Both Reaching Communities and Awards for All will be at least as well funded going forward as they have been in the past, the chair and chief executive of the Big Lottery Fund have confirmed.

And there will be a new programme later this year that aims to support ideas where BIG can add value by bringing people together to tackle intractable social problems.

In an interview with civilsociety.co.uk about BIG’s new strategic framework which is published today, Peter Ainsworth and Peter Wanless said that the total lottery income available to BIG to distribute was likely to be in the region of £600m to £650 a year – similar to the levels reached before the Olympics diversion.

In England, where most of the money goes, funding will be split three main ways – between demand-led programmes such as Awards for All and Reaching Communities; a small number of significant strategic investments in very challenging social areas - the themes of which are still being decided – and the place-based programme Big Local.

“We haven’t put in quotas but each of these will be significant chunks of the overall picture,” said Wanless, “with an effort to be less programmatic and more flexible. 

"We’re very keen to take the complexity away from the applicant so that if you’ve got a brilliant idea that’s going to make a significant difference to the lives of people most in need in the country, we ought to be able to help you find a way through to be funded – rather than us having 57 programmes that you have to somehow shoehorn your idea into.”

Expanding on that, Wanless said the funder is devising a new programme to attract 'bright ideas' where BIG might orchestrate coversations between various parties to tackle social problems.  He said further information on this will come later this year.

Three-year strategy

The new framework, titled Fresh thinking - the next chapter, sets out the funder's priorities for the next three years, up to 2015.

No target has been set in the new framework for how much of lottery funding will be allocated to the voluntary and community sector.  Under the previous framework, the target was 80 per cent and the total amount ended up being closer to 90 per cent.  But Wanless and Ainsworth say that while there is no target, the allocation of around 90 per cent is “likely” to continue.

“Grant funding to the sector will remain our absolute core commitment,” said Ainsworth, “but we’re delighted our new policy directions have given us the flexibility to go beyond that.

“I know some in the sector would like us to be compelled to spend 100 per cent of our grants in that sector but we don’t think that would necessarily be the best outcome.”

However, he added that both Reaching Communities and Awards for All would be "at least as big" going forward.

Partnerships and social investment

In terms of new priorities, BIG wants to increase its partnership working with both the public and private sectors, and see if it can help to build the social investment market. This work will focus in the first instance around co-commissioning, finding opportunities where sector groups can genuinely add value to contracts, rather than just offering lowest-cost payment-by-results contracts. 

“We won’t be the people to come to for lumps of capital for social investment,” said Wanless. “We want to support investment-readiness and the understanding and capability of the sector to take advantage of this new flow of money when it comes forward.”

No specific sum or percentage has been allocated for social investment: “It depends what kinds of projects come up and how we think we might be able to help,” said Ainsworth.

Revenue expectations are positive

The overall revenue outlook is good, with lottery ticket sales continuing to grow.  In fact, even though the proportion of good causes money coming to BIG is falling from 50 per cent to 40 per cent, Ainsworth said it will end up with around the same sums as before, thanks to healthy ticket sales.

The funder remains under pressure to reduce its overheads to 5 per cent of income by 2014.  It has already made progress on this, cutting admin costs from around 10 or 12 per cent to 6.8 per cent.  But in order to cross the last part of the bridge, BIG needs, according to Wanless, to be “better, faster, cheaper, more streamlined, fewer iterations between customers and funder, fewer programmes with their own rules and procedures and monitoring arrangements, and more effective management demand.”

Click here to read Tania Mason's interview with Peter Wanless and Peter Ainsworth.