Transport Grants Guidance

• For registered charities working in Scotland, with an annual income* of £30,000 to £2 million, that support people who are experiencing (or are at high risk of experiencing) poverty and trauma.
• Funding of between £5,000 and £20,000 per year, for 1-3 years, to contribute towards the costs of transport to support your work.
• If you are already in receipt of a Small or Large Grant from us, you can still apply for a separate Transport Grant. However, we will take the fact that you already hold funding from us into account. In these cases, we are likely only to award a one-year Transport grant or, if we award you a 3-year grant, we are likely to cap this at a maximum of £20K in total.
• Apply any time – no set closing date.

  *Annual Income: This is based on the money your organisation received in the last financial year, as shown in your most recent annual accounts. If you are a new organisation, which has not yet produced accounts, you can base this on the income you expect to receive in the year ahead. As a general rule, we will only accept applications for Transport Grants from charities whose annual income is over £30,000 and up to £2 million. There are some cases where we will make exceptions, for example, if your income last year was less than £30,000 but you are growing your activities and projecting increased costs; or if your income was over £2 million due to one-off funding for a capital project. We understand that organisations’ income may fluctuate from year to year and we’ll therefore look at up to your last three years’ income, as presented on OSCR. If you would like to be considered for a Transport Grant but you’re not sure if it’s right for your charity, please call us on 0141 353 4321 to discuss.

• Charities who have received Community Vehicle or Transport funding from us within the past 12 months. If you wish to reapply for a Transport grant, please call us first to discuss.

The following types of organisations are not currently eligible for funding from us through our open, responsive grant streams, including Transport Grants. However, we are committed to reviewing our guidance and criteria across the course of our strategy. To be kept informed, please sign up to our mailing list. 

• Housing Associations and Arm’s Length External Organisations (ALEOs - these are organisations which are formally separate from the local authority but still subject to its control or influence).
• Community Interest Companies (CICs). While Transport Grants are not currently available to CICs, larger asset-locked CICs have been able to apply for Programme Awards via thematic open calls and, previously, Partners in Change. As our Social Impact Investing work opens, we envisage being able to offer affordable loans to some asset-locked CICs whose work is strongly aligned to our mission, via investment partners. During 2025 we will also undertake a new review of how CICs working to prevent and reduce poverty and trauma could be eligible for grant funding.

• A minimum of three unconnected Trustees on your charity’s Board. By unconnected we mean not related by blood; married to or in a civil partnership with each other; in a relationship with each other or living together at the same address.
• Recent independently examined or audited annual accounts. If your organisation is a newly registered charity which has not yet produced accounts, we’ll ask you to send us details of an independent referee who knows your work well, a recent bank statement and a projection showing your organisation’s expected income for its first year.
• A bank account in the name of your charity, with two unconnected people required to make every withdrawal or payment.
• A safeguarding policy. If your organisation directly supports children and young people or vulnerable adults, we would expect you to have an appropriate policy document which sets out how you will keep them safe.

Through all of our funding, we want to support work which aims to prevent or reduce poverty and trauma for people and communities in Scotland.

We recognise that many organisations applying for a Transport Grant are likely to be focused on addressing poverty primarily, and that trauma may feature less strongly in their work. That’s ok! We will fund work that is focused solely on preventing or reducing poverty. We know, however, that often where people experience poverty, they may also experience related trauma. We are therefore also interested in funding work which seeks to address poverty and trauma together, where the experiences are interlinked.

We understand the importance of affordable, reliable transport for people and communities with higher rates or higher risks of experiencing poverty and trauma, and for the charities who support them. Our Transport Grants aim to:

• Support charities working to prevent or reduce poverty and trauma to deliver their services;
• Remove transport barriers for people or places with higher rates or at higher risk of experiencing poverty and trauma, to ensure they have fair access to services, activities and opportunities that will help address the issues they are facing related to poverty and trauma.

People – We recognise that there are certain groups of people who experience higher rates of poverty and trauma, or who are at higher risk, than the population as a whole. We are focused on those groups in Scotland who are more likely to experience low incomes and restricted opportunities as a result. These groups include but are not limited to:

• Lone parent families
• Other child poverty priority family groups (including larger families, families with young children, and young parent families)
• Disabled people
• Communities experiencing racial inequity
• Asylum seekers, refugees and those with no recourse to public funds
• Households claiming Universal Credit or related low-income social security benefits
• People with experience of the care system
• Unpaid carers
• Women with low incomes
• Young people (in most cases up to age 25, or 30 for those with additional support needs)
• Older people (on low incomes)
• People living in deprived places, including rural or remote communities
• People experiencing severe or multiple disadvantage (e.g. due to homelessness, substance misuse and offending)

We are particularly interested in supporting applications which will benefit these groups. Not everyone who falls into one of these groups will be experiencing or at greater risk of experiencing poverty and trauma, so it is important that you describe in your application how these issues are affecting the people you support, and how your work will help address this.

