Rise programme
Under the Rise programme, The Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust will award grants of up to £30,000 to pilot projects that provide additional capacity to charities.
Apply by noon 18 February 2026
Grants up to £30,000 available
Open to registered charities
Under the Rise programme, The Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust will award grants of up to £30,000 to pilot projects that provide additional capacity to charities to review their governance, strategic growth, maturity of impact measurement and financial resilience, to ensure they’re well equipped to support their beneficiary cohort.
Eligibility
As this is a pilot programme, it is open to small or medium armed forces charities only.
Your charitable objects, as outlined in your governing document, must explicitly state that you support the armed forces community.
Additionally, the support your organisation provides must have a UK-wide reach and primarily relate to the ‘special consideration’ element of the Armed Forces Covenant. ‘Special consideration´ is defined by the Armed Forces Covenant as support for those who have given the most.
We are defining the size of the charity as follows:
- Small charity – annual income of £10k – £100k
- Medium charity – annual income of £100k – £1m
What’s available
You can apply for a grant of up to £30,000 in total towards a project being delivered over a period of 6 to 12 months. In exceptional cases, the Trust will consider awarding an enhanced grant. You can request up to an additional £20,000 to enhance your project.
Enhanced awards will only be considered for organisations wishing to work alongside other organisations. The other organisation will need to be benefitting from the work and achieving similar sustainable outcomes, rather than simply backfilling support or providing some other service. For example, provision might include the legal costs of both organisations looking to merge; or perhaps exploring opportunities to merge back-office functions, to support efficiency savings.
Themes and priorities
The aim of this programme is to pilot a small number of grants to organisations to provide additional capacity to review their governance, strategic growth, maturity of impact measurement and financial resilience, to ensure they’re better equipped to support their beneficiary cohort.
All projects must meet this overarching aim and the following programme outcome:
- The organisation has developed an actionable vision to more effectively provide its
services to those in the UK armed forces community who’ve given the most.
Deadlines and dates to note
There will be one deadline for applications this financial year:
If you apply by midday on Wednesday 18 February 2026, you’ll receive a decision before the end of March 2026.
Guidance and resources
Before making your application to this programme, we strongly recommend you use the helpful resources below to ensure you make the best application you can.
We encourage you to take a look at the application questions before beginning your online application to the Hidden Voices programme.
You can also view the terms and conditions to receiving a grant.
Application questions in Word
Please note, this is for reference only and applications can only be made via our online application portal.
Download 42.7 KBFrequently Asked Questions
We’re looking to pilot a grant programme where organisations can apply for capacity building-related funding. The overall vision is to support enhancing the resilience of the sector, ensuring those that have given the most have adequate access to support and that improved outcomes for them can be sustained.
As this programme is a very small pilot and we are only looking to award a small number of grants, the application form will be shorter than usual and shouldn’t take too much time or resource to complete. This programme will be for charities where the trustees or the senior management team are advanced in their thinking on how the organisation needs to evolve but may have insufficient resources to proceed.
This is a new style of grant programme for the Trust, which we’re piloting on a small scale. For that reason, we’ve decided to focus on the core organisations we fund only. We will be gathering any learning from this pilot, which will include reflecting on opportunities for expanding future eligibility.
Organisations that have been registered as a charity for three or more years are eligible to apply under this programme. Time spent as a CIC is not recognised under this programme.
No. Whilst this is a capacity building programme, it is not designed to give any organisation unfair advantage over another. This programme is designed to support organisations reach a more sustainable footing, to better support their beneficiaries. A particularly successful project could result in a decreased reliance on grant funding. One of the measures of success for projects may be their ability to diversify their income streams away from grant funding.
No, this is still a project-based grant programme, where you’ll need to have some output to show for it. This might be in the form of a new fundraising strategy, enhanced impact measurement tools or methodologies, or some other output to support your organisation in adapting to best suit the needs of your beneficiaries.
The Trust is not a core-costs funder, unless in very exceptional circumstances. If you’re looking for funding purely for core costs, you’ll need to seek out other funders.
Absolutely, as long as a core element of your work supports those that have given the most, we’d like to hear from you.
Several of the Trust’s programmes offer the opportunity for local provision of support. As this programme is a pilot, we’ve opted to focus it on charities that provide services to beneficiaries across all, or large parts of, the UK.
No, the Trust cannot support direct fundraising costs with this grant programme.
We’re updating the way you apply for grants!
Our new grants portal makes the application process simpler and more user-friendly. Click here for a step-by-step guide and tips to help you get started.
Ready to apply?
If you’ve read the guidance and are ready to begin your application, please click below.
Apply to the Rise programme