For the first time in a generation, our flagship funding programme, National Lottery Awards for All, is changing to deliver the promise and ambition of our new UK wide strategy, ‘It starts with community’. 

But don’t worry, the programme known and loved by many remains open to applications, and with no closing or deadline dates, will continue to deliver for grassroots communities across Scotland.  

Read on to find out what’s changing, what’s staying the same and what it means for applicants and grant holders. 

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Key Changes

If your project has broad community benefit, from 15 November you can apply for up to £20,000 and your project can take up to two years. 

Currently organisations can hold two National Lottery Awards for All grants at the same time as long as one is for a specific cost of living activity. This will change and from 15 November you will not be allowed to hold more than one award at a time. 

Each project must be complete before you can make a new application. 

So, for example, if you are awarded £20,000 over 12 months you would be eligible to apply again for another £20,000 once your original award has completed. This means that groups could in theory apply for £40,000 as a maximum over two years but please bear in mind that we cannot guarantee funding for a second time. 

What’s staying the same

In Scotland, National Lottery Awards for All continues to be delivered jointly by The National Lottery Community Fund, sportscotland and Creative Scotland funding community, sports and arts projects. 

If you are applying specifically for an arts or sports project which is not aimed at broad community participation, please note that the maximum National Lottery Awards for All grant you can get will continue to be £10,000 over a 12 month period.   

If you are applying for an arts or sports project please refer to this blog for further guidance.  

Our National Lottery Awards for All application process will not be changing, and you can apply online here. 

There’s no rush to get your application in as we will not be closing the programme. National Lottery Awards for All continues to be a rolling programme, so that means there’s no deadline to apply by. Our turnaround time of 12 weeks from submitting your application to getting a decision remains the same, and we ask you to factor this in when applying. So, if you apply on 15 November your project should not be starting before 8 February 2024. 

We have not changed the types of projects we are looking to fund, or the eligibility for applying. 

Advice for applicants

Project costs 

When applying for National Lottery Awards for All, we ask you to reflect your project costs in the application form. We don’t expect all applications to request £20,000 and projects costing anything from £300 will be considered. The programme is competitive. For the best chance of success, we encourage you to only request the amount your project needs.  

Eligibility 

Our eligibility criteria remain unchanged, and we advise you to read the full list of criteria before applying here. 

If you are applying as a school or organisation working with a school, your project should involve and benefit the community outside of the school – not just teachers, pupils, and parents of pupils. 

Our funding priorities for community projects 

For community focussed projects applying to National Lottery Awards for All, we can fund projects that will do at least one of these things: 

• bring people together 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 

• support people, communities and organisations facing more demands and challenges because of the cost-of-living crisis. 

You can apply for funding to deliver a new or existing activity or to support your organisation to change and adapt to new and future challenges. 

Info for current grant holders

If you received a National Lottery Awards for All grant before 15th November 2023, you would have to complete that project before you can apply again. We will not be providing increases to current awards. 

Contact us

If you have any questions about the changes to National Lottery Awards for All, you can email us at advicescotland@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk or call us on 0300 123 7110. We are always happy to help.