Household Support Fund

Since 2021, BVSC has worked closely with the DWP and Birmingham City Council to address the cost-of-living crisis by distributing grants of up to £200 to eligible Birmingham households experiencing financial hardship, with the funds intended to help households with food costs and energy payments.

After receiving cabinet approval in March 2025, the Household Support Fund ran until April 2026.~

Fairer Futures Fund

Phase 1: Small Grants:

Birmingham City Council, on behalf of Birmingham Place Committee (BSOL Integrated Care System) commissioned BVSC to distribute several small grants, using funding from the Fairer Futures Fund, with the aim of supporting community organisations to support improved health and care outcomes for our city’s most vulnerable citizens in inclusion health groups. These are groups or communities with poorer health outcomes (including but not exclusively: new migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, homeless people, people with substance misuse difficulties, people with Autism, people with Learning Disabilities, women, people experiencing racial disparity and LGBTQ+ groups.

Phase 2: Birmingham VCFSE Locality Partnership:

Birmingham City Council, on behalf of Birmingham Place Committee (BSOL Integrated Care System) has commissioned BVSC to distribute a number of grants across Birmingham for the purposes of stablishing and facilitating a VCFSE Locality Partnership that supports Fairer Futures Fund (FFF) delivery within a locality and leading on the development of an investment approach to the Fairer Futures Fund Locality Partnership Fund using funding from the Fairer Futures Fund, with the aim of supporting community organisations to deliver in alignment with identified ICS priority themes.

The intention of this Project, made possible through grant funding from the Fairer Futures Fund, was to support improved health and care outcomes for our city’s most vulnerable citizens.

Phase 3: Citywide Partnership Fund

The Citywide Partnership Fund is a three-year fund with a total value of £5.74m focusing on identified health priorities across the city. The aim of this fund is to tackle the health inequalities experienced by communities of identity or experience, delivered through projects that operate citywide or across multiple areas of the city.

It has an explicit partnership focus; partnerships should be made between the statutory and voluntary sectors to provide integrated, effective, and efficient care.

Addressing Homelessness

Shelter commissioned BVSC to produce a grants distribution programme with the aim of supporting defined local communities in the city. 

Birmingham currently has over 4,000 homeless households, 90% of which are families with an estimated 6,000 children currently affected – many of which are currently housed in temporary accommodation in lieu of permanent social housing being available. It is typical for families to be housed in temporary accommodation for over 2 years.

Shelter partnered with the Oak Foundation who support Shelter to build capacity and resilience across the communities in Birmingham that Shelter serves – with a focus on helping people be part of the solution to the issues in the city. The Addressing Homelessness project was delivered with an aim to make lasting, systemic changes, particularly for vulnerable and under-served areas of the city.

 

Centre for Ageing Better

BVSC sought to commission a delivery partner, funded by CfAB, to deliver a redundancy and retraining project, following a series of successful pilots that focused on older adults facing redundancy in the manufacturing and automotive industries.

Commonwealth Games Legacy Fund

Following a successful Commonwealth Games event in the city in the summer of 2022, several of our 74 grant holders who delivered activity through this grants stream began to wind down. Our focus therefore was on supporting these organisations to look for their next funding opportunities by helping them identify further funding and linking them in with our Engage for Good structures as well.

Engage for Ukraine

In support of the Government’s response to the Ukraine crisis and offer to resettle Ukrainians families in the UK, Birmingham City Council and BVSC launched a community grants fund to voluntary, community and social enterprise sector groups and organisations that worked with the resettlement process across the City.

The fund was aimed at targeting and bolstering support to the rapidly growing Ukrainian community so that families and individuals can more easily navigate their way through the system of support to help build their lives in the city.

 

Compassionate Communities

The Compassionate Communities was a grants distribution programme with the aim of supporting the City’s Voluntary, Community, Faith and Social Enterprise Sector in delivering the City’s Compassionate Communities Agenda. Community Organisations worked within localities across the city to support communities around conversations about Death and Dying. Taking an Asset Based Community Development (ABCD).