The Big Lottery Fund has said it will take steps to ensure that charities win more of a £550m pot of grant money it is jointly providing along with the EU.
Last year BIG announced that it would be be providing half the cash in the Building Better Opportunities Fund, match funding cash provided by the European Social Fund. At the time it said it would commit £260m.
The money will be distributed through a single application process, but will be used to match prorities decided by Local Enterprise Partnerships.
Speaking at a funding conference yesterday organised by NCVO, Andrew Morris, deputy director for England at BIG, said the money will not be exclusively available for charities, but BIG is encouraging voluntary organisations to apply.
“We can’t guarantee that funds will go to the voluntary sector,” said Morris. “But we can design a way to give the voluntary sector the best possible way of competing on equal terms for the funds.”
In particular, BIG will encourage the voluntary sector’s access to the fund by “increasing cash at source, giving grants instead of contracts, giving money up front, providing additional lottery-only development grants, giving support and simplified monitoring and better access”.
Morris said 36 out of 39 Leps had agreed to work with the Big Lottery Fund to see their European money doubled.
Morris said three quarters of the funding would go to helping people into employment.
Other key spending areas include “providing support for social enterprise”, “financial inclusion”, “digital inclusion” and “skills and volunteering”.
The Big Lottery said it was increasing efforts to make voluntary organisations aware of the European money coming their way next year and working hard to increase their access to the fund.
Each Lep would be “personally responsible” for deciding how to use its allocated European money, said Morris.
“The Lep will decide how much money they want to opt in with us. That is their decision. They have all this money and say to the Lottery, ‘you can have this much of it’. So we said we will match that bit depending upon the intervention rate,” he said.
“The matching will all be done behind the scenes,” said Morris. “So there is one application process, one assessment process, one decision making process and one grant managing process. But two funds in one. That’s one way we are trying to make it easier. So administration will be at least halved because you are only going to see one funder rather than two."
