Catherine Cookson Foundation Call for applications

The Catherine Cookson Foundation was set up by the generosity of the late Dame Catherine Cookson to support academic initiatives within the University.  It has been able to make a valuable and distinctive contribution through a wide variety of awards. The Foundation is happy to consider applications from colleagues and students of the University.

An annual call for applications is made in the Spring Term for consideration by the trustees at an annual meeting in June/July each year, however, if there are funds available, the Vice-Chancellor and President is also happy to hear at any other time about possible projects requiring support and which meet the criteria below.

Small grants, normally in a range between £500 and £5000, are made on a one-off, non-recurrent basis to projects where the Trustees consider their intervention will make a significant difference between success and failure, and where there are no other obvious routes to obtain significant support. See the list of previous award winners to get a flavour of the type of projects that have been supported already. Unfortunately the Trustees are not able to consider applications for PhD study or applications which are of a standard research grant format, the latter should be directed to the relevant research council.

The criteria used in selecting projects for support are, that they:

• should be the type of activity in which Dame Catherine Cookson herself might have had an interest;
• should have local interest and be of benefit to students
• should be of modest size;
• should have no obvious alternative source of support, or be the sort of project where support from the Foundation could be pump-priming for other financial help;

It is a condition of any grant that a final report on the project is submitted to the Trustees. This should take the form of an A4 document, no more than two pages in length, listing original objectives and saying to what extent they have been met together with a statement of how much funding was received from the Foundation and how it was spent.  If a final report is not forthcoming within a reasonable time, the Trustees reserve the right to request the return of the funds.

The closing date for the annual call for applications was 5pm on Friday 10 June 2022.

You can download the application form. Applications should be made in the form of a single PDF document (combining the application form, supporting statement and CV), and must be submitted to alison.jeavons@ncl.ac.uk.

Please contact Alison.Jeavons@ncl.ac.uk if you have any questions about this call.