Grants, generally for up to £15,000, are available tor UK registered charities, not-for-profit organisations and educational establishments for innovative projects that use Information Technology to strengthen communities.
The Worshipful Company of Information Technologist’s (WCIT) Charity is a national charity with a City of London home. Its purpose is to use the power of tech for impact through digital inclusion, education, charitable, and public engagement initiatives across the entire UK. The WCIT Charity works with a wide range of registered charities and not-for-profit organisations aligned with its purpose, who depend on external financial support and specialist skills to realise their IT initiatives.
All projects funded by the WCIT Charity must make use of information technology, and must relate to one or more of its priority areas, which are:
- Education.
- Inclusion.
- IT for charities, and/or
- Public understanding of IT.
WCIT is more likely to fund:
- The development and delivery of innovative new services, solutions, training, apps, analytics, AI, robotics, or accessibility features/hardware.
- Projects where WCIT is the material or sole funder.
- Projects where WCIT is the sole funder of the IT component of a larger project, and
- Organisations that could benefit from WCIT’s pro bono support.
- Projects need to demonstrate an innovative use of IT, be scalable for wider replication, and be sustainable over time.
Grants of up to £15,000 are available. Applicants for grants of between £5,000 and £15,000 will be required to provide details of an unrelated external referee who can provide a reference on the charity’s project or service delivery history.
In exceptional circumstances, grants of over £15,000 may be made, although such grants are subject to additional levels of scrutiny.
WCIT is also less likely to fund a hardware refresh (eg replacement of laptops/desktops), off the shelf software packages, websites, network and telephony costs, migration to cloud services, large national charities with significant income and reserves, or projects where its contribution and impact may be very small.
Further information, guidance and details of the online application process is available on the WCIT website.
Applications for funding may be submitted at any time and are considered by the Charitable Operations Committee at one of its four meetings a year.
The next deadline is 31 July 2024.