Freemasons’ Charity Small Grants

Another unrestricted one, The Freemasons’ Charity, until recently the Masonic Charitable Foundation and still widely searched under that name, assesses your charity as a whole rather than a specific service or project, then hands over money with no strings on how it is spent.

• What they fund: Unrestricted funding for the organisation itself; the application focuses on your charity as a whole, not a named project, so a new website is simply a spending decision once the grant lands.
• Typical grants: £1,000 to £5,000 per year for up to three years, capped at 20% of your charity’s income averaged over the past two years.
• Who can apply: Charities with an annual income of £25,000 to £500,000 in their latest published accounts, whose support focuses on the funder’s target beneficiary groups. Those groups currently centre on young children, children with SEND or affected by domestic abuse, and older people living with dementia or loneliness. Beneficiaries must be in England or Wales. Read the eligibility criteria before starting; the beneficiary focus is strict.
• The angle: The fit test is who you help, not what you buy. If your charity matches the beneficiary groups, this is about as low-friction as website funding gets, and three years of it comfortably covers a build plus ongoing care.
• Worth knowing: No deadlines. It starts with a short online expression of interest, answered within two weeks, and the average time to a full decision is around three months from submitting the EOI. Charities above £500,000 income should look at the separate Large Grants programme instead, which awards £10,000 to £60,000 but is restricted to defined projects.