MRWA and Veolia Community Fund is support for the Voluntary, Community, Faith & Social Enterprise sector (VCFSE) to deliver innovative waste prevention, reuse, recycling projects in the Liverpool City Region area.

Complete the online application form below, in APPLY NOW.  You will register a log-in for your application, which you can then use if you wish to return to your application before submitting your completed submission.

Once you have submitted your application you will need to send the supporting documents listed in the ‘What documents will I need to include with my application?’ section below.

Waste prevention: includes actions that reduce the amount of waste created by changing people’s behaviour.

Reuse: includes repairing, upcycling or cleaning activities that allow items to be reused for the same purpose as it was originally intended.

Recycling: when materials are collected and sent to organisations that reprocess the material into new products.

Your project should address at least one of four key priority household waste materials: Food, Furniture, Textiles and WEEE (Waste Electrical, Electronic Equipment). Successful applicants will have identified how their project focuses on the prevention, reuse or recycling of at least one of these key priority materials.

You will also engage with your community and help them to positively change their behaviour towards waste. You can see case studies of previous funded projects here.

• Food: Food waste can be prevented by providing people with training, skills, and knowledge to improve their food shopping and storage habits and by improving portion control.
• Furniture: Unwanted furniture may be suitable for reuse, repair, or repurposing. These activities can provide opportunities to develop new skills and reduce waste.
• Textiles: Textiles are sometimes thrown away unnecessarily when they are often suitable for repair and reuse. Sewing skills can help with the reuse of clothing and other textiles.
• WEEE: Can be defined as electrical and electronic equipment that are battery or plug operated, that is broken or unwanted. Many of the electrical items that are thrown away can be recycled or repaired, which helps to save natural resources and reduces damage to the environment.

An A–Z list and the Recycle Right website will help you to identify other household waste materials: www.recycleright.org.uk/

To apply to the Community Fund you must not have any overdue monitoring or reporting from a previous MRWA funded project.

We fund a variety of legal community structures such as:

• Registered Incorporated Charities (you should provide your Charity Number).
• Not-for-profit Organisations, a registered legal entity that does not make a profit for directors, members, or shareholders.
• Community Associations, Tenants, and Residents groups that have an overarching community purpose that reaches beyond its membership.
• Faith or Political Groups – we support projects from groups that have a community purpose other than the advancement of religion or political activities.
• Environmental, arts and heritage organisations that have certificate of registration, Memorandum or Articles.
• Co-operatives, social enterprises, and Community Interest Company Ltd by Guarantee, who don’t have shares or shareholders. C.I.C’s must have three unrelated Directors.
• National organisations need to have a local presence that delivers your project in the Liverpool City Region. You can provide evidence of income and expenditure for activity in the Liverpool City Region.
• Schools, College or University – your project will benefit your establishment and the wider community, and/or work in partnership with a voluntary or community organisation.

• Individuals or projects from profit making businesses.
• Core costs that are not specific for the project.
• Research projects.
• Activities that any other organisation has a duty to undertake.
• Projects that deliver activities that are the responsibility of local authorities.
• Projects that deal with waste from businesses that would not be expected to be collected by local authorities.
• Activities already provided by other funders.
• Contribution to endowment fund, payment of deficit funding or repayment of loans.
• Recoverable VAT.

We have a total funding pot of £165,000 for projects between £1,000 to £30,000.

• Grants of £1,000 to £8,000 are available for an individual district area project.
• Grants of up to £30,000 are available for projects delivering across the City Region area. To qualify for a regional grant, you must deliver your project in a minimum of three districts equally.

Only the costs directly relating to the delivery of your project will be funded.

As well as a list of your project costs we require the budget to be broken down in detail. You can include management costs that are for the project activity being delivered.

e.g. If you are requesting sessional salary costs, we require the number of staff x the number of hours x the £s per hour.

If you are requesting costs for capital items we need to know the cost per item. Please include details and quotes for items over £300 with your applications.

We expect the majority of applications will be via the online application form. If you are not able to access this, for whatever reason, please contact us community.fund@merseysidewda.gov.uk for further information on how we can support you with your application.

Yes, but you should be aware only one project – either a regional or a district specific – will be awarded in the funding year.

You can check if your ideas are in line with our funding aims by submitting an Expression of Interest (E.O.I) before Sunday 5th March 2023. This should be no more than one side of A4 paper. Please email: community.fund@merseysidewda.gov.uk

We will give you feedback by email so you can consider putting in an application. So that we can advise you please include in your E.O.I.:

1. Which priority materials your project will include.
2. A very short summary of your project idea.
3. Who in your local community will be involved.
4. What you expect to achieve.

We will get back to you within five working days of you submitting your E.O.I. If you decide to then apply this must be received by Sunday 26th March 2023 at 11.59pm.

You don’t need to submit an E.O.I. before you complete an application.

Sunday 26^th March 2023 at 11.59pm. We can’t accept applications after this date.

We aim to make decisions by early May 2023, so we expect project delivery will be between end of May 2023 to March 2024.

As part of our due diligence process we require you to provide documents about your organisation. Failure to provide supporting information may result in your application being withdrawn.

• A copy of your governing document, your Constitution/Memorandum/Articles of Association or set of rules.
• A copy bank statement from the last three months. This should be clear and not redacted. It should show the name and address of your organisation, account number and sort code, and the account balance. Our request for a bank statement falls in line with data protection requirements. If payments have been made to individuals, you can redact these.
• Quotes for any capital items over £300.

Please upload your documents with your application, or you can email them to community.fund@merseysidewda.gov.uk if you can’t do this then please post to:

Community Fund 2023-2024, Merseyside Recycling and Waste Authority, 7^th Floor, No1 Mann Island, Liverpool, L3 1BP.

Documents need to be received within seven days of submitting your application.

If your application is successful you will receive an email that will:

• confirm how much funding you will be awarded (please note this may not be the full amount you requested).
• request details of – insurance liability cover, lease agreements and consents that are applicable, and bank details.
• detail the terms and conditions of your offer and explain how we will monitor your project.
• ask you to confirm your project can start no later than one month after receiving funding.

The award of any funding will require you to enter into a Funding Agreement. This  includes your project resources, and the expertise to deliver activities, performance and budget monitoring and reporting, communications. Further conditions to your project may be specified which will be included in your Funding Agreement.

You will receive an email informing you on this occasion that you have not been successful. Where possible we will provide specific feedback on why an application was unsuccessful but please note that sometimes it can be purely due to oversubscription.

Your funding will be paid into an organisational bank account that has two independent signatories who are not related or live at the same address. Most of our grants are paid by electronic transfer (BACS) direct to your bank, which is why we ask for up-to-date bank statement. If this is not possible, we will send a cheque issued in the organisation’s name.

The funding will be paid in two or three stage payments. The first payment will be made in advance. Subsequent stage payments will be paid on you providing a monitoring report which shows your project is progressing to the agreed plan.

We ask our projects to complete a short monitoring form twice during the project, providing information on your agreed outputs, together with a short comment on how your project is working well, and what isn’t going to plan and how you will change that.

At the end of your project you are required to provide a Project Report (a template is available) no later than the 12^th May 2024.