National Lottery Good Causes Call For Evidence: response from The National Lottery Community Fund

Introduction

Good Cause funding has profoundly shaped society over the past 30 years. During the 30th anniversary of The National Lottery, we spoke to some of the first grant holders from 1995. National Lottery funding transformed their communities and organisations, and some of those earliest grants continue to make a difference.

These differences are local and personal. A neglected woodland has become a thriving community space, hosting everything from outdoor gyms to history walks. Babies have grown up to become trustees of the organisations that helped to give them the best start in life. Despite harsh weather, schoolchildren in Shetland have learned climate-friendly ways to grow their own vegetables. From Belfast to Powys, charities have helped people turn their lives around, and seen them give back, supporting communities in their turn.

Looking ahead, we need Good Cause funding to evolve, innovate and be open to change so the National Lottery is relevant to the ever-changing needs of our communities for the next 30 years. We welcome the review’s commitment to the principle of additionality and its emphasis on genuine empowerment at a local level, strengthening the connection between National Lottery players, communities and National Lottery investment, and on simplifying access.

Our approach to each theme is driven by the guiding and simple truth of our strategy: It starts with community. We fund communities across every part of the UK and our local funding officers have deep connections to the people and places we serve, combined with a national presence that facilitates the sharing of learning and understanding of impact UK-wide.

We do this in the following ways:

• Local by design, embedded in communities: It starts with community provides our shared strategic framework across the UK, while giving each country the flexibility to respond. Our deep local relationships, evidence and insight shape funding decisions, while our country committees reflect the policy directions we receive from devolved governments

• Community-led and shaped by lived experience: communities have always shaped our funding. National Lottery Awards for All provides a simple and responsive route for grassroots funding. Participation, lived experience, and community power are becoming increasingly embedded into the Fund's funding, governance and decision-making. We have a strong track record in enabling local decision-making by collaborating with partners. We are now exploring the civic infrastructure needed to empower residents for the long-term, which we highlight in this submission

• Connecting grassroots action to long-term change, backing people and places: responsive funding allows communities to pursue their own priorities. Our UK-wide reach means we share evidence from this work to make a bigger difference, identifying shared challenges, and encouraging learning. The combination of these elements helps us to understand the concerns of communities and enable them to have the power, voice, assets and capabilities to shape their future and change wider systems

• Trusted for our independence, we can support communities that others cannot reach. Our arm’s-length status allows us to take a long-term view and fund communities according to need. Our equity-based approach ensures we target investment to the places most in need, a principle we know the public wholeheartedly supports ^{[1] Footnote details}. Across our funding, 78% of our grants offer targeted support to diverse community groups furthest from support. The remaining 22% of the projects we funded were open to all ^{[2] Footnote details}

We distributed £939.7 million in National Lottery funding last year to organisations delivering change in each of our four mission areas. Our missions support communities to: come together, be environmentally sustainable, help children and young people to thrive, and enable people to live healthier lives. Our recent impact report shows that, thanks to National Lottery players, 7 million people regularly benefit from the projects we fund, many of them through the small grants that make up 86% of our awards ^{[3] Footnote details}. We target our funding where the need is greatest; last year 47% of our grants were awarded to places that are in the 30% most deprived across the UK.

Our funding is in significant demand. We receive a new idea once every three minutes and typically fund around 40% of the applications we receive. The scale of need for community funding is driving our work to deliver a faster, simpler service to applicants and make more time for our funding teams to be available for relational work with communities.

That level of listening and learning has shown us the strength already present in communities: we have seen people come together rather than turn away, create welcoming spaces, support each other through difficult times, quietly improve the places around them, and rebuild connection, trust and hope. We know that communities thrive when they have greater influence over decisions and resources that affect them and believe that devolution of power should not stop at institutions; it should extend into communities themselves.

Our response focuses on how the next phase of the National Lottery can combine independent grant-making, deeper community participation, simpler access and stronger local relationships with UK-wide learning and coordination.

Empowering communities to take decisions

The evidence is clear that communities in this country do not feel empowered enough to influence local decisions ^{[4] Footnote details}. Research shows concerning variation across the UK and between different parts of society, with young people least likely to say they have influence over decisions that affect them ^{[5] Footnote details}.

Yet communities can also prove something both simple and profound: that connection, care and collective action remain among the most powerful resources we have. Communities have told us they want us to recognise that they hold knowledge, relationships, leadership, pride and a deep sense of what their places and people need ^{[6] Footnote details}.

