The projects we fund
Our funding criteria
To get funding, your organisation must meet the following criteria.
- You cannot apply if you currently hold a Sustainable Community Buildings grant
This programme has been running throughout 2024. Organisations that have already received grants are not eligible to apply again.
- You must own your building or have an unbreakable lease for at least 6 years
We want to invest in community buildings that will benefit from this funding long-term.
If you own the building, we'll ask to see the land registry title/evidence of ownership (at stage two).
If you lease the building, we'll ask to see your agreement or contract, which should be registered at the Land Registry/Registry of Deeds, as appropriate (at stage two). We also reserve the right to raise further queries.
- Your building must be open and used
We want to fund community buildings that are well-used by communities. We’ll ask for details about the number of people who use your building and its opening hours. We’ll prioritise buildings that can demonstrate they are well used throughout an average week.
- You must not be solely focused on delivering sports activities
Or be affiliated with a governing body of sport (recognised by Sport Northern Ireland). We’ll still consider your application if sports clubs are part of a range of groups that use your community building. However we cannot fund sports clubs that are affiliated with a governing body of sport – for example, the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), Ulster Rugby and Irish Football Association.
If your expression of interest is successful
If your expression of interest is successful, you’ll also need to:
- complete carbon literacy training
We ask that two people from your organisation attend the training. It should take around 2 days to complete. These days might not be consecutive.
It must be a committee or board member and a volunteer or staff member that attend.
- work with a sustainability expert
We ask that you work with an expert (that we provide) to work out how to improve the environmental performance of your building. You’ll work with them to create an environment plan.
Funding isn’t guaranteed
There is no guarantee you’ll get funding to improve your community building.
Even if you complete the training and work with the sustainability expert.
This is because we only have a set amount of funding to improve the environmental performance of community buildings and we want to fund where we can make the greatest impact.
Why it’s good to do the carbon literacy training anyway
There is high demand for carbon literacy training across Northern Ireland. It can also be an expensive course. If you complete it, you’ll learn how to reduce your organisation’s impact on the environment, free of charge, which you can use in the future.
As part of our new strategy, future funding will require organisations to consider their environmental sustainability. This training will help you prepare for this, even if you don’t get funding.
We also expect projects that we fund to:
- have ideas on how to share the benefits of being more environmentally sustainable with their community
We want you to share what you’ve done to empower others in your community.
- monitor, measure and report on the impact of their funding
For example, we’ll want you to track what difference the improvements have made to carbon emissions, energy savings, community engagement and behaviour change.
If you already have funding from us
You cannot apply if you currently hold a Sustainable Community Buildings grant.
You can apply if you have a current grant from us from one of our other programmes e.g. National Lottery Awards for All.
We'll support projects across Northern Ireland
We want to make sure the funding has a wide reach across Northern Ireland. When making decisions, we’ll consider the location of your building and how often it’s used.
We'll take this into account when assessing your application against others that we receive.