The National Lottery Community Fund (NLCF) has responded after concerns were expressed about a change to the eligibility criteria for one of its main funds.
From the start of this month, NLCF stopped accepting applications from national or multi-region projects to its Reaching Communities grants programme.
The change came after the funder updated the programme in April 2025 to better align with its strategy to 2030.
Since the update, NLCF has found that projects working across the whole of England, or across multiple regions, “no longer align well with our Reaching Communities priorities” and therefore announced it would only accept applications from projects in one region from 1 June.
Several professionals working in the sector have expressed concern that the changes may mean that small communities spanning multiple regions will now be excluded.
Others have criticised NLCF for failing to communicate the changes clearly or more prominently.
In response, an NLCF spokesperson said: “We understand that changes to our grants matter to communities, and we want to reassure organisations that we still support work across different parts of the country.
“Our funding remains open to all communities, but our priority is supporting the places, people and communities that need it most.
“We encourage any organisation interested in applying to speak with our advice team to explore the most suitable funding route, recognising the time and effort involved in preparing an application.
“We have been in conversations for several months with organisations who we were aware were considering applying under this specific element of Reaching Communities.
“Applications already in the system will be considered as normal. Our website has been updated so that no one starts an application unnecessarily.”
Grants of between £20,000 and £20m are offered through the programme, with the average award being £319,000 over three years in 2025.
‘Lack of transparency’
Trust specialist Jo Jeffery flagged the “significant change” on social media this week, highlighting the lack of “any news article or social media announcement”.
Her post sparked reactions including by freelance fundraiser Sarah-Jane Pickering, who said organisations working across regions had been struggling to secure funding through the programme over the past year.
“The changes at National Lottery have huge implications in terms of what they believe community to be. Their new definition of community appears to be very much place-based,” she wrote.
“Yet increasingly, we know this isn’t true. So many communities are joined by lived experience. Be that by diagnosis, shared backgrounds, by trauma, by age or life-stage. In 2026 community means a lot more than who lives nearby.”
Fundraising consultant Rachel Cross accused NLCF of a “lack of transparency” over the change and called for a more prominent announcement.
