The National Lottery Community Fund (NLCF) has announced it will be doubling the maximum amount of funding it offers to smaller charities in its new strategy, but will not be switching to more unrestricted funding.
Its grants programme for smaller charities, Awards for All, will be doubled so organisations can apply for up to £20,000 that can be used within two years instead of one.
NLCF announced the changes as part of its new seven-year strategy, in which it pledges to distribute at least £4bn of National Lottery funding by 2030.
Speaking to Civil Society, NLCF chief executive David Knott said the charity’s new strategy represented the “biggest National Lottery change for over 20 years”.
However, when asked whether NLCF would offer more unrestricted funding, he said it would “always primarily be a project fund”.
NLCF also announced a £15m programme that aims to connect communities, which will open around August.
It will release another £9m from its 10-year £100m Climate Action Fund this year too, making its overall investment £35m so far.
More flexibility
NLCF received over 18,000 responses to its strategy consultation process which launched in April 2022.
Knott said it took over a year to create the resulting strategy, called “It starts with community”, due to the magnitude of responses received, which was much more than anticipated.
He emphasised the demand for the funder’s grants by stating that NLCF receives a grant application every three minutes and funds one every seven minutes.
The four focuses of the funder’s strategy are people coming together, being environmentally sustainable, helping children and young people thrive and enabling people to live healthier lifestyles.
At least £4bn to be distributed by 2030
The funder aims to distribute at least £4bn of National Lottery funding by 2030, according to its strategy.
In the last five years, NLCF has distributed £3bn to over 75,000 projects.
Knott told Civil Society: “£4bn is our confident commitment and our baseline, but actually we are ambitious to do more in the years ahead from growth in all of those different streams of funding.”
One of these streams of funding is dormant assets funds, of which NLCF is to be the distributor.
Core costs
When asked if the funder will be supporting more organisations’ unrestricted and core costs, Knott said it will “always primarily be a project fund”.
“We’re going to continue to be flexible and adaptable and open as a fund, so on debates like core costs or infrastructure funding, we’ll continue to do a balance of core costs and project funding but we will always be primarily a project fund,” he said.
“We recognise and understand that as a project fund, organisations will be looking beyond the project cycle and will always work to support people as best we can.”
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