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Trust Funding Application Template: A UK Guide to Writing to Trusts

Checked against official sources · 4 min read

UK trusts and foundations do not share one form. Some ask for a letter, some for an online form with an uploaded proposal. A useful trust funding application template is therefore a structure you adapt: find the right trusts, write a tight two-page letter, price the work honestly, and know the rules on VAT and paid help.

Find trusts that fund work like yours

Good prospects fund your kind of work, in your area, for organisations of your size. Check all three for free:

  • 360Giving GrantNav searches grants data published by UK funders in the 360Giving Data Standard. Search your town, your field or a funder's name to see who gives grants like the one you need, and at what size.
  • The charity registers. The Charity Commission's register lets you search registered charities in England and Wales, with finance information such as income and expenditure. OSCR holds the Scottish Charity Register, and the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland registers charities there. A trust that is a registered charity appears there too.
  • The trust's website and annual report: current priorities, exclusions, whether it accepts unsolicited applications, and the grants it has made.

Look at grants to organisations of your size, not the largest grant.

The two-page application letter

When a trust asks for a letter, two pages is a sound default unless it says otherwise. Put the request first:

Section What to write
Our request The amount, the period, what it pays for and who benefits, linked to the trust's priority in its own words
Who we are Three or four sentences: purpose, years of work, people supported, one result with its source
The need The problem in your area, one or two sourced figures, and how the people you support told you
What we will do Activities, who delivers them, where and how often
The difference it will make By [date], [number] of [participants] will [change], as measured by [tool]
Cost and other funding Total cost, your share of core costs and how you calculated it, other secured and pending funding
Closing Restate the request, offer a call or visit, give a contact

Online routes ask for similar content. The Garfield Weston Foundation's Grants Portal, for example, asks about your organisation, the people who benefit and your safeguarding practices, then for an uploaded proposal and your "latest annual return or independently examined or audited accounts".

The UK Trusts & Foundations Kit's UK_Trusts_Trust_Application_TEMPLATE.docx holds this letter, a longer proposal and a core cost table in one file.

Full cost recovery: include your core costs

By full cost recovery we mean pricing a project so it covers its direct costs plus a fair, justified share of your organisation's core costs: management, premises, finance, IT and governance. That is our working description, not a quotation from any one body.

  1. List your annual core costs from your latest accounts or budget.
  2. Choose a fair basis to share them, such as staff time or floor space.
  3. Calculate the project's share of each cost and show the basis in your budget.
  4. Use the same method for every funder.

If a trust says it does not fund core costs, do not hide them in other lines.

Open and Trusting funders

Some UK funders have signed up to IVAR's Open and Trusting Grant-making commitments: Don't waste time; Ask relevant questions; Accept risk; Act with urgency; Be open; Be flexible; Communicate with purpose; and Be proportionate. Under "Be flexible", funders pledge "we will give unrestricted funding", or funding as flexible as possible. If a trust has signed up, ask plainly for core or unrestricted funding, and ask whether it will accept a report you wrote for another funder.

VAT basics

HMRC says: "As a charity you do not pay VAT when you buy some goods and services." The relief covers qualifying items only, so most purchases carry VAT. Charities must register for VAT if their VAT taxable turnover is over £90,000, and can register voluntarily below that, for example to reclaim VAT. In your budget, include only VAT you cannot reclaim.

Paying a bid writer

The Fundraising Regulator's Code of Fundraising Practice came into effect on 1 November 2025. Standard 6.2.1 says: "You must have an appropriate written agreement in place with any third-party fundraiser", unless they are a volunteer. Standard 6.2.3 says that where the third party is paid, the agreement must include "how you will calculate the payment". Section 6 does not name bid writers, so also read section 12, on grant-making bodies including trusts and foundations. Then check each trust's own rules: some do not accept applications prepared by paid writers, and your trustees remain responsible for every word.

General information: this article is general information, not legal, tax or fundraising advice. No template can guarantee funding. Always follow each trust's own guidelines.

The Funder File is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to 360Giving, the Charity Commission for England and Wales, OSCR, the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland, the Garfield Weston Foundation, IVAR, HMRC or the Fundraising Regulator.

Sources

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