The National Lottery Community Fund (NLCF) wants to see an overhaul of its statutory remit to give a greater focus to defining the good causes it supports as helping communities, rather than simply giving to charity.

In its response to a government call for evidence on its funding, the NLCF says that “the commonly used description” of “charity” to describe a good cause “no longer adequately reflects either the organisations and communities we support or the role the Fund plays”.

It said that instead in future “we believe there is a case for modernising the language” it uses to describe its work “to recognise community explicitly within the statutory description of National Lottery Good Causes”.

“This would better reflect the Fund’s purpose today: strengthening communities, supporting social infrastructure and enabling people to act together on the issues that matter to them, while preserving the independence of our existing remit,” it added.

It also says that this change would “reflect the evolution of the Lottery itself”, and that the last major review of its good cause funding took place 23 years ago.

Greater Collaboration

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport's call for evidence on the future of National Lottery good cause funding launched in July and closed last week.

This has a specific focus on ensuring grant making reaches "the areas that need it most" and also to find ways to reduce the bureaucracy involved.

The NLCF welcomes the Call for Evidence's focus on simplifying access to funding.

"We hear from applicants and community organisations that accessing funding can be time-consuming, repetitive and difficult to navigate, particularly where they are applying across multiple programmes, funders or National Lottery distributors," it said.

To help tackle red tape the Fund says that "there is a significant opportunity for the Lottery family to work more closely together so that applicants experience a more coherent and easier-to-navigate funding system".

It points to the National Lottery Awards for All Scotland funding scheme, which involves the Fund alongside SportScotland and Creative Scotland, as an example of a partnership it would like to see replicated.

"The partnership in Scotland has grown over decades and demonstrates that distributors can retain their distinct expertise and responsibilities while giving communities a simpler and more coherent route into funding," said the Fund.

"We would welcome exploring whether National Lottery Awards for All could again provide a test bed for deeper collaboration across The National Lottery family, including more common approaches to applications, data and applicant support."

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