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Reaching Communities: England

For areas: England
Open for applications: 7 December 2005
Application closing date: See below for details
Minimum grant: £10,000
Maximum grant: £500,000
Total available: £60 million: year three

Reaching Communities has proven to be a very popular and highly competitive programme. Competition for funds is very high, and difficult decisions have to be made, often resulting in very good projects not being funded.

Any new applicant should note the high levels of interest in this programme and consider whether your project is not better suited to another Big Lottery Fund programme.

Additionally, you should check the programme update section to view the latest news and current success rates for applicants to Reaching Communities.

Communities are at the heart of Reaching Communities. We want to fund projects that respond to needs identified by communities, and actively involve them. We want to fund projects that help those most in need including those people or groups who are hard to reach. We will give support to those projects we think best meet their communities’ needs.

The three-year programme, launched on 7 December 2005, will make up to £60 million available in 2008-09.

Reaching Communities will give grants of more than £10,000 and up to £500,000, including a maximum of £50,000 for capital grants. We have set a maximum overall project size of £750,000 and £200,000 for the total capital element within a project. We will fund projects for up to five years.

We want to bring about the following changes as a result of our funding through this programme:

people having better chances in life, including being able to get better access to training and development to improve their life skills
strong 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.

You can apply to Reaching Communities if you are:

a registered charity
a voluntary or community group
a statutory body, (including schools)
a charitable or not-for-profit company
a social enterprise – a business that is chiefly run for social objectives, whose profits are reinvested in the business rather than going to shareholders and owners.

If you have any queries about this programme, please contact the BIG Advice Line on 0845 4 10 20 30 where you can also obtain an application pack and guidance notes.

The BIG Advice Line will be able to answer any questions you want to ask prior to submitting an Outline Proposal form. Please note that the OPF team will only be able to help you once you have submitted an Outline Proposal form.

Alternatively you can download the pack and guidance notes by clicking on the link on the right. The PDF version of the outline proposal form is for printing out and filling in by hand. Alternatively you can fill in the RTF version of the form in and email it back to opteam@biglotteryfund.org.uk.

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