HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ONE AND ALL! The GRIN team of Dominie and Paul wish you all a successful and prosperous 2026. The GRIN office reopens this morning and will remain open throughout the year until Friday 18th December 2026.
As usual for our first post of the year, we’ll be setting out our plans and priorities for the year ahead.
Judging by recent reports by the BBC and other media outlets, it looks as if 2026 will be another challenging year for the voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise sector. During 2025, we received noticeably more enquiries from charitable organisations urgently seeking advice on grant opportunities than at any time in GRIN’s 15-year history and we expect this pattern to continue this year.
Our focus in 2026 will be to help agencies overcome their funding challenges by continuing to provide information and advice on grant programmes by the following means:
- Daily Grant Bulletins – the daily grant bulletins will follow the same format as in 2025, with detailed information on major grant programmes with a forthcoming application deadline, as well as details of more niche funding opportunities and less well-known trusts and foundations. We’ll also continue to provide an item on local grant opportunities, while our daily website article is more likely to feature international funding and award schemes.
- GRIN Grants Database – all the information we provide in the daily grants bulletin is collated onto a large, searchable Grants Database. This currently contains detailed data on around 2,000 grant programmes. We’ll be dedicating time each day to updating and improving the database.
- Grant Prospect Searches – in 2024 we experienced some difficulty carrying out scheduled requests from charitable organisations for lists of grant opportunities because of an increasing number of urgent requests from charities in need of grant support. Responding to these requests effectively meant they ‘jumped the queue’. This pattern continued throughout 2025. We want to continue helping charities facing an urgent funding issue as well as those that have scheduled a Grant Prospect Search, so in 2026 we plan to provide a quick turnaround, short summary of 10-15 strong grant prospects for all requests. We’ll refer agencies that require a more detailed Grant Prospect Search to consultancies that can provide a more thorough and in-depth service.
- GRIN Micro-Award Scheme – over the last 2 years we’ve been making an unrestricted donation of £250 each month to a charity or good cause nominated by our subscribers. We’ll be continuing the GRIN Micro-Awards in 2026, starting at the end of March, although we haven’t decided how much each donation will be, other than to say that it will be at least £250.
The 4 areas outlined above will be the cornerstones of our work in 2026. In addition to these, we also plan to:
5. Provide a helpful response to all enquiries, whether these are from subscribers or non-subscribers.
6. Retain the same pricing structure. We’ve made a commitment to keep the cost of subscribing to the daily grant bulletin and monthly grants database at the same level until at least 2030.
Our fees for 2026 will be:
o Daily Grants Bulletin – £15 per year for an individual subscriber or £25 per year for multiple subscribers from the same organisation (which can include volunteers and trustees). Organisations that would like to try out the daily bulletins can continue to sign up for a free 2-week trial.
o Monthly Grants Database – £60 for a 12-month period or £100 for a 24-month period. Both subscription rates include the daily grants bulletin and the offer for GRIN to carry out a search for grant prospects.
7. Review and upgrade the GRIN website.
8. Review our payments system with a view to closing our PayPal account as this has never quite worked as we hoped it would. Instead, we’ll be issuing invoices so that any payments can be made by bank transfer.
9. Review our list of agencies we refer enquiries to that we don’t have the capacity or knowledge to help with. This typically includes requests for bid writing, proof reading, developing fundraising strategies and advice on governance. We currently have a list of 10-12 excellent consultancies we’ve known and worked alongside over many years and are happy to refer enquiries to, but we also have lists of local support agencies across the UK including Councils for Voluntary Services, Community Councils and other infrastructure organisations.
10. Grant Assessments – we regularly assess grant applications on behalf of grant-making trusts and foundations, and we will continue to provide this service in 2026.
11. Social media presence – in 2025 we closed our Twitter/X account, stopped posting on Facebook and opened a Bluesky profile. However, Bluesky hasn’t really worked for us, so we’ll look at developing GRIN’s profile through other social media outlets.
12. Advertising job and training opportunities – this is a free service that voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise organisations can use to promote any job, trustee or training opportunities they may have in the daily GRIN Grants bulletin and on the GRIN website. Our subscriber group is exclusively those who work in the Third Sector and the daily bulletin reaches several thousand organisations, so it can be a useful platform to promote your work, opportunities and services to others.
Many thanks for all your help and advice throughout 2025. GRIN seriously couldn’t provide a service without your input. We have great admiration for anyone working in the sector and we love to hear from you. Please get in touch with either Dominie or Paul by email at info@grin.coop or phone 07387 377043 if you have any questions about any of the services detailed above or if you’d just like to have a general chat about funding and grant opportunities.
With our best wishes for the year ahead.
Paul and Dominie
GRIN (Grants Resources Information News)
GRIN SW LLP
Company No. OC374833
Phone: 07387 377043
Email: info@grin.coop
Web: www.grin.coop
