People and Places: Medium grants

You can apply if you are a UK-based:

• voluntary or community group

• registered charity

• co-operative

• social enterprise or community interest company

• not-for-profit company limited by guarantee

• statutory organisation such as a local authority, health board or school.

Partnerships from all sectors are welcome to apply as long as the lead applicant is one of the organisation types listed above. Your organisation must have a management committee with at least three unrelated members aged 18 years or over.

We cannot fund individuals or sole traders, profit-making groups or those not established in the UK. A majority of the people that will benefit from the project must live in Wales.

Check if you’re eligible

Want to double check your project is eligible? We’ve created an eligibility checker tool below for you to use at any time.

Please speak to us before starting your application. You can contact us by emailing wales@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk or calling our advice line on 02921 680214 between 9.00am and 5.00pm, Monday to Friday.

Eligibility Checker

The projects we fund

People and Places: Medium grants offers funding for projects where people and communities are working together and using their strengths to make positive impacts on the things that matter to them the most.

We want to fund projects that are:

• supporting organisations to adapt or diversify to respond to new and future challenges 

• supporting communities adversely affected by COVID-19 
• supporting communities and organisations to become more resilient to help them to respond better to future crises. 

 Successful applications must be:

People-led

We believe that people understand what's needed in their communities better than anyone. So it’s important to us that you involve your community in the design, development and delivery of the activities you’re planning.

You might want to ask yourself:

• Have I spoken to the people in my community?
• Have the people in my community told me what they need and what’s important to them?

• Have I listened to them and used what they’ve said to create my project?

This short video explains it well. It might be helpful when you’re putting your application together.

Strengths-based

We’d like to support people and communities to build on the knowledge, skills and experience they already have, to make the changes they want.

You might want to ask yourself:

• What’s already working in my community?
• How will my project add to these positive things that are already working?
• How will my project make the most of any resources that are already helping my community?

We’ve developed StrengthChecker, a free tool to help third sector organisations to prioritise the strengths they need to build on most for their development and growth. Please use this tool to help identify any organisational development costs

Connected

We want to know that you’ve a good understanding of other activities and services in your community. We’d like to see how you’ll compliment these. So you can add value to what’s already there.

You might want to ask yourself:

• Have I spoken to other groups in the area that are doing something similar to my project?
• Have I thought about how we can all help each other?

Delivering your project in Welsh

When you receive funding from The National Lottery Community Fund for a project in Wales, you'll need to deliver it in Welsh as well as English and make sure all your activities are available to your community in both languages. For further information read our guidance on managing your project bilingually or contact the Welsh Language Team at welshlanguage.advice@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk

Make sure you include costs of delivering your project bilingually, such as translation costs, in your budget.

What can you spend the money on?

People and Places can fund capital and revenue costs up to £100,000, such as equipment, staff costs and refurbishments. We can fund projects for up to five years.

We can’t fund:

• alcohol

• profit-making/fundraising activities

• recoverable VAT

• statutory activities

• political or religious activities

• paying someone else to write your application.

We remain open to all applications. We are here to help and want to talk to you about your ideas to support communities to adapt, recover and thrive.

If you’d like to apply for a grant, please contact us by emailing wales@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk or calling 029 2168 0214 between 9.00am and 5.00pm, Monday to Friday.

We’ll put you through to a Funding Officer in your area for an informal chat with you about the idea you need funding for. If you’re ready to apply, we can send you an application form.

Before calling, please take a look at our Guidance Document for further information. You can also download a sample application form below.

Related documents

• Guidance notes (PDF 3MB)

• Sample application form - medium grants (PDF 778KB)

• Land and buildings guidance - medium grants (PDF 276KB)

• Standard terms and conditions (PDF 218KB)

• Capital terms and conditions (PDF 174KB)

• Managing your project bilingually (PDF 115KB)

Get help using our electronic forms here.

Reduce your environmental footprint

The National Lottery Community Fund cares about our environment and are always striving to manage our environmental impact. We encourage and support projects and communities to do the same. Learn more about how you can make your project or event more environmentally sustainable and perhaps save money at the same time.

Checks

As an organisation that gives out public funds, we carry out some checks on the information you provide us. Learn more about our checks.