What is the Wessex Water Foundation Community Fund?
The Wessex Water Foundation Community Fund supports charitable and community-based activities or projects that meet a local need and seek to improve the lives of local people who are most in need of support. These activities or projects should be informed by the people or community they serve and have considerable reach and wide community benefit, with priority given to work that fulfils one of more of the following:
- takes place in areas of multiple deprivation or rural isolation where people lack access to local services
- helps build stronger communities – enabling people to work together and create solutions to local challenges
- helps people take steps to manage or avoid debt and build their financial capability. This can include activities that raises awareness and take up of utility affordability support such as the Wessex Water schemes
What you can apply for
Grants of up to £4,000 are available to groups and organisations delivering work that is improving the lives of local people who are in most need of support. Further information on priorities can be found in the guidelines (see link below). You can see examples of previous grants awarded through our 2024-25 grants awarded list.
Who can apply to the Wessex Water Foundation Community Fund?
Applicants must be based and working in the West of England, which includes Bath & North-East Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire. You can apply for a grant if you are a:
- voluntary and community group with charitable aims
- registered charity
- Community Interest Company
- parish council
Your group or organisation must have been running for at least 12 months and have a track record of delivering work, as well as financial record.
We will prioritise applicants whose annual income has been on average under £500,000 for the last three years.
Further information on Quartet’s eligibility criteria can be found here.
How to apply
You need to complete an application form, and can apply online using the link below (this will be available when the programme is open). Please do read through the guidelines before applying. We have further information to help you apply, see our Help & Guidance page here.
We have a plain text version of our application form that can be viewed here. Please note that you cannot use this paper form to apply and applications must go through our online form. If you need adjustments to this process for accessibility reasons please contact us directly.
Please note: We received a large number of applications for this grants programme last year, with the total amount requested nearly 2.5 times greater than the amount available for grants. This made the decision-making process challenging with 44% of applications received being successful. We have limited funds available for this programme so we expect to be able to award about 25 grants.
Decision turnaround
Applicants will be notified of the decision outcomes in early December 2025.
