Following a recent strategy review by trustees, The Paristamen Charity is tightening the criteria for award of Responsive grants. This is because we were starting to receive more applications than we could effectively consider, which would have meant a very low likelihood of success – we want to get back to the position where those applying to Paristamen for a Responsive grant would have at least a 1 in 3 chance of success (until recently over 40% of applications that met our criteria led to a grant).
We are still happy to consider applications from a very wide range of charities and our Responsive grants will continue to be almost always unrestricted, but the following additional criteria will apply for all Responsive grant applications received on or after 1 September 2023 – see the Responsive grants page for full details.
- We will only consider applications from charities registered in Scotland (i.e. registered with the Scottish Charity Regulator, OSCR). So charities based elsewhere in the UK, or UK charities working overseas, must have achieved registration with OSCR in order to apply. [Previously we would accept consider UK charities simply on the assurance that they had some activity in Scotland.]
- We will only consider applications from charities with a total income (as in the last formal accounts) in the range £25K to £500K. [Previously we would consider charities in the range £0 to £1M.] It follows that the smallest charities will no longer be able to apply until your income has reached £25K, and medium to large charities will need to look to other funding sources if your income goes over £500K.
- We will no longer consider charities whose main work falls under the heading of the advancement of education or the advancement of arts, heritage, culture or science. We accept that there are many educational and arts/heritage/conservation charities doing worthwhile work, but we have decided that our priorities are in other fields. (If a charity has a number of objects, you are not ruled out simply because one object falls into these headings, but we will no longer consider applications where one or more of these objects is the main focus.)
- All capital appeals are excluded – not just buildings. So appeals specifically to fund furniture, equipment or musical instruments will be rejected. We want to focus on supporting the operational work of your charity. (However, we fully appreciate that in most charities some of the day to day running costs in your General Fund will relate to premises or equipment – such charities can still apply for a Paristamen unrestricted Responsive grant.)
- Our exclusion of armed forces charities is widened slightly to exclude young people cadet groups which have formal links to the armed forces.
Thank you for your understanding of these changes – which we hope will lead to a better chance of successful applications for those who fit our updated criteria. [However, if you have an application in preparation that was started before we announced these new criteria, we will consider it if received by 31 August 2023, so long as it falls within our former criteria as noted above.]