Support for Meithrin Natur grant holders

We’re looking for an organisation or partnership to support projects in Wales funded by Meithrin Natur.

You must understand how the natural environment can support children’s health and wellbeing.

By natural environment, we mean giving people positive and meaningful experiences with nature and outdoor spaces. Like parks, rivers or forests. It’s about helping them access, interact with and learn to care for nature and these spaces. 

Your organisation or partnership must:

  • work with children under 5 years old
  • work in nature and the environment
  • work in health and wellbeing
  • use safeguarding practices, particularly for children under 5 years old

To apply for this funding, you must have experience of helping other organisations with:

  • capacity building. We’ll want to know how you’ve helped improve confidence and skills in other organisations
  • co-production with children under 5 years old and their caregivers. Co-production means how you’ve designed projects or services with the people supported by them
  • designing and caring for outdoor spaces that benefits people and nature
  • evaluation and sharing their learning
  • working in partnerships
  • working bilingually in Welsh and English
  • working across Wales

When we say children under 5 years old and caregivers, this includes:

  • babies
  • expecting parents
  • family, foster carers, paid or unpaid carers
Area
Wales
Suitable for
Voluntary organisations, community organisations or partnerships
Funding size
Up to £1 million, over 7 years
Total available
£1 million
Application deadline

12pm, 30 October 2025

Apply

Before you apply

Sign up to one of our webinars about this funding:

How to apply

Contact us for a chat about your idea

We’ll put you in contact with a funding officer in your area within 5 days of contacting us. We’ll ask you about your idea and discuss if this funding is right for you.

There are 2 stages to the application process.

Stage 1

If you’re suitable to apply, we’ll ask you to email us information about your:

  • idea
  • experience
  • organisation

Find out what information you’ll need to email us.

We’ll let you know if we want to take your application to the next stage in 2 weeks of contacting us.

Stage 2

If you’re successful, we’ll ask you for documents about your project. For example, a project plan. You’ll need to submit your final application by 30 October 2025.

We’ll make our final decision by early 2026

We’ll let you know if we’re going to fund your project or not. If you’re successful, we’ll tell you what you need to do next.

If it's difficult or impossible for you to send us this information

You can contact us if you have any communication support needs.

We’re happy to talk about other ways for you to tell us about your idea.

What information you need to apply

We ask for the contact details, home addresses and dates of birth of 3 different people from your organisation. We need a different email address for each person

One person should be someone we can talk to if we have any questions about your project. The others should be a senior members of your organisation, who'll be legally responsible for the funding. All of them need to live in the UK.

These 3 people cannot be related. Related can mean:

  • related by marriage
  • in a civil partnership with each other
  • in a long-term relationship with each other
  • related through a long-term partner
  • living together at the same address
  • related by blood

We ask for the legal name of your organisation. And its address. And what type of organisation it is

Check these details before applying. Also check any registration numbers if you have them – like a charity number or company number. It will slow down your application if these details are not right.

We ask for details about your organisation’s accounts

We’ll ask for:

  • a copy of your most recent accounts
  • a copy of your draft accounts, if your accounts are older than 10 months
  • a copy of your 12 month projections, if your organisation is less than 15 months old
  • your accounting end date
  • your total income for the year

Read and agree to our terms and conditions

You can read the terms and conditions.

We do checks on the information you give us

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

How we use your personal data you give us

You can read our Data Protection Statement.

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 in our guidance on reducing your environmental footprint.

Who can apply

Who can apply

You can apply if your organisation is a:

  • constituted voluntary or community organisation
  • constituted group or club
  • registered charity
  • charitable incorporated organisation (CIO)
  • not-for-profit company
  • community interest company (CIC)
  • statutory body (including local authorities, town, parish and community councils) 
  • community benefit society

Partnerships and groups of organisations can also apply

You can apply for this funding as a single organisation or as a group of organisations.

If you’re in a partnership, we’ll give our funding to the lead organisation. They can then pay the other partners for the work they do.

The lead organisation must:

You need at least 3 board or committee members who are not related

Related can mean:

  • related by marriage
  • in a civil partnership with each other
  • in a long-term relationship with each other
  • related through a long-term partner
  • living together at the same address
  • related by blood

All companies who apply must have at least 3 directors who are not related in any of these ways. This also applies to companies that are also registered as charities.

Who cannot apply

Who we cannot accept applications from:

  • schools
  • individuals
  • sole traders
  • organisations based outside the UK
  • companies that can pay profits to directors, shareholders or members (including Companies Limited by Shares)
  • organisations applying to more than one of our programmes for the same project over the same period. This is because you cannot get duplicate funding for something we're already funding you to do. It’s OK to apply to another programme if you've already had an unsuccessful decision though
  • organisations funded through Meithrin Natur
  • one organisation applying on behalf of another

We can fund some political activity and campaigning

But only if:

  • the activity is not party political. This means that it must be about policy, practice, or legislation rather than opposing or supporting a political party
  • the activity is meant to help the cause of your organisation and benefit the public or society

We will not fund projects where political activities are the main purpose. But we can fund projects that are mainly about campaigning.

