Funding Your Group 

So, you’ve been litter picking for a while and it’s great, but that cake won’t buy itself...You might start thinking about how you could get some funding, and you’ve come to the right place.  

Here are our top tips on how to fund your litter picking group:  

Think local

Your local authority, town council, or parish council are here to help, and they’re always a great place to start. Some local authorities can lend out litter picking equipment, providebags, and collect the litter you collect.  

Other top tips include

  • Chatting to your local Ward Cllr and parish council. Sometimes they have environmental budgets that you can get money from.  
  • Unsure who your Ward Councilor is? You can find them online.
  • You might also be able to get a small grant from your local authority, parish council or an organisation like The Rotary Foundation.
  • Local businesses are also a great support for litter picking groups. Like you, they’re a part of the community. You could ask them to put up posters to promote your group, and some groups have struck up great friendships with local business owners, such as caféswho offer free coffee to all litter pickers.

Supermarkets

Lots of supermarkets have fantastic grant-giving schemes and community programmes. These initiatives are designed to support community projects like yours and make a real difference. It's worth checking with your local supermarket to see if they offer any opportunities for funding and community involvement. They might just be the perfect partner for your cause!  

A list of some national grants schemes is below

Greening donations

Greening is a process that involves making local areas more environmentally friendly – think less litter, more plants. Lots of businesses support greening, and once you start looking you might be surprised by the number of organisations happy to help.  

Here’s a few suggestions from us  

Grant Funding

A grant is some money that you can get from an organisation or government to do a specific thing, and you don’t have to pay it back. It’s a win-win for everyone. There’s usually a process that you need to go through to get the money e.g., filling in an application form.  

If you fancy getting a grant for your group, here’s a few things that can help:  

  • The National Council for Voluntary Organisations has some great funding advice on its website.
  • My Funding Central is a new database of grant funding and social investment sources and is free for organisations with an income of under £30k.
  • The National Lottery Awards for All programme gives small grants of between £300 and £10,000 to community projects which, amongst other things, help the local environment.
  • Browse lists of grant-making trusts. The most popular is the book 'The Directory of Grant-Making Trusts'. The Directory of Social Change publishes it once a year and it is often available in libraries. 
  •  The Heritage Fund to improve climate change

Other potential funds options:  

Lots of businesses also offer support and funding. It’s worth keeping an eye out for, and we’ve included some other options for you here.  

A handy tip from us

If you’re struggling to get started, channel your inner Sherlock Homles and head to the websites of other groups that are like yours. Look on their website and or social media to see where their funding comes from.

Spread the love 

We are sure that once you get started with your search for funding, you will find that there are all sorts of possibilities for help out there. We are always really interested to hear what works for you. So, do get in touch and let us know if you have any fundraising ideas that we can share with other litter pickers!  

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