Places – We are also interested in supporting requests aimed at geographic communities with higher rates of poverty and trauma. We recognise, however, that whilst SIMD and other measures can give an indication of disadvantage in a geographic area, they don’t always adequately show this, for example in remote and rural communities where there may be smaller pockets of disadvantage. We are open to hearing from applicants about the challenges in their community relating to poverty and trauma, and how their work helps to address these.

We are particularly interested in funding requests which address one or more of our funding themes - please click through for details.

• Financial Security – improving income adequacy, income security, manageable costs, financial safety nets and advice for those most at risk of poverty and trauma.
• Education Pathways – preventing and reducing poverty and trauma through access and engagement in early years, education, training and learning.
• Work Pathways – improving access to good and fair work that can prevent and reduce poverty through increased pay, hours and career progression. This also includes employability support, focused on areas or groups with lower employment rates.
• Nurturing Relationships - Supporting nurturing relationships within families and communities, to help break the cycle between persistent poverty and intergenerational trauma, and support recovery.

Through our Transport Grants, we can also support work which is not directly aligned to these themes, but which is about removing transport barriers for people and places with higher rates or higher risks of experiencing poverty and trauma, for example, a community transport service operating in an area with high levels of deprivation and poor transport links.

We can contribute towards the costs of transport to support work that:

• meets people’s immediate needs around poverty and trauma 
• provides earlier help which aims to prevent or reduce the likelihood of experiencing negative outcomes relating to poverty and trauma 
• tests new approaches or does more of what works 
• is universal (aimed at a wide group of people or an entire community) or targeted (focusing on a specific group of people, e.g. young people), as long as it shows how it will reach and meet the needs of people (at high risk of) experiencing poverty and trauma. 

Sustainable Transport

We are committed to finding ways to help address the causes of climate change through our funding. We are therefore particularly interested in supporting sustainable transport options. These include but are not limited to the costs of Electric Vehicles.

We recognise there are barriers to purchasing and using Electric Vehicles. Our funding can be used to help address these, such as contributing towards installing a charge point, although there are other sustainable transport options which we are keen to support. These include the costs of a vehicle which would be shared by a number of local groups, reducing the need for each group to have its own, as well as active travel, such as using bikes and e-bikes.

Community Transport Association’s ‘Act Local’ report contains some real-life examples of transport providers developing and delivering sustainable transport solutions, which you might find inspiring.

We are happy to consider contributing towards the costs of:

• A range of vehicles such as minibuses, vans and bikes, including electric vehicles (EVs) and e-bikes. We can support the costs of purchasing, leasing or upgrading a vehicle.
• Charge point installation for electric vehicles.
• Running costs such as fuel/energy costs, driver salaries and training. We can also consider funding the costs of hiring a vehicle from a local transport provider.
• A vehicle for a charity providing whole family support for families experiencing poverty, to enable them to deliver outreach services in rurally disadvantaged communities.
• Innovative means of transport to support your work, such as drones to deliver essential items to people in remote communities. We are open to other suggestions! If you’re not sure whether your request is something we would consider, please contact us at funding@therobertsontrust.org.uk.

We will prioritise funding for sustainable transport options as above, including shared vehicle use, active travel and electric vehicles.

• We can provide Transport funding of between £5,000 and £20,000 per year, either one-off or for up to 3 years depending on your costs and needs. If you are already in receipt of a multi-year award from one of our other Funds, we will take this into account and are likely only to award a one-year Transport grant or, if we award you a 3-year grant, we may cap this at a maximum of £20K in total.
• Unrestricted Funding – For organisations whose sole purpose is to provide transport, such as community transport schemes, we can consider providing unrestricted funding towards their overall costs. This could include the costs of purchasing/leasing/upgrading/repairing a vehicle, as well as associated running costs.
• Restricted Funding – For organisations whose work is not solely focused on transport, but who provide transport to support the delivery of their activities, such as youth clubs or food hubs, we can consider providing restricted funding towards the costs of their transport needs. Again, this could include the costs of purchasing/leasing/upgrading a vehicle as well as associated, transport-related, running costs. If your work falls into this category and you need funding for your organisation’s overall running costs, you may be eligible to apply to our Small or Large Grant Funds.

