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Lower Hutt Community Resilience Fund

This fund provides financial support for organisations, groups and initiatives in Lower Hutt who are delivering services that support resilience, or sport and recreation programmes that support community wellbeing.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the steps taken to mitigate the impact, have created challenging times for people in Lower Hutt. Hutt City Council is doing all it can to alleviate financial pressures on people, including creating the Community Resilience Fund.

There are two categories of funding under Community Resilience Fund:

Delivery of services that support resilience
Sport and recreation programming to support wellbeing.

A total budget of $130,000 (GST exclusive) was available for allocation, $30,000 of this is ring-fenced for sports and recreation groups. All funding available has now closed.

Funding categories and amounts

Delivery of services - closed

The fund aims to support local resilience during COVID-19 Alert Level 4 and the following recovery period.

Grants of up to $2000 (excluding GST) per request. Requests that are more than the initial cap will be considered by exception and may require further documentation.
A total of $100,000 (GST exclusive) is available for allocation.

Sport and recreation - closed

This fund has closed. Sport and recreation is running and it is expected that organisations are pulling in revenue to support their operations through traditional methods. Class 4 Gaming Funding is also running and is supporting community organisations as it was pre-COVID lockdown. This is in-line with Sport NZ and Sport Wellington's decisions to close their Community Resilience Funds.

What we fund

Delivery of services

Some examples of initiatives that we can fund are:

Supporting community efforts to maintain links with and support each other in new ways in light of social distancing and other possible requirements.
Translation services for published information.
Developing local plans to provide food and supplies for people not able to access these because of self-isolation concerns and implementing them*
Preparation of meals to be distributed from a central place like local Marae.
Wider assistance with self-isolation and development of community outreach programme including technology based solutions.

*The Community Resilience Fund is likely to decline applications to support food and/or sanitation packs due to significant central government funding available for these initiatives. Council recognises the importance of these services, however we want to avoid duplicating existing funding streams.

Salaries or administration costs, activities that intend to generate profit, the promotion of commercial, political, or religious objectives, or the purchase of alcohol.
Wage subsidy or direct financial assistance.
Major changes in service demand on current services.
Grants are not to be for the sole benefit of one individual.

Criteria

The organisation is a non-governmental organisation (NGO), registered charity and/or community group that is or will be providing essential community-led solutions to support local resilience and community wellbeing
The organisation does qualify for other COVID-19 related financial assistance packages available through government or other funding bodies but this amount is not enough to support their initiative/s; or
The organisation does not qualify for other COVID-19 related financial assistance packages available through government or other funding bodies.
Applications must provide details on:
- how the grant will be used to fund the proposed community-led solution and support wellbeing for people in the community
- total grant amount requested and how the amount has been calculated, and
- how they will bring the resources together that are needed to deliver the initiative and how delivery will be done.

Assessments of applications will take into account Council’s Community Funding Policy; and
Grants allocated from the Fund will be one-off.

Retrospective applications

We'll consider reimbursing costs to a NGO, registered charity and/or community group that has or is providing, essential community-led solutions to support local resilience and community wellbeing during the COVID-19 Alert 4.

These applications will be considered using the same criteria for other applications together with the total amount requested, including the total amount already spent, how the amount has been calculated and available receipts.

Apply online

Applications for the Community Resilience Fund closed June 2021.

Successful applicants

Council will contact successful recipients. Fund recipients will need to provide a short statement about their initiative including:

what you did and how it was delivered,
what impact the initiative had, and
how the grant funds were spent.

Organisations receiving funding are required to account for this by providing a report on how the funds were used. Council reserves the right to audit this information.

List of Successful Community Resilience Fund applicants