The National Lottery Community Fund: Growing Great Ideas

Archived Active citizenship Advice services Age discrimination Black and minority ethnic Communities Community and neighbourhood development Community development Democracy and freedom Dependants and carers Family and parenting Gender equality and sexual orientation Health promotion Health, wellbeing and sport Healthcare services Housing and homelessness Human rights and equality Human rights and justice Information Technology Medical conditions Miscellaneous Offenders and ex-offenders organisational development People with disabilities Policy, advocacy and campaigning Poverty and deprivation Racial equality Refugees and asylum seekers Rural development social enterprise Social inclusion Social partnership Social welfare and poverty Strategic and project planning Un/Employed Urban development Victims and survivors Voluntary and community infrastructure volunteering Antrim & Newtownabbey Ards & North Down Armagh City, Banbridge & Craigavon Belfast City Causeway Coast and Glens Derry City and Strabane England Fermanagh and Omagh Great Britain Lisburn and Castlereagh Mid and East Antrim Mid Ulster Newry, Mourne and Down Northern Ireland Scotland Wales Large (over £60,000)

Track grant Notes

Back to grants

Overview

They’re looking to invest in different compositions of people, communities, networks and organisations over the long term. They might be better described as ecologies, platforms, ecosystems, assemblages, networks and constellations - they’re using different words because at this stage of the funding programme, they’re still testing an approach. They’re also using language to be explicit about how this is different from what they’ve done before. The important thing is that they can see the potential in how they will grow and deepen over time, extending their missions, and adding to the ecology as they go.

Funding Size

The minimum grant size is £150,000. The minimum length is two years. Funding can be available for up to ten years in some circumstances.

They expect to have a total of £25m available for this programme until March 2022. And more funding beyond that.

Who can apply

They’re particularly interested in exploring how they can more deliberately invest in ecologies, platforms, ecosystems, assemblages, networks and constellations that are working towards a common purpose and new philosophy. These could be existing ones that want to extend and/or deepen their work, or new ones that emerge. This work can take place at a local or national level.

Your lead organisation also needs to be a:  

registered charity  
community interest company 
Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO)
community benefit society
co-operative society (if it has a not-for-profit clause)
voluntary or community organisation  
statutory body (including town, parish and community councils) - we’d like them to be part of the initiative but not lead it   
company limited by guarantee (if it has a not-for-profit clause).

What they are hoping to fund

At this stage, they’re looking to fund things that may look quite different from each other but will likely have in common some of the following:

They’re likely to be starting with a new philosophy, frame, logic or narrative that guides the work, like a new philosophy about how the economy could work or how society could be organised.
They consider equity in everything they do - equity for people and for the planet. They are looking for initiatives that are creating new patterns of who has power and what is valued.
They’ll be generating an infrastructure through which many things are possible.
They can show that the things that are created underpin genuine transitions away from/towards the relevant focus.
They’ll be able to show that they’ve been consistently asking and exploring good questions about how things need to change in the present, and can imagine and articulate what alternatives looks like.
They’ll be operating from a set of principles that show how they’ll get there, even if they do not know what the final result might be (because it’s experimental).
They can show an ability to continually adapt as they go. They want to invest in how people are enquiring.
They will be able to describe what progress looks like for their work, how they are committed to that progress, and to have some ideas about how they will measure and show progress.
There is momentum to what they are doing. They can point to how they are making ripples as they have been growing and deepening their work, and show that they are attracting others to it.
They are unlikely to be a single organisation or project, already working with multiple partners and enmeshed in many relationships. They can also show that they’ve had real engagement with other parts of the landscape that are key to things being different.

They’ll be looking to explore longer-term funding commitments that show them investing in those involved for seven to ten years. This is not about ‘core costs’ - they want their funding to be used in a more adaptive, vital and regenerative way than the term ‘core costs’ suggests.

In such a long-term, emergent approach, they know they’ll need to also have flexibility in where the funding goes, and to enable groups and organisations to come in and out of the ‘ecology’ as it deepens and grows.

Eligible costs

staff salaries
development work (testing new ways of working, staff training and development, developing governance, tech or IT upgrades/purchases, sharing learning)
transport
utilities/running costs
volunteer expenses
equipment
capital costs (they may consider funding capital costs if you can demonstrate how they can benefit the ecology in the longer term).

They can also support organisations with funding over longer periods, potentially seven to ten years, depending on how long their idea might take to evolve.

If you’re invited to the next stage, they’ll talk to you to agree what the funding will cover.

Track grant Notes