Our core purpose is to equitably fund and support communities to act on the issues they care about and enable them to build on their ideas and strengths. We have a strong track record of co-design and participatory approaches. It starts with community, our strategy to 2030, was developed by engaging with 18,000 people and organisations, ensuring it reflects what communities say matters most. We have since strived to make inclusive participation a core part of The National Lottery Community Fund, prioritising approaches that give communities a stronger role in shaping decisions that affect them. We now want to go further through both existing and new innovative approaches.

Recent examples include:

• Our Youth Voice Advisors provide recommendations on specific funding decisions and help deliver training. We also have youth governance roles on our four country committees and our Board ^{[7] Footnote details}. Engaging young people in varied ways leads to richer thinking, stronger decisions, and more inclusive and impactful outcomes.

• We recently launched a pilot programme, You Decide, whereby we are funding eleven expert partners to test new ways of involving communities in decisions about grant making. We are keen to learn from these You Decide pilots and whether they could grow to support greater participation in other parts of the UK and in wider National Lottery funding.

• We are investing in resident-led decision-making for the long-term through the Community Wealth Fund in England. This builds on the Big Local programme and will empower disadvantaged communities to decide how funding is used to improve social infrastructure and civic capacity. In the autumn we will be announcing priority places with high need that will each receive a share of this £175 million long-term fund which combines National Lottery and Dormant Assets funding to make both go further.

• The Building Communities Trust in Wales was set up with £16.5 million of National Lottery money to independently plan, manage and deliver Wales’s largest, asset-backed community development programme in 13 places. Residents of those places decided how, when and where to use the funds.

• In Scotland, a residents’ panel recently made awards totalling £15 million for the Edinburgh Regenerative Futures Fund with a shared goal to tackle poverty, racism and climate change in the city. We worked with local and national organisations and contributed £2 million of National Lottery money.

Across this work, we have learned that meaningful power requires more than transferring money. Communities need genuine authority, time, trusted relationships, appropriate support and good governance. Different places will need different forms of support, and confidence and capability often grow over time.

That experience shapes how we now approach participation across the Fund. Our role is not simply to fund community-led activity, but to create the conditions in which communities can exercise real influence over decisions and resources that affect them. We welcome the opportunity the Call for Evidence presents to increase community empowerment and explore opportunities for deeper collaboration across The National Lottery to support this.

Funding what’s important to the public

The Call for Evidence highlights the essential role The National Lottery has played supporting local communities across the UK to improve their lives and the lives of their neighbours. It stresses that Good Cause funding must deliver on the public’s priorities and have the maximum impact possible. We share the concern that not enough people know about Good Cause funding or see it as a driving factor in their decision to play The National Lottery.

Media and Good Cause promotion

There is an opportunity to demonstrate further the breadth and benefits of Good Cause funding through traditional and new forms of media. This is currently a shared responsibility with distributors, the operator and the National Lottery Promotions Unit.

As well as our own activity, which supports grant holders to tell their story, and acknowledge lottery funding, we collaborate with the wider National Lottery ecosystem on a range of campaigns, including significant TV moments such as the National Lottery Big Night of the Musicals and the National Lottery Big Bash for New Years Eve.

The media played an important role in participatory grant making while delivering the ‘People’s Projects’ between 2005 and 2019 with ITV and the Scottish Sunday Mail newspaper group. The 2019 winners show attracted 3.5 million viewers and evidence showed it increased awareness and positivity about The National Lottery.

The love of The National Lottery and the connection between players and investment could also be revitalised through DCMS’s ambition to reinvigorate local media, particularly where it is used to give communities a voice in our national story. At this level there are opportunities both for promotion and for building participation. For example, we have previously worked with newspapers in North Wales to encourage their readers to vote on projects shortlisted for micro grants. The media landscape and competition for attention are both an opportunity and challenge for the future.

This should be a shared priority for the operator, distributors and Government, embedded in the player experience as well as wider communications.

Working with elected representatives

Our strategy prioritises investment for the people and communities that have the greatest need. Our funding starts from the needs of each community – the issues they face, the systems they are navigating and the solutions they design. Working with elected representatives and their offices helps us understand these needs. Our work with all levels of government across the UK highlights issues at a local, regional, city or country level that may otherwise get overlooked in the gap between national policy making and daily life. Effective partnerships combine community insight and learning, democratic leadership, sector expertise, resources and independent grant making.

