Charity Grants

This section is for charities and organisations. If you are an individual interested in our bursaries and travel awards, please go to the Bursaries and Travel Awards page. Important note for charities and organisations: Please check first to make sure that your project will meet the criteria set out below under “Application Requirements“. Specifically, we can only support applications which will directly benefit vision-impaired people and for which funds are received and accounted for within the UK.

If you have any questions, please email charity@spectaclemakers.com

Application Requirements

The Spectacle Makers’ Charity will consider applications for grants from:

• registered UK charities having a visible and meaningful impact on the lives of vision impaired people
• educational institutions in the UK teaching and researching in the eye health field

The Charity will not consider:

• grants which do not directly relate to vision
• more general disaster/emergency appeals
• direct grants outside the UK

The trustees will consider grants towards specific projects as well as co-funding larger projects where it can make a meaningful contribution. Charitable grants given by this Charity to organisations are usually small amounts to support particular projects. The Trustees would not usually pay for staff or core organisational costs for which a charity would need to budget year after year. Most grants will be for amounts between £1-5,000. The Trustees may award up to £10,000 but this would be very unusual.

The Spectacle Makers’ Charity (together with its founder member, The Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers) is interested in developing mutually beneficial relationships with those that it supports. The impact of each grant made is very important to us. Honest reporting of outcomes and an analysis of the long term benefits delivered by past projects will form a major part of our decision making if a benefiting charity decides to re-apply for funding.

Standard Application Process

The Trustees meet four times a year.

Applications can only be accepted online. Here are the deadlines for receipt of applications before each Trustee meeting.

February meeting: applications must be received by 3 January

May meeting: applications must be received by 4 April

September meeting: applications must be received by 1 August

November meeting: applications must be received by 20 September

If you have a vision impairment and/or would have difficulty in submitting an online form, please call us on 020 7236 2932 and we will be pleased to suggest an alternative.