Christmas Challenge 2023
Our Christmas Challenge matched-funding campaign is open for applications until the 19th July. The campaign will take place Tuesday 28th November – Tuesday 5th December 2023.
Our Christmas Challenge 2022 raised a total of ££4,034,390.50 for 89 projects supporting more than 100,000 children in London. Visit our Apply For Funding page for more information about our application process or get in touch with our campaigns team at campaigns@childhoodtrust.org.uk
What We’re Looking For
We are looking for charities that have an existing supporter base and an appetite to work with us to engage with the general public and existing donors. In order to be successful in our campaigns, it is helpful for charities to have an active trustee board or major donors who are prepared to make donation pledges to kickstart the fundraising for the project.
The Childhood Trust has four priority impact focus areas for children:
- Physical Health
- Mental Wellbeing
- Home & Community Environment
- Learning & Work Readiness.
The Childhood Trust does not fund religious activities or capital costs.
Read our full grant making policy here:
Our Grant-making Policy
The Childhood Trust funds charities across all 33 London boroughs. We offer charities two funding tracks to become either a Grassroots Partner or Synergy Partner.
Applications from charities will be streamed by the following criteria:
To be eligible for funding, all partners must:
- be registered with the Charity Commission
- have one year of filed annual accounts
- be able to demonstrate that they are a going concern
- have strong financial processes and be legally compliant
- have a robust governance structure
- have solid safeguarding processes
The minimum requirements for any project to receive funding are:
- Children (0-17 year olds) will be the primary beneficiaries of the funding;
- Children living in London will be the primary beneficiaries;
- Children experiencing poverty (demonstrated by poverty measures such as IDACI, Free school meals, Pupil premium, low household income) will be the primary beneficiaries.
- Our charity partner must demonstrate outcomes against one of our four impact goals: Physical Health, Mental Wellbeing, Home & Community Environment and Learning & Work Readiness
Why Apply
In addition to offering matched funds, The Childhood Trust builds charities’ capacity to run successful fundraising campaigns with:
- Workshops on how to run a successful fundraising campaign, including topics such as how to formulate your campaign messaging and how to use social media effectively
- One-to-one support on any aspect of the campaign
- Connections with other charities working with children and young people across London
- Raised profile and visibility through broader campaigns, events and other activities to raise awareness of the issues around child poverty and drive traffic to the charities
We also request our charity partners' participation in our other programmes, such as Decorate a Child’s Life, the Bedrooms of London exhibition or The London Child Poverty Summit, amongst others that we are in the process of developing.