This initiative is not open to enquiries or applications.

The Clothworkers’ Foundation responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in two phases, awarding more than £3 million in emergency funding. We also awarded additional grants to existing grantees to support them with their own COVID-19 responses.

During the first phase of our funding response, we worked in a coordinated and collaborative way with other funders, and also set up our own Clothworkers’ Emergency Capital Programme (CECP), ensuring funding was distributed quickly to organisations on the front-line responding to the pandemic:

• £1.13 million for the Clothworkers’ Emergency Capital Programme (CECP). You can find out more about this programme from our insights paper and the findings of our CECP grantee survey;
• £500,000 contribution to the National Emergencies Trust appeal;
• £300,000 contribution to the London Community Response fund;
• £170,000 awarded on a case-by-case basis to support existing grantees from our Open, Proactive and Regular Grants Programmes;
• we also funded the development of DigiSafe, a free step-by-step guide to digital safeguarding when designing new services or taking existing ones online. 

In the second phase, we awarded strategic funding to support communities experiencing racial inequalities as well as the domestic abuse sector:

• £200,000 to co-fund The Global Majority Fund, managed by Comic Relief, which will work with partners with the expertise, networks and knowledge to distribute funding to support communities experiencing racial inequality affected by COVID-19;
• £100,000 grant to GALOP - the UK's LGBT+ anti-violence charity - to increase the capacity of its Young People's Service (demand on the service has doubled since the outbreak of Covid-19);
• £12,000 towards the secretariat costs of the Funders for Race Equality Alliance, which brings together charitable foundations working towards race equality in the UK;
• £50,000 towards the Ten Years’ Time Racial Justice and Social Transformation: How Funders Can Act on Both research project;
• £100,000 grant towards The Ubele Initiative’s core costs;
• £200,000 grant towards Rosa UK’s delivery of a grants programme to support specialist women’s organisations, particularly those led by and for Black and minoritised women;
• £100,000 grant to Breaking Barriers to support the expansion of its work outside London;
• £200,000 grant towards the development costs of Baobab Foundation.

Our indebtedness to organisations supporting disadvantaged communities and individuals across the country – as well as to the army of staff and volunteers working with and for those organisations – cannot be overestimated. It is they who rose to the enormous challenges presented by COVID-19, adapting services and generally doing whatever they could to support the communities and individuals they serve.