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Sarah attended a webinar organised by South Yorkshire Funding Advice Bureau covering the National Lottery Coronavirus Community Support Fund. A representative from the National Lottery Yorkshire and Humber Region was available to answer questions and all in all it was a very useful session. We thought you might be interested to read Sarah’s notes – see below:
At present (June 2020) National Lottery Coronavirus Community Support Fund is replacing Awards for All and Reaching Communities. It offers support for up to 6 months and you can apply for up to £10,000 or for any amount between £10,000 and £100,000.
It is a mix of funding from the Lottery and the government, and if your organisation doesn’t wish to accept Lottery funding you can ask that your award comes directly from the government pot.
The key principle is the same as it has been for many years at the Lottery in that they would like to fund the difference that your project makes to people in need.
This fund cannot help you with the rent on your building if you are not meeting / supporting people in need at present. The fund is for things that you are still running despite coronavirus or new ideas / activities that you have started because of the new situation. Priorities are:
• Those people facing a disproportionate disadvantage due to coronavirus
• Those people who are vulnerable
• Connecting communities
We learned at the training that the National Lottery use the word ‘charity’ on the application form as a short-hand for a not for profit organisation. But remember – you don’t have to be a registered charity to apply. However, for this fund, schools and parish councils are not eligible, which is new, as previously both have been able to apply, certainly to A4A. Parent teacher associations could apply, if independently constituted, with a bank account, and two unrelated people on the committee, but our trainer felt it was unlikely they would receive a grant from this fund, if their project was something that only related to school.
The Lottery wants to know that you involve people, in the design or the delivery or both, so you must show that you have consulted with your community. They understand that this may be different to how you usually would do this. It could be telephone calls, it might be flyers in food parcels, using social media or asking previous project participants what they would find useful if they were using the service now.
It is an online application process but they are accepting email applications and video proposals for those people who cannot submit an online application. More information is asked of the applications that are for more than £10,000.
Bear in mind that proposals should be about the ‘now’ and they are for projects that will be spent by March 2021. It’s not about ‘coming out of lock-down’…
You can’t apply for both a small award and a large award, as the same organisation. If you have an idea for something small and to your mind, stand-alone, but you also want to apply for a larger project, the Lottery suggests putting the two together in a large application. So do one application only for a project that costs £6,000 for example plus the other element of what you need funding for, this other element would then have to cost no more than £94,000.
The National Lottery Coronavirus Community Support Fund has to be assigned by September. They are trying not to be too ‘First Come First Served’ about it as they are aware that some really good projects could come in later over the summer. But my take on this was – start applying now.
Sarah has the presentation which she can share with any interested groups and both Sarah and Jonathan are available for funding advice. Please email us at enquiries@ddcvs.org.uk
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