National Lottery Community Fund announces Awards for all England

Deadline: Ongoing

The National Lottery Community Fund is seeking nominations for the National Lottery Awards for All England.

The Fund can support you to:

Continue to deliver activity – whether your community needs crisis response, recovery or business as usual activity.
Change and adapt, becoming more resilient to respond to new and future challenges.

In order to support communities to thrive, they aim to:

Build strong relationships in and across communities;
Improve the places and spaces that matter to communities;
Help more people to reach their potential, by supporting them at the earliest possible stage.

People understand what’s needed in their communities better than anyone, especially during these unprecedented times. They want to support projects that:

Involve people and communities from the start;
Build on people’s strengths;
Are connected in their community.

Funding Information

Grant amount: £300 to £10,000, for up to one year.

Eligibility Criteria

You can apply if your organisation is a:

Voluntary and community organisation;
Constituted group or club;
Registered charity;
Charitable incorporated organisation (CIO);
Not-for-profit company;
Community interest company (CIC);
The school (as long as your project benefits and involves the communities around the school);
Statutory body (including local authorities, town, parish and community council);
Community benefit society.

How to apply

They only have a certain amount of funding to award

They get a lot of applications, and many of them are for really worthwhile projects. This means they have to make some tough decisions around which projects they can fund when reading all the applications they’ve received. So there are often lots of projects they cannot fund, even the good ones.
Make sure you also check who can and cannot apply before filling out the application form.

What happens after you apply

You send them your application – They’ll get back to you with a decision in around 12 weeks. During these 12 weeks, they look at your idea and do their security checks. You can find out more about the checks they do. They might give you a call within those 12 weeks, to talk a little more about your idea or ask for more information.
If your application is successful – They’ll send you an email with the good news. You can start your project as soon as you get this email if you want to. And they’ll put the funding in your bank account within 14 days (or sooner, if possible).
You can start spending the funding on your project – you should spend the funding the way you said you would in your application (unless they’ve agreed to something different first). They might check in from time to time – to see how things are going.
Share your story – let people know about your grant and the amazing work you’re doing in your community. Sharing news about your project with your community can be a great way to keep them involved and engaged. You can find out more about how to promote your grant. Your award email will also include details on how to publicise your grant and let people know about how your project is supporting people in your community.