The amount of funding we can offer will depend on how strongly your request fits with the aims of this fund, either directly in line with our funding themes, or more broadly, with our aim of helping to remove transport barriers and costs for people and places affected by poverty and trauma. Although we can award up to £20,000 (per year) through this fund, we will be unable to award this size of grant to all applicants. Grants of between £10,000 and £20,000 (per year) will only be considered for requests which have a strong fit with the aims of the fund and which adopt sustainable practice, such as shared vehicle use, active travel or use of electric vehicles.

As our grants do not exceed £20,000 (p.a.), we may not be able to fully fund your request. This means you may need to source other funds to meet the total costs.

You can only hold one Transport Grant at any time. 

If you are already in receipt of a Small or Large Grant from us, you can still apply for a separate Transport Grant. However, we will take the fact that you already hold funding from us into account. In these cases, we are likely only to award a one-year Transport grant or, if we award you a 3-year grant, we are likely to cap this at a maximum of £20K in total.

We will only consider funding requests where it is clear how the vehicle or transport costs will support your work in preventing or reducing poverty and trauma. Examples of the type of request we might consider include:

• A community transport service or other network organisation, based in an area with high levels of poverty, purchasing a minibus to hire out to local charities and groups at an affordable rate, to reduce the need for individual groups to have their own vehicle.
• A youth group or community hub in an area with high rates of poverty, requiring a vehicle to transport people to and from its activities and on trips, and for shared use with other local groups.
• A food pantry purchasing an e-cargo bike for the collection and distribution of goods.
• A community transport service in a rural community with a lack of public transport, providing a bus service to help local people get to work or college.

Please click through here for examples of projects we funded under our previous Community Vehicles Fund, which are strongly aligned with the aims of our Transport Grants.

• Work which takes place outside Scotland.
• Applications for funding if the work of your organisation/focus of your request does not aim to prevent or reduce poverty and trauma for people and communities in Scotland.
• Transport that seeks to address forms of trauma which are not connected to experiences of poverty, for example, trauma caused by a car accident, bereavement or illnesses experienced across the general population.
• Whilst we can provide funding to faith-based organisations delivering services and activities for the wider community, we cannot contribute towards transport costs to support projects and activities which incorporate the promotion of religious (or political) beliefs, or requests for salaried posts or volunteer costs where there is a requirement to be of a particular faith or none. This is because of the Trust’s commitment to support and enable equal access to activities, regardless of whether an individual accessing those activities is of a particular faith or none.
• Any retrospective costs already incurred by the applicant organisation.
• Any costs not incurred directly by the applicant organisation e.g. purchasing a vehicle on behalf of another organisation.
• Transport to support the standalone costs of childcare provision, although we may consider the costs of transport to childcare services as part of a broader programme of support to help individuals access education or work, where childcare presents a barrier to this.
• The costs of providing hospital or school transport which we would consider to be a statutory responsibility. We can consider applications from organisations who deliver these services as part of their wider work, however, we would not contribute directly towards these costs.
• Transport to support day or residential care services for older people, or adults with health conditions.
• Transport costs for services focused primarily on reducing social isolation (where there is no clear link to poverty and trauma).
• Transport costs for sports clubs for general participation or to attend competitions. We will consider work which takes a ‘sport for change approach’, where it is clear how sport or physical activity is being used to achieve wider social outcomes related to preventing or reducing poverty and trauma.
• Travel expenses for staff and volunteers to attend work/their volunteering commitment, due to the pressure this would place on our budget. We may consider volunteer expenses in cases where volunteers use their own car to take participants on outings or to activities. We would encourage any organisations applying for a Large or Small Grant towards their running costs to include general volunteer expenses as part of their full organisational budget.
• The costs of public transport for individual participants, due to the pressure this would place on our budget. We would encourage any organisations applying for a Large or Small Grant towards their running costs to include this type of cost as part of their full organisational budget.
• Funding for individuals (by this we mean we won’t provide funding which will primarily benefit only one or a very small group of individuals).

