East Sussex Mental Health Connection Development Fund

You can apply as an individual, if you run an informal or formal group, if you’re a community organisation or initiative, if you have a clubs or associations, if you work for a local service. We want to encourage applications from and to support members of marginalised communities. 

You could start by thinking about what your community might want or need, what meaningful ways do you already find connection with your community? how can that be strengthened?  If you’re applying as an individual, you could consider reaching out to a local organisation and asking them to collaborate on your idea by providing a venue, application support, or their existing resources. You could also contact a friend or existing community member and see if anyone would like to collaborate with you on a shared idea.

• You could start a peer support walk and talk group in your local park or open space

• Organise a monthly shared community meal for attendees to eat together and share stories of their traditional food

• You might want to move an existing online group to an in person meet up to strengthen group connection or start an additional group in a rural area.

• Use the fund to purchase the materials to start a biweekly meet up where attendees can do puzzle’s, enjoy craft activities or play board games together.

• It could be used to fund a facilitator to deliver a workshop specific to your community's needs or interests.

• If you have a club or group that already meets, but you need some funding to improve accessibility. This could include providing language or BSL interpreters, or transport links for people living in rural areas to more easily to attend.

This is not an exhaustive list. We welcome and look forward to hearing about your unique ideas and encourage you to apply.

By 31st March 2027 we ask that all successful applicants provide a summary of their project and how the funding helped them. This can be up to 2 A4 pages which outline how the funds were used, who benefitted from it, and any recommendations that you’d like to be shared with the community, future funders and/or partner agencies. We think it would be helpful to share your knowledge to further encourage investment in community resources which are led by-and-for marginalised communities. This could include capturing learning and how the project may have evolved over the length of funding.

We will be funding ideas that are focused on supporting the mental health of those in marginalised and/or rural communities. This can include faith-based groups or organisations but the groups sole focus cannot be religious. Charities must never support political parties. They cannot make political donations or give other financial support or resources. This is because it is a fundamental principle of charity law that it cannot be within the purposes of any charity to promote the interests of a political party. For more information provided by the Charity Commissioner please see  advancement-of-religion-for-the-public-benefit1.pdf and Charities and political donations - GOV.UK for further clarification.

All of the £30,000 of grant funding must be allocated by the end of June 2026. To achieve this, we may put the fund out for additional rounds of applications. If this does happen, we will update our website and promote the fund accordingly. However, we encourage all those who are interested in applying for the fund to do so as soon as they are able, so as not to miss out on this opportunity.

This grant fund is for the delivery of activities to residents of East Sussex, which does not include Brighton and Hove. Any organisation that is not based in East Sussex wishing to apply for a grant will need to clearly demonstrate they already have a project/activity they are delivering or intend to deliver to East Sussex residents, in East Sussex.

The East Sussex Mental Health Connection Fund is not only for new projects - it can be used to strengthen or develop existing projects, activities or services you already offer. We understand that if you are applying to strengthen or develop existing projects, that operational costs will likely be part of your application. However, your budget should reflect delivery and resource costs, and evidence how it relates to the activity or service being represented in the application. The grant cannot be used to account for a contribution for the operational costs of the organisation.