Three recent examples of our work with governments show the potential of this way of working:

• Our strong relationship with devolved governments in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. We operate a four country, UK-wide model which aligns our strategy with the policy directions and local priorities of each government. Our recently announced £60 million partnership with The Department for Health in Northern Ireland, Together for Families, aims to shift child and family support from crisis driven interventions to early, community-based help, aligning National Lottery and public-sector transformation funding. This has only been possible because we combine our UK-wide reach and resources with excellent local connections and partnerships.

• Live Well, is a scheme shaped by local people and in partnership with Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), the NHS and the voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise sector. It aims to tackle inequality in areas where social infrastructure has been under resourced for too long. It brings together services, opportunities, money and capacity and re-imagines how they can work, shifting them to serve people better. We have provided funding for a network of 100 Live Well spaces which has been backed with £30 million from GMCA and eagerly await the results of this pilot.

• Loved and Wanted is a £1.8 million initiative designed with the Mayor of London to establish a network of community spaces across London. We developed the programme at pace to meet the city’s priorities. The new community hubs will improve access to mental health support, employment and financial advice and are supported by a communication campaign emphasising community connectedness.

We hear from communities every day the importance of bringing people together, strengthening connections and bridging divides. Based on our experience of working at a local, regional and country level, we believe that what matters most for the future is designing approaches that reflect need (local or national), maximise impact for communities, and deliver public value. The future of the National Lottery Good Cause funding offer can start from this principle to find simpler ways of working and avenues to a better, clearer, more responsive approach.

Practically, we want to explore how National Lottery Good Cause funding can work more collectively and coherently at a community and regional level. This includes stronger partnerships with Mayors and other elected leaders around shared place priorities, including shared local intelligence, and a more coordinated National Lottery presence in place. It also means making it easier for organisations whose work crosses Good Cause boundaries to easily access the right funding and expertise.

The statutory remit of the National Lottery Community Fund

The statutory language which underpins our Good Cause still describes expenditure as “charitable or connected with health, education or the environment”. While this has enabled a broad range of funding, the commonly used description of this Good Cause as “charity” no longer adequately reflects either the organisations and communities we support or the role the Fund plays.

We believe there is a case for modernising the language 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.

This would also reflect the evolution of the Lottery itself. By the time of the 2003 Jowell reforms, the last major review of National Lottery Good Cause funding, the Community Fund and New Opportunities Fund, the two predecessor bodies which now form The National Lottery Community Fund, were responsible for a 50% share of Good Cause funding.

Simplifying access

We welcome the Call for Evidence’s focus on simplifying access. 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. We recognise that we have more to do ourselves, and we are already working to make our own funding faster and simpler while protecting the stewardship of National Lottery funding as public money. A faster, simpler experience for applicants will free up more time for relational work, convening and learning with communities.

With just three questions of no more than 650 words, the National Lottery Awards for All application form illustrates this goal in how it is designed to be simple and easy to use. This is reflected in high levels of customer satisfaction, which have consistently been above 85% for our small grants programme. In 2024 we doubled the maximum grant available to National Lottery Awards for All applicants to £20,000 and allowed this to be used for up to two years. Our evaluation of the new product found that 70% of projects supported more people and that the changes increased capacity, confidence and credibility, enabling communities to focus on longer-term, community-led impact ^{[8] Footnote details}.

We know, however, from sector research that community organisations can often feel that they are on a treadmill as they are passed from one funding stream to another ^{[9] Footnote details}. Applying for funding from trusts and foundations alone creates a significant overhead for the charity sector, which was estimated at anywhere between £442 million and £1.1 billion per year in 2022 ^{[10] Footnote details}.

We believe that simplification cannot stop at the boundaries of individual Lottery distributors. 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.

For example, National Lottery Awards for All Scotland is a partnership between The National Lottery Community Fund, sportscotland and Creative Scotland. This programme supports grassroots, community projects that bring people together and help communities across Scotland thrive, with grants between £300 and £20,000 lasting up to two years. 