We consider a number of key criteria when assessing applications. As well as meeting the basic eligibility requirements and fit with the aims of this Fund, as outlined above, we want organisations who apply for a Transport Grant to demonstrate how they:

• Focus on preventing or reducing poverty and associated trauma: recognising the challenges people in their community are facing in their lives related to poverty and trauma, as well as how their organisation’s work will respond to this and support them, and work to prevent future experiences of poverty and trauma, where possible.
• Focus on community participation: involving their community in the organisation, for example on the Board or through volunteering; and that they listen to their community and respond to their needs. By community, we mean either a geographic community or a community of interest (a group of people with shared experiences). We are also interested to know how applicant organisations include people from diverse communities (for example disabled people or people experiencing racial inequity) and remove barriers to their participation.
• Plan to use the vehicle regularly: either themselves or through shared use with other local organisations, to maximise use and impact.

We prioritise funding for applications which involve shared vehicle usage or other more sustainable options.

Other criteria we consider include:

• The organisation’s financial position, including its sustainability and whether it has an imminent need for our funds.
• How well the organisation is governed and, where appropriate, the safeguarding policies and arrangements it has in place.

We have created a sample of the application form with help text here.

We consider Transport Grant applications as part of a rolling programme of funding. You can apply at any time, bearing in mind our timescale for decisions, detailed below. You can download a copy of our application questions and help text here.

Please complete the online application form.

• Within the application form, we will ask you to upload a copy of your most recent independently examined or audited annual accounts.
• If you are a newly registered charity and have not yet produced accounts, we will ask you to provide details of an independent referee (someone who knows your work well but is not directly involved in it), a recent bank statement and a projection showing your organisation’s expected income for its first year.
• If you are applying to purchase, lease or upgrade a vehicle, you don’t need to provide copies of quotes or estimates for this when you apply. However, if we award you funding, we’ll ask you to send us evidence of the purchase, lease or work to be undertaken before we release the funding. This could include, for example, a purchase order, invoice, lease agreement or evidence of a deposit paid.

View a Guide to Completing Our Online Application Forms.

• We’ll email you to confirm we’ve got your application and when you can expect to receive a decision.
• We’ll aim to tell you the outcome of your application within 8-10 weeks. This is dependent on receiving any additional information we may ask for – delays in receiving this extra information could mean the decision takes longer.
• We’ll send all correspondence about your application via email, so it’s important that the email addresses and contact details you provide in your application are correct. We’ll normally contact the person you’ve listed as the ‘application contact’ in the first instance, so it’s helpful if this person is available during the assessment period. Please let us know if there are any changes to the contact details provided

We’ll assign one of our Funding Officers to assess your application. They may get in touch with you during the assessment period and will be able to help you with any changes or updates you might need to make to your application.

If we award you funding:

If you have been awarded funding, we’ll email you to let you know.Before we can pay your funds, we’ll ask you to provide:

• A copy of a recent bank statement for your organisation’s account, from within the past three months.
• A copy of a quote or purchase order, if your award is for the purchase of vehicle; or a copy of your lease agreement, if your award is for a vehicle lease.
• Evidence that you have enough funds in place to meet any remaining shortfall in your project costs.

We’ll do our best to pay the funds to your organisation’s bank account within two weeks.

Transport Grants can be for up to 3 years. If we award you a one-year grant, well ask you to send us a brief report at the end of the grant year, telling us about the work you have delivered, the differences this has helped to make and how you know this.

If we award you a multi-year grant, we’ll ask that you send us a brief report at the end of each grant year telling us about your progress, the differences your work is helping to make and how you know this. Once we have reviewed your report, we’ll release your next payment, if applicable.

If you have a Transport Grant from us and you would like to apply for further Transport funding, we would ask you to contact us first to discuss this. We are unlikely to provide funding towards the purchase of a new vehicle year on year, for example, for organisations who have multiple vehicles and are looking to replace these. We may, however, consider further funding towards transport-associated running costs or ongoing vehicle lease costs, in which case you can re-apply 6 months before your current grant ends.

If we don’t award you funding:

We’ll send you an email in which we’ll try our best to explainwhy we’ve not awarded you funding. We will also let you know in our email how soon you can re-apply. If the reason we haven’t awarded you funding is something we think you can address, you may be able to re-apply once you have been able to do so. We’ll explain this in the email. If the reason you have been unsuccessful is something we don’t feel can be easily addressed, we will ask you to wait 12 months before considering reapplying.

If you would like to have a chat with us about our decision and whether – or how soon – you can re-apply, you can email us on funding@therobertsontrust.org.uk and your Funding Officer will aim to get back to you within five working days.