The Big Lottery Community Buildings Fund
This fund has £50,000,000 in it and will consider church halls as well as other community buildings. (It is also possible for funds to be used to create community facilities in churches.)
In addition to all the guidelines, there are some application pointers available on the Big Lottery website. The page for the Community Buildings programme can be found here.
The application process
Stage One
The first stage is to ascertain whether the applicant is likely to be a project in which the Big Lottery would be interested.
At this stage the projected OUTCOMES are really important:
- how the project will be a benefit to people
- why the building is a necessary factor in achieving this outcome.
The form is not huge but must be completed in careful detail.
Stage Two
Although as yet none have been sent out, the second stage forms will be far more onerous with a supplementary buildings form that the professionals will have to help with.
These observations may be of help:
- While the top grant possible under this scheme is £500,000, expect very few grants (or even none) to be at that level as too few projects would be helped.
- The application process is competitive; only the best bids on a number of fronts will actually get a grant.
- It is essential to give evidence of both needs and demands for the new facilities. Needs may be identified by a desktop search and assessment of community building provision locally. Demand – that is actual people who actually want to use the space – can be proved by letters from organisations and individuals who will use the space. Expect to present a schedule that indicates a busy building, to justify the investment in it.
- Good management of the construction stage and of the ongoing running must be evident. Most churches do not have good management either in place or planned. Use books such as ‘Managing your community building’ from Community Matters or Maggie Durran’s ‘Making Church Buildings Work’ to establish thorough and effective management that can be included in your bid.
- Expect to include a simple business plan showing how the benefits (outcomes) will be delivered, monitored and measured. Include also a robust cashflow projection for the ongoing running of the building that shows the investment will be looked after in a well-maintained and repaired building for many years to come. (Show that all costs are met from hall income plus savings put away for repair and maintenance.)
- The overall cost of the project must, comparably, not be too expensive. £500,000 may be the right overall cost of the project with the church/hall raising part of that sum themselves; a generous contribution from the Lottery will then help towards the total and trusts can contribute the balance. (A parish in the Diocese was successful with this kind of balance.)
- The church/hall must raise a good sum of money itself. Applicants are unlikely to get help if you they done nothing to help themselves. If the project will cost over £500,000, expect the church to raise at least the money that is needed above that sum, say £300k for a £800k project. For total project costs less than that, would it be possible to raise one third?
- The project should be seen to be value for money compared with what other community hall could provide. So £500k for one small hall is probably overpriced, but the same sum for a well-sized hall with all essential facilities is more reasonable.
- The application must use the language of the voluntary sector and not the church sector. (Out goes PCC, churchwarden etc – try to find other words.) See Maggie Durran’s fundraising book for more detail.
- The timescale should not be protracted. The Big Lottery and most trusts don’t want to put money in your bank for it to just sit there. They will want to know there is good reason to think that you will have the rest of the money in, say, less than a year from their grant offer.
- Ideally create a small group to discuss every question and “bullet-point” the answers. Then one person can draft the completed form for the committee to review and modify, as well as help to collect all the essential appended material.
There should be some winners in London – let it be us. They will result from really thorough, well-rounded applications not luck.
