact person and their contact details including an email address and phone number if appropriate. If you are a registered charity please include your registration number. If you have an online presence send us a link to a website or social media.
• Any conflicts of interest – If you are significantly involved with the trust or personally know or are related to any of the trustees you must declare this at this stage. Failure to do this may lead to a breach of the Charities Act 2022. This will not affect how we evaluate your request, we may need to change a couple of steps with our internal process.

How Long Should Your Application Be?

There is no limit to the length of your application. Always err on the side of including more details instead of fewer.

As a rough guideline, if printed we would expect your application to be in the order of 2 to 4 pages in length. This is not a hard and fast rule but it’s a starting point.

For smaller requests we would expect your request to be at the lower end. Larger requests for help with complicated projects will be at the longer end.

We’ll Take It From There

We will confirm when we receive your request. This might not be immediately; our trustees all voluntarily give up their time to support the work of the trust.

We will schedule your request into our next trustees’ meeting. The trustees meetings are not scheduled to a specific timetable. Usually they take place every month or bi-monthly. If your request is urgent please be sure to tell us.