How to get funding for your church: The Cornerstone grants database
Find out more about the Cornerstone Grants Database, how it works and how to use it to find suitable funding opportunities for your church.
THE CORNERSTONE GRANTS DATABASE GIVES churches access to over 600 charitable grants they can apply for. This page explains what it is and how to use it.
Developed by the National Giving Team, Cornerstone is an online generosity tool available free of charge to all Church of England churches. It offers three distinct functions:
- Insights
- Pathways
- A comprehensive Grants database.
Access to the Cornerstone platform is available to any Church of England church through your Diocesan Giving team.
The Cornerstone grants database contains well over 900 grants – all suitable for churches. It’s totally free to use and you can filter the grants by the activity you need money for, or your location, or even by the method of application. With a single click you can add a potential funder to your shortlist and print this to share with your PCC or fundraising committee.
Why should I use the Cornerstone grants database?
Funding from charitable grants is so important for many church projects. However generous your congregation is, or however ingenious your fundraising plans are, a cash injection is sometimes the most helpful way forward. But finding these pots of money can be a lot of work for time-pressed clergy and volunteers.
The Cornerstone grants database supports this important source of revenue by making it easy for churches to identify which funders are right for their project and by giving them the best chance to craft a successful application.
Covering a range of purposes, values and geographic areas, this searchable, filterable database is updated weekly and is the biggest range of grants currently available to churches. Each grant is described and there is a link to the grant making body so you can read further and apply.
What do other churches say about the Cornerstone database?
Carolyn Leigh from All Saints Fulham has already used the database and said: “This is a great free resource for churches and all the better for having some of the legwork about eligibility taken out of the research process.”
Joshua Townson, Giving Advisor at Oxford Diocese, said: “When I show it to people, they generally say: ‘Wow! This is amazing!’ So many churches immediately see what it can do and start to think about how they might be able to use it for more than the initial fundraising project.”
Another individual said: “Thank you so much for putting all these grant making bodies together in one easily accessible file. This is surely a great advantage to us all. I can now throw away lots of paper which I have accumulated over the years about grants.”
Watch the people of All Saints church, Nettleham, talk about their experience of Cornerstone in the video below:
How do I use the database?
Speak to your Diocesan Giving Team to get a login to the Cornerstone website. Once you have access, just go to ‘Grants’ in the Cornerstone menu and you’ll see the list of available grants to browse. You can filter your search based on purpose, closing date, location and size of grant. The video below explains more about Cornerstone, and explains the grants database from 02:45.
You can read more about the Free Grants Database filtering here.
What else can I do with Cornerstone?
Cornerstone isn’t just about grants. Finding suitable grants to apply for is a big part of the funding puzzle, but making the application is also vitally important, and again, is hugely time-consuming for parishes. The Pathways section of Cornerstone guides you through ‘Building a Case for Support’ and ‘Applying for Grant Funding ‘– both vital parts of most applications.
Where can I find help?
If you’d like to get started on Cornerstone, or want to learn more about Pathways and the other functions, contact your Diocesan Giving Team.
If you have any problems getting access, you can email the National Giving Team, cornerstone@churchofengland.org
