Executive and Governance Office

Catherine Cookson Foundation

Catherine Cookson Foundation

The small grants programme, open to colleagues and students, looks to support academic initiatives that will make a difference, but which have no other obvious alternative source of support.

The Catherine Cookson Foundation was set up by the generosity of the late Dame Catherine Cookson to support academic initiatives that are a benefit to students within the University.  It has been able to make a valuable and distinctive contribution through a wide variety of awards, and the Foundation is happy to consider applications from both our colleagues and our students.

Click the link to see a  list of previous award winners, to get a flavour of the type of projects that have been supported in the past

Small grants, normally range between £500 and £5000, are made to projects on a one-off, non-recurrent basis, using the following criteria:

  • should be of modest size;
  • should be the type of activity which Dame Catherine Cookson herself might have had an interest;
  • should have no obvious alternative source of support, or be the sort of project where support from the Foundation could be pump-priming for other financial help;
  • should have local interest;
  • should be of benefit to students.

It is a condition of any grant that a final report on the project is submitted to the Trustees. This should be in the form of an A4 document, no more than two pages in length, listing original objectives and to what extent they have been met together with a statement of how much funding was received from the Foundation and how it was spent.

If a final report is not forthcoming within a reasonable time, the Trustees reserve the right to request the return of the funds.

The closing date for applications is 5pm Friday 26 May 2023.

(Applications will be assessed at a meeting on the 22 June 2023 with results communicated shortly after that meeting.)

Interested in applying?

Completed forms must be submitted to alison.jeavons@ncl.ac.uk, they should be a single pdf document (combining application form, supporting statement and cv, if appropriate, into one email attachment please)