The Henry Smith Charity has been giving money away since 1628, and it still gives away tens of millions a year. For UK charities it sits in a useful spot: large enough to fund a three-year salaried programme, but with a small-grants route that a volunteer-run group can realistically apply to.
The difficulty is that "Henry Smith" isn't one grant. It's a set of quite different funds with different sizes, deadlines and audiences, and knowing which one you're aiming at changes everything about how you write the application.
First, the name
You will see this funder called both the Henry Smith Charity and the Henry Smith Foundation, sometimes on the same search results page. Both names are in active use across funder listings and local funding portals.
It matters for one practical reason: if you search only one spelling, you'll miss programmes listed under the other. When you're checking whether a fund is open, search both.
Strengthening Communities
This is the programme most small charities want. It supports the running costs of small, community-based organisations working in the most deprived parts of the UK, with grants in the region of £20,000 to £70,000.
Two things make it distinctive. It funds running costs, not just projects, which is rare at this size. And it is explicitly targeted at deprivation — eligibility leans heavily on where you work and who you reach, not on how novel the idea is.
If your organisation is small, embedded in a deprived area, and needs salaries covered rather than a new initiative launched, this is the one to read first.
Holiday Grants
One-off grants of roughly £500 to £3,000 for schools, youth groups and not-for-profit organisations to take children on a recreational trip or holiday. The age limit is the thing people miss: it's aimed at children aged 13 and under.
It's a genuinely small, genuinely simple grant, and it's one of the few places a modest group with no fundraising staff can get a clean yes. There's a published deadline each round, so this is one to diarise rather than apply to on a whim.
Career Ready
A larger programme supporting young people with learning disabilities into meaningful work experience — funding in the order of £50,000 a year over several years, so around £200,000 in total.
This is a different kind of ask entirely. At that level the Charity is buying delivery capacity and expects the organisation to have it: existing employer relationships, staff who have run supported work placements before, and outcome data from work you've already done.
Maternity Equity
A three-year fund of roughly £61,600 in year one and £61,700 in each of years two and three — about £185,000 in total — for preventative maternity equity support.
At the time of writing this fund is open with a published closing date in October 2026, which makes it one of the few Henry Smith programmes with a hard deadline in the diary rather than a rolling door.
Clergy grants
Grants of £10,000 or more a year, for up to three years, towards the wellbeing of Anglican clergy, open to churches, charities and not-for-profits working in that area. It's a narrow fund and an unusually specific one, and it's frequently missed by organisations that would qualify because it doesn't look like a standard charitable grant programme.
What the assessors are looking for
Across the larger programmes, the same themes come up:
- Deprivation evidenced, not asserted. Name the area, use the index of multiple deprivation, and describe the population you actually reach.
- The organisation's track record over the idea's novelty. These are funds for work that is already happening and needs paying for.
- Realistic budgets. A three-year salary ask should include the real cost of employing someone, including on-costs, not a headline salary figure.
- A clear beneficiary. "Local people" is not a beneficiary group. "Families with a child aged under five living in [named ward]" is.
Common reasons applications don't succeed
- Applying to the wrong programme — a small project idea sent to a multi-year strategic fund
- Missing the Holiday Grants age limit of 13 and under
- A running-costs request from an organisation outside the deprivation focus of Strengthening Communities
- No evidence of delivery history for programmes that are buying delivery
- Missing the closing date on the funds that have one, which not all of them do
How to apply
Each programme has its own form, guidance and timetable on the funder's site, and the differences between them are real — read the guidance for the specific fund rather than assuming the Strengthening Communities criteria apply everywhere.
Where a programme is open on a rolling basis, apply when your case is strongest rather than rushing to be early. Where it has a deadline, work backwards from it: a three-year budget and a set of outcome measures take longer to assemble than most people allow.
Finding Henry Smith funding on Grants Hub
Grants Hub tracks the Charity's open programmes — under both names — alongside 4,000+ live UK grants from 1,500+ funders across 100+ sources, updated daily. You can see which of its funds are open today and match them against your organisation's profile, and we take 0% commission on anything you win.