On Thursday 27th February, applications to our large grants round saw a staggering 313 bids! This has been our most popular and competitive grants round ever – with a 32% increase from last year’s 238 bids. Collectively the 313 applications represented a financial ask of £13,667,859 (up from a total ask of £10,910,889 in 2024) or an average ask of £43,667.
What happens next?
Each application has been carefully read, reviewed, and scored by our independent grant assessor, with a longlist of 47 bids currently being considered by the Trust’s Grant-Making Committee. The Trust’s available limited funds means that many worthy bids could not go forward this year. The decision as to who can and who cannot be funded by the Trust can often be very marginal. To all non-longlisted applicants, we champion their commitment to the values of social justice and wish them all the very best as they source other means to make their worthy projects and good causes come to fruition.
The weeks ahead will now entail a rigorous discernment of which long-listed Catholic Social Teaching inspired projects the Trust can support. Those who will become award holders will be publicly announced at the Charles Plater Trust annual Awards Ceremony, which this year, takes place at Cardiff’s newest conference centre, Cornerstone, followed by Holy Mass at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Saint David, on Tuesday 24th June.
Reflecting on the current climate
For the past two decades, the charity sectors' main source of income has been public donations. Since the covid-19 pandemic, this has drastically changed. With rising inflation and the cost-of-living crisis, public donations have, unsurprisingly, almost halved. With charities facing economic uncertainty amongst a difficult funding landscape, the competition and demand for grant funding has never been more competitive and demanding.
To be accountable as a grant funder and to help applicants get a better sense of the pool of applicants that they find themselves competing against, the Trust is once again releasing its large grant round statistics (see 2024’s here). By publishing these statistics, we hope to help charities understand the competitive nature for the Trust’s funding so that they can make informed decisions about the investment of their own limited time and resources.
Who applies to the CPT and for what types of projects?
This year’s stats at a glance...
If you are interested in applying for funding, our next large grant round will open in January 2026. More details about our grants can be found here.
