The National Lottery Community Fund: Empowering Young People

Overview

Who can apply?

You can apply if you’re:

• Unregistered voluntary or community organisation
• Registered charity (unincorporated)
• Charitable incorporated organisation (CIO)
• Not-for-profit company

What do they want to fund?

They fund projects that work with young people (between the ages of 8 and 25) to face and overcome challenges.

The projects they fund through Empowering Young People can last from one to five years.

They’re looking for applications that involve your young people in the development, design, running and evaluation of the project.

If you’re not sure how to do this read their blog ‘Can your community group empower young people?’

You can apply for funding to deliver new or existing activity or to change and adapt to new and future challenges, including the current cost of living crisis.

A good application should help young people:

1. Get the skills they need for their future

This could be practical skills for jobs they’d like to do. Or life skills, like helping young people deal with difficult situations.

2. Have better relationships with their support network and communities

Support networks are just people. These people can be family and friends. Or different groups that help people like doctors, the police, charities, youth groups and teachers.

When they say community, they mean:

• people living in the same area
• people who have similar interests or life experiences, but might not live in the same area.

3. Have good health and wellbeing

When they talk about health, we usually mean physical health. And when they talk about wellbeing, they’re normally talking about how a person feels emotionally. So they look at how your project might help young people both physically and mentally.

Environmental Impact

They encourage and support all projects and communities to consider their environmental impact when designing their projects.

For example, if your project requires a vehicle to help support your community, they expect you to have considered whether an electric or hybrid option is a viable alternative to petrol or diesel. Electric or hybrid vehicles will help reduce your projects carbon footprint, but it can also save you money on fuel, tax, and servicing.

If your project involves a building they expect you to consider how you can reduce its environmental impact and therefore its running costs.

This could include:

• Choosing to use more sustainable, environmentally friendly or recycled materials as much as possible
• Conserving water by ‘harvesting’ rainwater (it is free after all) with water butts or reusing ‘grey’ water (the water from sinks, showers, washing machines, etc.) to flush toilets
• Reducing the amount of energy your building needs by installing energy efficient lighting and low energy appliances. Or even consider generating your own energy by installing solar panels
• Reducing the amount of heat your building making sure your building is a well-insulated as possible or consider more efficient alternatives to oil or gas such as infra-red heating, heat pumps or biomass boilers
• Consider what will happen to all the waste that will be generated from your building project and commit to reduce, reuse and recycle as much as possible.

Some extra tips for your application:

• Tell them how you’ve involved young people, and the community, to come up with your project. Show them that you’ve really listened to what they said and understand why the project is needed.
• Don’t only listen to young people. Listen to their support networks and communities too, and show us how their aspirations are reflected in your plans.
• It can be good to involve parents and guardians at an early stage. If they understand how you can help, they’re more likely to encourage young people to get involved.
• It’s important that young people are involved in running your project. Tell them how you’ll make sure their voices are heard and their advice acted on.
• They want to back projects that suit all kinds of young people. Include a range of interests and experience, as well as different levels of confidence and ability.
• Show them how your project is different from others that are already out there. Or how you plan to collaborate with others who are similar.
• Be clear and direct in your application. Use facts and evidence, and focus on the problems you want your project to address.

They can fund:

• staff salaries
• training
• volunteer expenses
• equipment
• premises costs
• evaluation
• overheads.

Information on how to make a good application can be found here