Lottery £50m to shelter VCS from funding cuts

The Big Lottery Fund has made £17million available to fund an additional 650 charitable and community projects through its two main open grants programmes, Reaching Communities and Awards for All. The grants, which have been made to a range of projects from family support schemes to employment and debt advice services, are designed to help the sector meet increased demand for support from communities and individuals most in need.

Over the next few months, BIG will also be offering grants of up to £10,000 to close to 1,000 existing BIG grant holders in the last 18 months of their projects to review the way they work and explore ways of becoming more sustainable. Activities could include developing a more effective operating model, partnership working, or finding new ways to deliver activities in future.

Projects that are having a particularly significant impact will also receive an additional year’s worth of funding to continue their project and carry out plans to make their projects more sustainable in the long term.

Lottery £50m to shelter VCS from funding cuts

Bit more on this in the Guardian from Peter Wanless, Chief Exec of BIG:

In tough times such as these, an intelligent funder needs to trust its grant holders to do the right thing. Charities are calling for cash now to help address the fundamentals of their business, not a complicated application form to justify additional expenditure on a specific project or an opportunity to bid for a brand new venture.

That’s why the Big Lottery Fund is announcing today at least £50 million of extra good cause cash across England, all of which we will award before the end of the financial year, to provide immediate relief, much of it with (almost) no questions asked.

Big Lottery Fund announces £50m extra charity and community funding