The Cabinet Office has launched a consultation into new proposed policy directions for the Big Lottery Fund.
The consultation, which opened on Friday, is for the allocation of Big Lottery Funds in England, Isle of Man and UK-wide funding programmes. The proposals in the consultation document are in line with the government’s “big society” agenda, which re-emerged in the Conservative party’s 2015 manifesto.
In the foreword to the consultation document, Rob Wilson, minister for civil society, said: “Our intent while drafting these policy directions has been to respect and reflect the Fund’s own commitments and strategic priorities, as outlined in its framework, in combination with the government’s commitments and priorities for creating a bigger stronger society.
“These priorities include supporting the development of stronger, more resilient, more capable and empowered communities, improving the life chances of the most disadvantaged in society, and growing a more confident and capable voluntary sector, armed with the skills it needs to meet the challenges ahead. All of these are areas in which the Fund is already active.”
The Big Lottery Fund receives 40 per cent of all the good causes money generated through the National Lottery each year, amounting to around £700m being distributed annually to tackle disadvantage and improve lives throughout the United Kingdom.
The policy directions were last set in 2012. The key principles of the new policy directions include a renewed focus of local engagement. This means “engaging people and local civil society organisations in how funding is used in their communities, enabling and catalysing local partnerships and collaborations between communities, public, private and civil society organisations”.
It also includes a new focus on variety and innovation, meaning “distributing funds to a wide spread of projects, primarily those delivered by civil society organisations, in particular small and medium sized charities, or the organisations that support them, backing new and innovative approaches and organisations, as well as tried and tested models “.
A new section has been added to the guidelines intended to provide, for the first time, explicit policy directions for distribution to the UK-wide funding portfolio, which are not applicable to the England funding portfolio.
These include the desirability of supporting projects across the UK which have a focus on learning, growing or bringing people and communities together. It also states that when funding UK-based organisations to provide benefit outside the UK and Isle of Man, the focus should be on the “exchange and interchange of best practices and new approaches, and should prioritise the involvement of communities and civil society organisations”.
Jay Kennedy, director of policy and research at the Directory of Social Change, said that a proposal to require an element of partnership funding is potentially problematic. He said that match funding and partnerships need to serve a purpose, and not just be a “piece of bureaucracy that can get in the way of funding good work”. He said that this sort of requirement can also “incentivise false partnerships”.
There is also a new focus on outcomes and impact, where the consultation document states a focus on “delivering measurable outcomes and impact of funding, sharing data, evidence and learning on what works to help the development of policy and practice beyond the Fund’s own activities”.
Kennedy said of this that “measurable outcomes are great, but not everything that you want to fund is going to have measurable outcomes, or it may not be proportionate to try to measure them”. However, he added that the sharing of data, evidence and learning is a positive step, and one that the DSC has been putting to BIG and government for many years.
The consultation is open for 12 weeks, closing on Friday 12 August. Following the consultation, a final version of policy directions will be issued to the Big Lottery Fund in Autumn 2016. To read and respond to the consultation, click here.
