customers needed to help believe housing allocate its community grants

believe housing is encouraging customers to join their grants panel to help allocate funding to community projects in County Durham.

Throughout the year, believe housing supports projects and activities that make a difference to people’s lives and wellbeing through our extensive community grants scheme.

Not-for-profit and voluntary organisations in County Durham can apply to us for grants of between £500 and £20,000.

Our customers help us to decide which projects to award grants of £500 or £1000, by sitting on a grants panel which considers those applications.

Damian Pearson, Community Investment Performance Team Leader at believe housing, is now inviting more customers to get involved.

He said: “We know our grants can have a hugely positive impact and support our vision of life without barriers for our customers and communities.

“We award funds to initiatives that support our key themes of health and wellbeing, employability and training, increasing household income, promoting a greener and fairer future, and tackling inequalities as a result of Covid-19.

“It is important to us to involve customers in decision making and to ensure projects address local needs, so we’d like more customers to get involved by joining the grants panel.”

The believe housing grants panel meets fortnightly, currently on Tuesday mornings, and volunteers are on a rota to take part.

Three members are needed for a meeting and if someone cannot attend their date, another volunteer is asked to step in.

New members will receive training and our Community Investment Coordinators support the grants panel, vetting applications and asking questions to help members make a decision.

All meetings are held online, so members must have a laptop or tablet, and can last between ten and 90 minutes depending how many applications are to be considered.

If you are a believe housing customer and interested in joining the grants panel contact the Community Investment Team by email: communitygrant@believehousing.co.uk or call us on 0300 1311 999.