Apply for funding

Our grant funding supports the activities of some of the best-known maritime charities who work with seafarers in the UK and internationally, as well as some impactful newcomers. Our funded activities include advice lines, hardship grants, port chaplaincy, safety initiatives, podcasts, retirement accommodation, advocacy, and abandonment support, as well as free relationship counselling.

In this section you will read more about our grant making strategy, our funding resources, key information about applying for a grant, and a link to our application form.

Grant-Making Strategy:

Everything we do is focused on how our grant making achieves impact in relation to The Seafarers’ Charity’s Thrive Strategy. We have focused on the five Strategic Outcomes linked to Thrive that will improve the lives of seafarers throughout their careers and during retirement. These include:

• Better working lives at sea
• Safer working lives at sea
• Improved health and well-being
• Enhanced financial resilience
• Increased social justice

In addition to this, we have three “pathways” that overlay these relating to the preventative, advocacy, and growing international flavour of our work.

We are also increasingly taking a “relational funder” approach. This involves working in partnership with our funded Delivery Partners to support a mix of core costs, project and programme costs, capital costs, and capacity-building where measurable deliverables can be co-created.

Please take some time to read our Grant-Making Principles document to learn more about our approach so that your application has the best chance of success.

If you are new to the maritime welfare sector, or a first-time grant applicant, please contact the Impact Team to discuss your potential application by emailing impact@theseafarerscharity.org.

Funds

The Seafarers’ Charity is the largest independent maritime grant maker in the UK and has been funding maritime services for over 100 years. Over this time we have developed different funds that we can draw on to award grants that deliver on our strategic outcomes including:

• Main Grant Programme
• Merchant Navy Fund
• International Fund for Fishing Safety

Click on each link to find out about these different funds.

From time-to-time additional special grant funds are created, but in general, whatever fund you are applying to, your application starts via the same portal below. However, please keep in mind the following:

Key Information:

• Our funding budget year runs from on 1^st January to 31^st December.
• There are no hard deadlines for applications as we grant throughout the year, but the Impact Committee meets formally in March, July and November. If you are aiming for one of these grant rounds, please make sure your application has been received by the middle of the month prior to the meeting. E.g. applications for the March round need to be with us by mid-February.
• We will contact you to inform you of the outcome of your grant application within three months of your online application. If successful, the award will be paid by BACS transfer direct into bank accounts within 3 weeks once all required paperwork has been signed and returned.
• Monitoring and evaluation reports on successful awards are due within 12 months depending on the purpose of the grant.
• We do not fund individuals, only charitable organisations. If you require funding for an individual, please email us on impact@theseafarerscharity.org and we can signpost you to one of the many organisations we fund to do this.

Get Started:

Before you begin, we strongly recommend you download our Application Guidance to assist you with navigating our application process.

If you have any questions or would like to arrange a call with one of the Impact team, please contact us at any time on impact@theseafarerscharity.org