We do not accept applications written for you by private businesses or consultants

Be careful of businesses or consultants who say they can support you with your funding applications. They might say they’re acting on the Fund’s behalf, or they’re a preferred supplier of the Fund. They could even offer to write an application for you.

We do not accept applications from these types of businesses or consultants.

But it’s ok to get help from support organisations - like your local authority or County Voluntary Council (CVC)

They may be able to give you support and advice on writing your application.

What we’re hoping to fund

What we’re hoping to fund

Your organisation or partnership must:

  • work with children under 5 years old
  • work in nature and the environment
  • work in health and wellbeing
  • use safeguarding practices, particularly for children under 5 years old

You will be helping other organisations with:

  • capacity building
  • co-production with children under 5 years old and their caregivers
  • designing and caring for outdoor spaces that benefits people and nature
  • evaluation and learning

Working with stakeholders

To help organisations funded by Meithrin Natur to deliver their projects well, you’ll need to:

  • understand how nature improves the health and wellbeing of children under 5 years old
  • build strong relationships with them and agree on the best ways to work together
  • communicate well with different audiences
  • support their projects, from planning to development and delivery
  • be flexible and able to respond to their changing needs
  • work closely with us to make sure projects meet their goals, on time and within budget

Capacity building

To build capacity in the organisations funded through Meithrin Natur you must:

  • share approaches that'll help them to run their projects
  • create guidance and resources
  • build confidence and skills

Share approaches that'll help organisations to run their projects

We'll expect you to help organisations to define and measure connecting with nature. For example, guidance or frameworks on nature connection, mental health and wellbeing.

Create guidance and resources

You'll need to create guidance and resources to help organisations run their projects. This could include information about:

  • child development. In particular, working with children under 5 years old. And with their families or caregivers.
  • nature and the environment
  • health and wellbeing

Build confidence and skills

You must support organisations to deliver their projects successfully. And help them to handle new challenges.

Co-production

You must help organisations to:

  • use co-production with children under 5 years old and their caregivers
  • work in partnership
  • use co-production tools

Help organisations use co-production You'll help organisations collaborate with the people they support. Co-production should happen throughout their project, including when they plan, develop and deliver the project. You might help them do this through training or coaching.

Support partnership working

You'll give guidance and best practice on how they can work in partnerships with other organisations.

Share co-production tools for children under 5 years old

You’ll support organisations to use co-production in their projects. As well as build on their own knowledge of co-production. This means helping them to design their projects with the children and caregivers they support. For example, you could share advice, techniques or approaches.

Evaluation and learning

We’ll expect you to support organisations to evaluate their projects. You must show them how to:

  • plan or commission evaluation to get useful evidence that supports their project aims
  • use and share what they've learned

You’ll need to share safe and ethical research practices with these organisations. And we’ll expect you to follow GDPR.

For example, you might help achieve these objectives by helping them:

  • measure how connected someone feels to nature
  • create outcomes or indicators
  • make evaluation plans

You’ll gather and share learning from all the projects with the organisations and the Fund.

As you’ll be working with children or young people. Or adults at risk

You need to have a policy in place that explains how they’ll be safe. If you get funding you’ll need to follow our expectations on safeguarding children and adults at risk.

The NCVO website has child safeguarding advice and information services.

Your project must be delivered bilingually in English and Welsh

We want people in Wales to access the projects we fund in the language they need. You should make sure people can engage with your project in English and Welsh.

You can include costs for bilingual services in your proposed budget. For example, the cost of translating promotional material.

To help you deliver a project in English and Welsh, you should:

For more information contact the Welsh Language team by emailing welshlanguage.advice@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk. 

What you can spend the money on

We can fund:

  • the running costs of your project
  • equipment
  • one-off events
  • staff costs
  • training costs
  • transport
  • volunteer expenses
  • part of your organisation’s overheads

We’ll fund the delivery of the project. And we’ll fund some of the indirect project costs.

Also known as overheads. This could include things like rent or insurance. Or part of a salary for someone not working directly on the project. Like a senior manager or an office admin worker.

For example, the project you’re applying for could be half of the work your organisation does. In that case, we could fund half of your overheads.

This is sometimes known as full cost recovery. Find out how to work out overheads in our guide to full cost recovery.

We cannot fund:

  • retrospective costs (costs for things that have already happened, or you’ve already paid for)
  • alcohol
  • contingency costs, loans, endowments or interest
  • paying someone else to write your application for you
  • fundraising activities (where you use our funding to raise more money)
  • VAT you can reclaim
  • religious activities (we can fund religious organisations if their project benefits the wider community and does not include religious content)
  • statutory activities
  • activities that help children or young people with their schoolwork during school time
  • overseas travel
  • projects that take place outside of the UK
  • activities that make profits for private gain
  • cash that will be given directly to individuals