The Big Lottery Fund (BIG)
Every year BIG gives out millions of pounds from the National Lottery to good causes. Money goes to community groups and to projects that improve health, education and the environment.
BIG breaks down its funding into various programmes, which include:
Reaching Communities
This funds community projects whose aim is to achieve one or more of the following four outcomes:
- People having better chances in life, with better access to training and development to improve their life skills
- Stronger communities, with more active citizens working together to tackle their problems
- Improved rural and urban environments, which communities are better able to access and enjoy
- Healthier and more active people and communities
It provides grants of between £10,000 and £500,000 over a 5-year period.
The People's Millions
This is a partnership between the BIG and ITV in which viewers vote for the community-based project they feel should receive funding. It provides grants of between £20,000 and £60,000.
Examples in Suffolk include the East Anglian Sailing Trust (EAST), which provides disabled people and their carers with regular opportunities to access and enjoy sailing activities and promotes enhanced independence, confidence and community involvement. EAST received £50,000.
Awards for All
This is a lottery grants scheme funding small, local, community-based projects in the UK. The maximum grant is £10,000 per project per year. Examples in Suffolk include the Benhall Ex-Servicemen's Club, which received £10,000 for its community access improvement project.
Heritage Lottery Fund
This is the largest dedicated funder of the UK's heritage. It has around £255 million a year to invest in new projects that will give people better opportunity to experience, enjoy, care for and protect the nation's heritage. The fund has a number of different grant programmes, ranging from small community grants to large national projects.
Examples of projects funded in Suffolk include Woodbridge Tide Mill, which received £958,298 from HLF for its restoration project; and RSPB Minsmere nature reserve, which received £870,000 for an improved visitor centre, hides and education facilities.
Suffolk Foundation
The Suffolk Foundation is an independent grant-maker for charities and community groups throughout Suffolk, supported by the generosity of local donors. It manages a number of grant schemes for community projects.
Examples in Suffolk include Bury Town Pastors, a group that cares for those involved in or affected by drunkenness and anti-social behaviour in Bury St Edmunds town centre. A grant of £2000 from the Safer Suffolk Foundation has helped volunteers to provide a safe place for the local community every Friday and Saturday night. Also, Fornham All Saints village hall received £5000 for kitchen improvements.
Improve and Prove Fund
This provides grants of up to £5000 and awards of £5000 and £10,000. The grant element benefits projects whose aim is to build the ability of their community to support themselves and reduce the need for state intervention. The awards element of the fund rewards groups or organisations which have undertaken a project with little or no public funding and achieved outstanding outcomes.
Landfill Community Funders (LCF)
The LCF enables landfill operators and community groups to work together on projects that improve the lives of communities near landfill sites. The main providers of grants in Suffolk are Viridor, Biffaward and WREN.
Rattlesden Community and Sports Pavilion received a £27,500 grant from Viridor toward construction costs.
Garfield Weston Foundation
The Garfield Weston Foundation supports a wide range of organisations with grants of varying sizes. Projects in the categories Arts, Community, Education, Welfare, Medical, Religion, Youth, and Environment have recently been supported. The Foundation is a large funder which provided totalling more than £26 million to over 1500 projects in 2009.
Great Barton received a grant for phase 3 of its village hall improvements, which included a new annex and changing facilities and improved entrance and toilets.
Garfield Weston Foundation website
Henry Smith Foundation
The Henry Smith Foundation makes grants to a range of projects and organisations from two programmes.
The Main Grants Programme is for grants of £10,000 or more per year. There are two types:
- Capital Grants - one-off sums for purchase or refurbishment of a building, or purchase of specialist equipment
- Revenue Grants - funding for up to three years to meet core costs (including salaries and overheads), or the running costs of a specific project (including staff)
The Small Grants programme is for sums of less than £10,000 per year.
The Foundation also provides County Grants of £500 - £20,000 to small organisations working in the counties with which it has an historical association - which include Suffolk. To be eligible, your organisation must have an annual income below £250,000, or below £1 million if it works county-wide.
The Henry Smith Foundation is interested in the following areas: Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME); carers; community service; disability; domestic and sexual violence; drugs, alcohol and substance misuse; ex-Service men and women; family services; healthcare; homelessness; lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender; mental health; older people; prisoners and ex-offenders; prostitution and trafficking; refugees and asylum seekers; young people.
Henry Smith Foundation website
Esmee Fairbairn Foundation
The Esmee Fairbairn Foundations supports the charitable activities of organisations which have the ideas and ability to achieve change for the better. It likes to consider work that others may find hard to fund: perhaps because it breaks new ground, appears too risky, requires core funding, or needs a more unusual form of financial help such as a loan.
The Foundation commits £30 million annually toward a wide range of work. Its main interests are in the arts, education and learning, the environment, and enabling disadvantaged people to participate fully in society. Grants are made from a number of separate funds: Main Fund; Biodiversity Programme; Finance Fund; Food; Museum and Heritage Collections; New Approaches to Learning.
Esmee Fairbairn Foundation website
Lloyds TSB Foundation
This Foundation funds local, regional and national charities working to tackle disadvantage across England and Wales. Seventy percent of the money is to meet core costs. The focus is on underfunded charities which can make a significant difference to the lives of disadvantaged people by helping them play a fuller role in the community.
The Community Programme funds core work to enhance the role of disadvantaged people. The Foundation is particularly interested in work that achieves this through:
- Improved social and community involvement
- Improved life choices and chances
- Helping people to be heard
Example projects in Suffolk include Signpost Gunton in Waveney, which is a partnership including the local Baptist church. It received £15,000 to provide a youth worker for its Dreamworx programme, supporting vulnerable young people in a disadvantaged area of Lowestoft.
EON Source Fund
This makes grants of up to £20,000 to community groups and not-for-profit organisations that wish to consider and implement ustainable energy projects in their buildings. The project must benefit young people, the elderly, and/or people in fuel poverty.
EDF Energy Green Fund
Funding is provided for the installation of small-scale renewable energy technology, or for feasibility studies.
For more information on 'green' funders, please visit the Green Suffolk website.
Sport England
Sport England is the largest funder of community sports projects in the UK. Funding is available under the following headings:
Themed rounds
Projects which meet the criteria within a given themed round will receive grants of over £10,000 to grow and sustain participation in community sport.
Small grants
Grants of between £300 and £10,000 are given to support sport in communities. The application and award procedures are kept as simple as possible.
Innovation Fund
Money is awarded to a limited number of large projects to try out new ideas which could be widely applicable. The risk of failure is greater, but so is the potential reward.
Sportsmatch
Sums of between £500 and £100,000 are provided to clubs and other bona fide organisations which need Sport England grants to bring in other funding.
This list is not exhaustive and there are many more sources of funding out there. We recommend that you design your project proposal with the emphasis on the need that the project addresses, rather than on possible funding sources. We can help to identify funding opportunities and assist with access to money.
