Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND)
The Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) priority aims to reduce the inequalities faced by children and young people, and their families.
We are looking to fund charities working to reduce barriers through early intervention, accessible social, leisure and education opportunities; as well as specialist information and advice for issues such as legal rights, benefits and Education, Health and Care Plans.
We are interested in funding projects that work towards the following outcomes:
- Improved access to early intervention services and therapies, for diagnosed, suspected conditions, and pre-diagnosis
- Improved transition support such as moving from primary to secondary school, or transitioning to adult services
- Improve awareness of and engagement with education, volunteering, employment, or training opportunities
- Increased independence, social inclusion and connections to their local community
- Enable their parents/carers to be better informed of their child’s options, rights, and available services
- Ensure their parents/carers are better able to cope in their caring role and meet their child’s needs
Supporting children and young people in their mental health
The Freemasons’ Charity’s target group titled ‘Children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities’ (SEND) is unfortunately not targeted towards those whose needs are best characterised as chronic mental health or illness such as cancer or heart disease. The Freemasons’ Charity recognises that when a physical or mental health condition has a substantial long-term effect on a person’s normal day to day activity this is classified as a disability, however due to limited resources our target beneficiary groups have been defined with the aim of enabling the Freemasons’ Charity to better target our funding. By focusing on this way, we hope to maximise the impact of our grants programme on beneficiaries of charities that are included within our SEND target group.
Grant programmes
SMALL GRANT
These grants are for smaller charities whose annual income is between £25,000 and £500,000.
Small grants are unrestricted and do not have to be used on a specific purpose, although we do ask grant recipients to report on how they used the funding.
Small grants range from £1,000 – £5,000 per year, for up to three years.
The total amount of the grant requested must not exceed 20 per cent of the total income of the charity, averaged over the past two years.
LARGE GRANT
These grants are for larger charities whose annual income is between £500,000 and £5m.
Large grants are restricted for specific projects with defined goals and budgets, and may be spent on, for example, salaries, equipment, training, monitoring and administration.
Large grants usually range from £10,000 to £60,000 in total spread over one to three years. The Freemasons’ Charity has a preference for multiyear funding (for example, £20,000 per year for three years or £30,000 per year for two years). We will consider one year grants only in exceptional circumstances such as for pilot projects.