Charity Grants

The Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers

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.

We want to help many different charities working to deliver the biggest impact they can for vision impaired people and their families. Our ability to do so depends on the income we ourselves receive. It means that the charitable grants we make are often small, with a value of £1-2,000. Medium sized grants are £2-5,000; £10,000 would be a large grant, given in exceptional cases.

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 and must be received by the deadline to give time for the Trustees to review and make a decision at their next meeting. The Trustees do not want charities to have to spend a lot of time and resources making an application. The form asks for certain basic information and a reviewing Trustee will then ask further questions as needed.

Here are the deadlines:

February 2024 meeting: applications must be received by 12 January

May/June 2024 meeting: applications must be received by 26 April

September 2024 meeting: applications must be received by 9 August

November 2024 meeting: applications must be received by 11 October

If you have a vision impairment and/or would find it difficult to submit an online form, please call us on 020 7236 2932 and we will be pleased to suggest an alternative method of providing the information. Applications will only be considered once we have received the information requested in the form. Please note that the Trustees will not consider speculative emails or printed proposal documents instead of the form.