The Big Lottery Fund has promised to simplify and shorten applications and to try to move away from a top-down approach in its strategic framework for the six years up to 2021, published today.

The two-page document, which chief executive Dawn Austwick (pictured) has described as “more of a statement of intent than a detailed set of directions”, says that the organisation, which awards funds from the National Lottery, intends to simplify its grant-making processes so they “support stronger and better informed judgements” about what they fund.

The strategic framework also says the funder wants to explore “new types of grant-making such as social investment and other funding instruments”. And it says that it intends to be “open and engaged with new approaches and forms of organisations” such as social enterprises, co-operatives and mutuals, and community interest companies.

BIG also intends to be more open and participatory in how it funds, for example through “crowd-sourcing ideas through digital and media”.

Writing in a blog post published alongside the release of its strategic framework, Austwick said she wants to work out how BIG can move itself away from applicants manipulating their own circumstances to get grants.

She wrote: “There will be challenges for us on the way. Two obvious ones are how this approach meshes with outcomes and with needs-led diagnosis. Should we as the funder always prescribe outcomes? How might we co-curate outcomes? And in tackling disadvantage, how do we move ourselves from inviting applicants to paint the worst picture of their circumstances to celebrate and build on the best of what they have to offer?”

The strategic framework says that the first steps for the funder include a pilot programme, called Accelerating Ideas, which will provide a flexible route to funding for “innovative practice that can be adopted and adapted more widely to grow its impact”.

It also has new test-and-learn pilots underway to simplify its open small grants programme, and a new function of its website to create a “digital community”, which will enable people and organisations to network, collaborate and communicate, and open up the fund to its stakeholders.

Austwick wrote that Big Lottery Fund will “invest in digital and other technology, to spot where we can add value, or indeed when we need to get out of the way and let others get on with it”.

'Welcome changes'

Karl Wilding, director of public policy at NCVO, said he was pleased by the direction BIG was taking.

"What they are trying to do is turn the oil tanker around," he said. "They are trying to be a bit less like a government department and a bit more like a voluntary sector funder.

"They have said they are going to bemuch more bottom up and people-centred and that is the right approach.

"They've also said they're going to try and cut the average length of an application form from 20 pages to six and that must be a good thing.

"They've also spoken about focusing on responsive grant-making and I understand that is what a lot of smaller organisations really value."