Managing your Living Places and Spaces Funding

Congratulations on receiving funding through Living Places and Spaces. This page will give you some information on how you should manage your project.

You should see the funding in your organisation’s account in the next couple of weeks. When the funding arrives in your account, you can start spending it on the activities you told us about in your application.

If the funding doesn’t go into your account, or you do not want the funding anymore - contact us.

You should share the good news with your community and your local elected representatives (like your MP/MLA):

• Tell the world about your funding via social media

Let people know about your grant and the great work you’re doing in your community thanks to the Department for Infrastructure.

You might want to share the good news on your social media platforms. If you do, please tag us and the Department for Infrastructure:

· Twitter: @TNLComFundNI & @Deptinfra

· Facebook: @TNLCommunityFundNorthernIreland & @Departmentforinfrastructure

• Get in touch with your local press

You need to run any press releases by the Department for Infrastructure first

You should thank the Department for Infrastructure in any press release, or any other type of media activity to do with the funding we’ve awarded to you.

You need to send a copy of your draft press release to The Department for Infrastructure before you publish it.

Send any draft press releases to The Department by emailing press.office@infrastructure-ni.gov.uk and give them at least three working days to get back to you.

The Department will sometimes add a quote to your press release to highlight the importance of the funding. The Department might also use their own press release to promote the funding.

Download the logo to help you promote your project and tell people about your funding

You can download the programme logo to use when promoting your project from our website. The Department can also provide you with this should you have any issues downloading it.

You should keep using this logo on anything you promote around the funding awarded to you.

You need to show us how the logo will look on any materials before you publish them anywhere

You should send press.office@infrastructure-ni.gov.uk a PDF of how the logo will look on all your materials. They need to approve these before they go to print.

Any questions

If you have any questions about publicising your grant, email the Department for Infrastructure at: press.office@infrastructure-ni.gov.uk

We encourage you to keep telling everyone about the difference your project is making throughout the life of your funding.

Please keep records of the things you spend your funding on – and keep track of how it fits with your application. We want to make sure that the funding is being spent the way you said it would.

Keeping bank statements can be a good record of what you’ve spent.

We could ask to see:

• copies of receipts
• invoices
• bank statements.

Relating to your funding for at least seven years. Or at any time during the project.

How to withdraw cash

Anytime you want to withdraw the funding as cash, it must be agreed by two people running the project. You also cannot withdraw more than £100 at a time.

Remember to keep receipts for anything you buy in cash.

What to do if your project changes

If you make small changes to your activities, or what you spend the money on, that's okay - as long as you’re still using the funding to carry out the project you told us you would in your application.

If you have a little bit of funding leftover, or your activities did not cost quite as much as you thought, do not worry. If it’s not more than £1,000, you can use the left-over funding to continue your project for longer - or run similar activities.

You only need to contact us if:

• the main or senior contact for your project changes
• you need longer than 12 months to finish the project
• you've finished the project and have more than £1,000 of funding left over
• completely different people are going to benefit from the project than you first thought
• you want to make changes to the project and spend the funding on very different things
• you cannot carry out the project.

Contact us

In any of these situations - contact your funding officer (if you have one) or contact us.

Hoping to improve your services and activities? Ask yourself, others in your organisation, and your community how the project went. This may also help you to apply for more funding in future.

You could ask:

• What have we learned?
• How many people got involved in the project?
• What did people say about the project or activities?
• What went well?
• What could have gone better?
• What would you do differently next time?
• What difference did the project make to the community?