Promotion, access and reach of this grassroots funding programme is strengthened by working in partnership. Each National Lottery distributor uses their own channels and networks to raise awareness of the funding, reaching more communities across Scotland. Applicants do not need to apply to each of the National Lottery Good Cause funders separately, nor decide which they should prioritise. Instead, they experience one grassroots funding ‘front door’ with a simple application form, and no deadline for applying. Applicants also do not need to wait a long time for grant decisions – instead through monthly decision meetings, groups are generally provided with a decision within 10 weeks of their application. 

The National Lottery Community Fund handles all enquiries and initial assessments of applications, payments and monitoring, drawing on a shared Memorandum of Understanding across partners. Our place-based relational approach allows us to engage directly with organisations, particularly new or lower capacity ones, to provide early bespoke advice during the application process. Final decisions about grants are made by each distributor to reflect their strategic priorities. Using this partnership approach, the distributors successfully delivered £2.2 million of grassroots funding to celebrate the recent 2026 Commonwealth Games. It also enabled rapid responses to the Covid-19 pandemic and cost of living crises. In total, the programme awarded over £17 million funding last year for 1,420 projects.

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. 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.

The future for National Lottery Good Causes

The National Lottery must be relevant to the whole of society and rebuild the connection between players, communities and Good Cause funding. This will mean building a much stronger convening presence on behalf of The National Lottery in communities.

In galvanising change to meet the ambition of this review, we offer three principles for reform:

• Greater public and community participation should be combined with independent grant-making and the principle of ‘additionality’. This will safeguard The National Lottery through political cycles and ensure it continues to invest for the long term ^{[11] Footnote details}. Community empowerment requires political impartiality. Greater participation can give people and communities a strong role in shaping priorities and decisions as a feature of the wider National Lottery system. We want reform to build on the expertise and independence of distributors while significantly strengthening community voice and partnership with elected leaders.

• The Good Causes system needs stronger collective leadership and coordination. This could help to remove barriers to collaboration and drive shared accountability, common standards, shared data and insights, a simpler applicant experience, coordinated work in places, and critically a clearer public story about the impact of Good Causes. It could ensure the themes of this review are continuously revisited and embedded across the system.

• Devolution should bring National Lottery funding closer to places and communities while retaining the benefit of UK-wide coordination. We want strong partnerships with Mayors, devolved governments and other elected leaders, alongside community participation and independent grant-making. Local approaches should be able to reflect different priorities, while UK-wide capability enables learning and action on challenges that cross geographic and administrative boundaries.

We believe this is the opportunity for deeper collaboration between distributors to achieve all three principles. Taken together, these principles point toward a National Lottery system that is simpler for communities to navigate, more participatory in how priorities are shaped, more coordinated in place-based activity, and clearer about collective impact.

The National Lottery will continue to have an important role in helping communities respond to major social challenges, from opportunity for young people and health inequalities to social connection and a changing climate. Our approach starts with community and builds towards larger scale change where that is needed. We are ready to use our funding relationships and convening capability and reach to test the approaches set out in the submission. We welcome the opportunity to work with government, other distributors and communities on the next ambitious phase of The National Lottery.

Evidence sources and references

1. National Lottery Good Cause Funding, Ipsos Mori polling for the DCMS, July 2026, slide 23: 63% of respondents felt funding should be focused on communities with the most need.  ↩

2. See National Lottery Community Fund, Our Impact. ↩

3. See National Lottery Community Fund, Our Impact. ↩

4. Only 26% of people in England feel they can personally influence decisions affecting their local area. Community and Engagement Survey 2025/26 - influencing local decisions: report - GOV.UK. ↩

5. See for example: Young People and Politics, A report on young people’s information literacy and political engagement in Scotland, January 2026 (PDF, 0.7 MB) .↩

6. From Neighbours to Neighbourhoods; learning on how to boost pride in place’, The National Lottery Community Fund, November 2022. ↩

7. From decision-making to culture change: developing our approach to Youth Voice ↩

8. ‘Communities Making the Difference’, our impact in 2024-25, The National Lottery Community Fund ↩

9. For example, see IVAR: ‘All in it together’: Charities’ hopes for reviewing progress on Open and Trusting Grant-making - IVAR  ↩

10. ‘Giving Pains: the cost of grant-making, Assessing the cost of foundation funding applications’, Pro Bono Economics and Giving Evidence, July 2022 ↩

11. The Tailored Review of the National Lottery Heritage Fund, for example, found a clear rationale for their independence as arms-length from government. See the Tailored Review of the Heritage Lottery Fund, 2017 (PDF, 19 MB) ↩