March 6, 2024

Charles Plater Trust publishes its application statistics for the first time

Who applies to the CPT and for what type of projects?

To be accountable as a funder and to help applicants get a better sense of the pool of applicants that they find themselves competing against, the Trust published today the statistics that related to the 2024 large grants round that closed on 22nd February 2024.

Each grant round the Trust has to carefully assess each application that it receives against the others, and go on to make difficult decisions about who to award it’s limited funding to.

Philomena Cullen, the Trust’s manager explains:

“Undoubtedly the worst part of the trustee’s role is to haveto turn down high quality applications because we simply don’t have more money to distribute to good causes. The funding landscape is particularly difficult at the moment for charities, and we received a huge response to our 2024 large grants round from 236 charities asking for combined funding of over 10 million pounds. As a small funder we simply can’t fund at this level and so the weeks ahead will entail a rigorous discernment of which CST inspired projects we can support. By publishing our application statistics today we want to let charities know the odds of success they face in applying to us so they can make informed decisions about the investment of their own limited time and resources.”

Those who will become award holders from the 2024 large grants round will be publicly announced at the Charles Plater Trust awards ceremony which takes place at St Mary’s College, Oscott, Birmingham on 19th June 2024. The 2024 application statistics were as follows:

Number of eligible large grant applications received in 2024

236

Charitable Status Applicants

233 registered charities

1 CICs

2 Universities

Applicant charity size

1 was a micro  charity (less than 10k income)

12  small charities (10k-100k income)

135 medium  charities (100k-1million income)

90 large charities (1million-10 million)

2 Universities (major)

Faith Status

54 applicants were faith based charities.

182 were from non-faith based charities sharing CST  values.

BME/Disability Led Charities

33 applicants described themselves as BME led charities.

11 were from disability led charities.

192 applications were from charities that were neither  BME or disability led.

Regional geography

London based applicants  (77)

Southeast (38)

North West (22)

West Midlands  (21)

Yorkshire and  the Humber (19)

South West (18)

East Midlands  (13)

East of  England (11)

North East  (10)

South Wales (4)

West Wales (2)

South West  Wales (1).

 

CPT Thematic Focus

Educational Social Action theme (209)

Leadership  for Lay People (3)

Leadership  for Lay People and Educational Social Action (15)

Educational  social action and applied research (6)

All three themes (2)

Applied Research (1)

  

Service User  Focus of Applications

Criminal  Justice (10)

Homeless (21)

Non-Sector  Specific (7)

Migration and  Asylum (26)

Vulnerable  Girls and Women (23)

Children and Young People (48)

Family  Support (19) Older People (8) Education (23)

Drug and Alcohol Recovery (1)

Disability (20)

Mental Health  (21)

Environment (2)

Other (7).

 

Proposed  project duration

3 months (1)

1 year (38)

1-2 years (17)

2 years(180).

Funding  Request Level

7k smallest  funding request (1)

60k largest  funding request (20)

50k asked for by most applicants (48)

Collectively the 236 applications  represented a financial ask of £10,910, 889 or an average ask of £46,233.