Making use of the Cornerstone grants database

Grace Wrigglesworth, Operations Manager at Kingswinford and Wall Heath has used the Church of England’s grant database on the Cornerstone platform to raise £100k for their two churches in the past two years.

Cornerstone is freely available to all our churches to help them with their stewardship and finances. It has been funded and provided by the national Church and along with insights into your parish finances and support running a stewardship campaign, it includes a database of over 900 grant-making bodies, all of which will give funding to churches.

Grace worked in HR in fashion retail before joining Kingswinford and Wall Heath as their Operations Manager and didn’t have any experience of church buildings or fundraising. She said: “Without Cornerstone, I wouldn’t have had a clue where to start. You’ve got 100s of grant makers at your fingertips and that’s so helpful when you’ve got limited time and experience.”

The Cornerstone database enables you to filter the grants by what they’ll be used for eg ‘maintenance and conservation of historical buildings’, the amount you are looking for, and several other factors, or you can scan through the whole database and favourite those which look most useful.

“You can also filter by region,” continued Grace. “I don’t tend to do that though as then you sometimes don’t see those which offer grants to anywhere in the UK or those that may have a preference of one area but will consider others. It is a relatively quick task to go through the info on the front page and shortlist those which look best. Once I’ve got a few shortlisted, I’ll go in and read a bit more about each one, checking the deadlines and identifying those most relevant to the funding we’re looking for.”

Grace will always try to give the grant making body a call before applying to check that the application will meet the eligibility criteria.

“I’ve found that reaching out really helps your application become less anonymous. My experience is that people really want to give you money if they can and even sending a quick email with a couple of questions can make a difference. I realise I’m in a privileged position because I’m paid to support the church, but I probably only spend around two hours a week exploring grant opportunities and the more applications I put together, the easier it becomes. Once I know what is needed for a particular application, I can copy and paste from similar things I’ve done before while always ensuring it is specific to the funding body or application I’m making.”

“I would really encourage other churches to use this database. It’s so much better than just Googling possible trusts. It’s easy to use and you know that all those listed will give grants to churches, which increases your chances of success!”

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Grace’s Top Tips

• Make sure you know exactly what it is you are applying for and be as specific as possible.
• Read right through the application form before starting it. Make sure you know what is needed and that you will be able to gather the information before the deadline.
• Try to contact the grant maker before putting in your application. Sometimes I’ve discovered that funding streams have closed early, which has saved wasted time putting in an application!
• Have a separate Excel spreadsheet once you’ve shortlisted a grant so you can immediately see what it is for and when the deadline is. In my personal experience, this is easier that keeping everything in Cornerstone.
• Log when you applied, what it was for, when you should expect a decision and whether it was successful. This will help when applying again in the future.
• Have a good understanding of the project you need funding for. Sometimes grants need to be used within a set time – you need to be ready to go as soon as you’re successful. I always get contractor quotes and ensure they understand it’s dependent on us finding funding. Most are happy to hold a quote for up to six months.
• Save all your applications to make copying and pasting the information into future applications easier.

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Grace would be happy to look over applications from other parishes if that would be helpful. Contact her on operations@stmaryskingswinford.org.uk.  To get access to the Cornerstone system and for further help and support, do contact Robyn and Chris in the stewardship team.