Reducing Veteran Homelessness Programme

Under the Reducing Veteran Homelessness programme, the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust will award grants on behalf of the Office for Veterans’ Affairs (OVA), towards projects that contribute to the aims of the government’s ambition to reduce veteran homelessness and end rough sleeping.

The programme will provide funds towards housing related support e.g., mental health support and addiction services, so people can regain independence in their lives.

Eligibility

We invite applications from the following types of organisation:

A registered charity or housing association that has been registered in the UK for at least five years at the time of grant award, which can demonstrate relevant experience and engagement in the direct provision of housing for veterans.

A not for profit registered provider of social housing, who is registered with the relevant regulator of social housing in your part of the UK; and has offered dedicated and specific housing support to veterans for at least five years.

We expect clear evidence of existing work with veterans who have experienced homelessness, including evidence of how people with lived experience will be able to strategically shape your project.

We particularly welcome applications that can show effective partnership working between Armed Forces charities and specialist or dedicated organisations who will bring expertise and experience to the project.

Your organisation must have a minimum of three unrelated trustees/directors registered at the time of application and throughout the life of your project if your application is successful.

In order to meet our eligibility criteria, your application must clearly show the following.

You have experience in providing supported housing to veterans.
That you have evidence of robust governance to manage risks effectively.
That the activities or services that you are bidding for must not already be in receipt of funding from Government, local authority or a similar statutory body. However you can bid for additional funding to enhance existing funded activities or services.

A full list of eligibility is available in the programme guidance below.

What’s available

You can apply for up to £500,000 per year (a total of £1 million over two years) per organisation.

We would expect high-complex need projects to have a higher cost per head and low-to-medium complex need projects to have a lower cost per head. Where an organisation is bidding for multiple schemes (locations), you should cost each scheme separately, but combined as a single application.

You can also apply for an Enhanced Award of up to an additional £250,000, per year (a total of £500,000 over two years) if you can show us that extending your project will fill a significant level of currently unmet need. See the guidance document below for further details of Enhanced Awards.

Your project can be up to two years in length, and should begin within two months of the date of award.

Themes and priorities

We want to support projects that improve the capacity of services in supported housing to be better able to help veterans with a range of needs. Through doing this we can help end veteran homelessness.

Adaptable: We would like to fund projects that are adaptable to the needs of veterans; including high, medium and low level support needs.

Sustainable outcomes: We will only fund projects that enable vulnerable veterans to access and remain engaged within supported housing as an alternative to street living. A good application will show us similar work that you have done with veterans and how you will work with veterans who have experienced complex needs to co-design the services that you will develop and implement as part of your project.

Your project must be able to clearly show how you will support veterans to transition to lower level support.

Collaborative: You should also show us that your project will support integration for veterans with the wider community, by working with other mainstream organisations and specialist veterans’ organisations.

We’ll ask you to tell us which other organisations you will be working with to support veterans. If another organisation will be receiving part of any grant we award, you will need to have a partnership agreement in place. There is more information on partnership agreements in our guidance document below.

Ethics

Our work supports the Armed Forces Covenant through funding projects that deliver real change to Armed Forces communities. The projects we support need to be carried out to the highest possible ethical standards.

We therefore need to know that you have the skills and experience to work with the groups of people that your project focuses on; that you can ensure they are kept safe; and that you take an ethical approach to your work.

Our ethical values are Respect, Competence, and Integrity.

We have a Code of Conduct; and free online training to explain our approach to ethics. We will ask you to confirm in your application form that you will run your project in line with our Code of Conduct. If your organisation has its own Code of Ethical Conduct; then you will need to explore whether your Code is compatible with ours; and tell us about this.

You can access our ethics resources here.

Deadlines and dates to note

This programme is now closed.

If you applied by 5pm on 22 May 2023, you’ll receive a decision by the end of June 2023.
We will expect successful applicants to start their projects before 1 September 2023.