Digital Inclusion Fund

Thanks to a generous match funding programme from Kent County Council, the Kent Community Foundation's donors have raised over £350,000 for a new Digital Inclusion Fund. The aim of the funding, which will be administered by Kent Community Foundation, is to enable frontline organisations to enhance their digital offer and strengthen client-facing technology infrastructure (this is not for internal system upgrades such as client databases).

The funding is available for three key beneficiary groups:

Disadvantaged young people seeking training and employment including looked after children to ensure that they can access online resources for school projects.
The elderly to navigate digital services and help them to access benefits and health services as well as well-being and social engagement activities.
Vulnerable adults to access training and skills development to enable independent living.

Funding is available to support infrastructure costs, but also service delivery costs for digital inclusion projects outlined above.

In addition, the fund will also support technology loan or upgrade schemes supporting the same beneficiary groups, so organisations can purchase hardware or connectivity packages that they can loan or use with their service users.

Grants up to £10,000, but many will be less, in the KCC area only.

The closing date of the funding was 15th January 2022.

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