Big Lottery Fund

At the end of each year we’ll ask you to tell us the percentage of people who actually benefited from your project. So you’ll need to analyse the equality data you’ve collected.

First you’ll need to consider the quality of your data.

• Have you got evidence from enough people to be able to rely on it?
• Do the responses reflect the full range of people who use your project?

Then you’ll need to compare the data you’ve gathered with your original estimates in your Starting your grant form.

If there are big differences for any of the equality categories you’ll need to think about why this is.

• It might be because of weaknesses in the evidence you used to work out your original estimates or the way you’ve gathered your evidence.
• Or it may be because of changes in your project beneficiaries or that you need to do more to promote your project and overcome any barriers that deter people from taking part.

Guidance for lead organisations reporting on behalf of more than one project

Some of our grant programmes make awards to lead organisations managing a portfolio of projects or third party grants. At the end of each year we’ll ask the lead organisation to tell us the percentage of people who benefitted from their range of projects. In order to do this, each project will need to provide the lead organisation with their equality information. Each project will also need to tell how many people benefitted from their project that year, so that the lead organisation can decide how to weight the equality information they receive when reporting back to us. So for example, if within a portfolio, Project A had 100 beneficiaries and Project B had 75 and Project C had 25, the lead organisation would want to weight the equality information provided by Project A and B by a factor of 4 and 3 respectively.

See some examples of how to review your evidence

Following your review you may need to take some corrective action, for example making changes to the tools and techniques you’re using to collect data, or taking steps to reach a wider range of people.

Find out about the action you could take to reach a wider range of people >>>