With 9 rounds and 38 funded projects under its belt, the TDS Charitable Foundation has been working to advance education about housing rights and obligations since its inception in July 2014. It is funded by donations from The Dispute Service (TDS), the leading Tenancy Deposit Scheme, and is presided over by a board of Trustees. To date £418,211.33 has been awarded in grant funding.
So what is the TDS Charitable Foundation and how has it contributed to advancing education?
The Foundation has a mission to raise standards within the private rented sector. This is delivered by providing education and information to tenants, landlords and agents both directly and through other organisations. The TDS Charitable Foundation is primarily a grant giving charity; each year the Trustees decide the core themes for funding and welcome bids from organisations and individuals. The Foundation looks to support projects which focus on promoting knowledge of landlords’ obligations and promoting knowledge of tenants’ rights and responsibilities.
How does it work?
Organisations are able to submit detailed grant application forms, setting out their proposed projects and how these will be implemented. All bids are then considered by the Trustees. Once the Trustees make a decision as to the successful applicants, grant funding is provided and the projects are commenced. The progress of individual projects is monitored throughout their advancement and the Foundation provides support throughout. Once projects are completed, any resources created are accessible via the TDS Charitable Foundation website to enable a cross sharing of resources for use more widely within the sector.
With the Foundation now in its third year of operation, trends were identified with the nature of proposed projects and crucially the scale and impact of individual ventures. Whilst not wanting to discount smaller scale projects which purely focussed on a particular region, the TDS Charitable Foundation sought to expand the reach of projects by increasing the limit of bid funding from £20,000 to £50,000 per project.
This decision led to the introduction of three defined funding streams:
- Community stream
For local projects [£10,000 per project] - Innovation stream
To enable unique and original projects [£20,000 per project] - National stream
for larger projects with national impact [£50,000 per project]
Who benefits from the funded projects?
The TDS Charitable Foundation has funded a vast range of projects, advancing education for varying groups in locations across England and Wales. First time renters, students, migrants and landlord forums are just some of the groups to have directly benefitted from projects created with grants from the TDS Charitable Foundation. For a comprehensive look at the organisations who have received direct funding from the TDS Charitable Foundation visit the dedicated website https://tdsfoundation.org.uk/programmes
What is to come?
The Charitable Foundation is approaching its 10th round of bid funding and there is still time to submit your applications. If your organisation has a project which meets the criteria, you can submit a bid for consideration. The deadline for applications is 5th January 2018 with applications to be considered early in the New Year.
https://tdsfoundation.org.uk/#apply-for-funding
The Tenancy Deposit Scheme (TDS) is a government approved scheme for the protection of tenancy deposits; we offer both insured and custodial protection. We also provide fair adjudication for disputes that arise over the tenancy deposits that we protect.
TDS can only comment on the process for our scheme, other deposit protection schemes may have a different process/require different steps. Content is correct at the time of writing.
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