The National Lottery - Partnership Funds

We're looking for partnerships where everyone takes responsibility to work toward their shared goals together, while offering their own insights and perspectives. We call this 'generous leadership'.

With the COVID-19 pandemic still with us, we'll continue to support people and communities most adversely impacted by COVID-19. We can support you and your partners to:

• continue to deliver activity, whether you're supporting your existing users, responding to the immediate crisis or undertaking recovery activity
• change and adapt, becoming more resilient in order to respond to new and future challenges.

In order to support communities to thrive, we aim to:

• build strong relationships in and across communities
• improve the places and spaces that matter to communities
• help more people to reach their potential, by supporting them at the earliest possible stage.

You can expect us to be flexible and responsive to your community's needs:

• whether you need long- or shorter-term funding
• whether your request is for a particular activity or to create more fundamental change
• whether the funding is to support a single organisation or to bring organisations together.

Given the ongoing pandemic, we expect continued high demand for our funding and we will have to make some tough choices. Please bear with us as our funding teams respond to the demand.

We can fund a partnership (both new partnerships, and one that's already been set up) as long as they're led by an eligible organisation. They can be made up of the types of organisations we've listed below.

Who can apply?

• voluntary and community organisation
• registered, exempt or excepted charity
• charitable incorporated organisation (CIO)
• not-for-profit company limited by guarantee - you must be a registered charity OR have a not-for-profit 'asset lock' clause in your articles of association
• community interest company (CIC)
• school
• statutory body (including local authorities, town, parish or community council)
• community benefit society
• a co-operative society - you must have a not-for-profit 'asset lock' clause in your society rules and also be registered with the Financial Conduct Authority.

Who is ineligible?

• individuals
• sole traders
• organisations based outside the UK
• anyone who's applying for another organisation
• organisations that look to make profits and share these profits out privately - including companies limited by shares, organisations without the right asset locks, or organisations that can pay profits to directors or shareholders.

We can fund:

• direct costs associated with delivering activities in your community - this can include project staff, materials, equipment, room hire, volunteer expenses and project evaluations
• organisational development - this can include business planning, testing new ways of working, staff training and development, developing governance and leadership, tech or IT upgrades/purchases, developing and sharing impact and learning, and increasing capacity to support collaboration and partnership working
• core/fixed costs to support the day-to-day running of your organisation - this can include core salaries, rent, utilities, equipment
• the purchasing, refurbishing or developing of land and buildings.

We cannot fund:

• activities that make profits for private gain
• religious activities (but we can fund religious organisations if their project benefits the wider community and does not include religious content)
• activities that replace government funding (for example, we can only fund school activities that happen outside of normal teaching hours)
• activities that benefit individuals, rather than the wider community
• political activities
• things you've spent money on in the past and are looking to claim for now
• loan repayments
• the topping up of organisation reserves.

Grants of £10,000 are available.

For more information, please click here.