Biggest distributor of National Lottery funding to empower third sector to showcase how they change lives and communities

UK charities and community groups will receive better support and tools to generate and use evidence and showcase the difference they make to society, thanks to plans published today by The National Lottery Community Fund.

As part of its strategy, ‘It starts with community’, the largest distributor of National Lottery funding in the UK has set out a blueprint to make it easier for third sector organisations to find and share the evidence, ideas, and good practice they need to demonstrate best how they change lives and communities.

Tom Walters, Deputy Director of Evidence and Impact at The National Lottery Community Fund, said: “Each year, thousands of people talk to us about what’s important to them and their communities. The issues they face. The solutions they have. We know from these conversations - especially with smaller organisations – that reporting impact, managing data, and accessing learning can be challenging - and we want to help to fix that.”

Learning from practice and using evidence to design projects can really help communities guide how National Lottery resource is deployed. As one respondent highlighted: “When you're applying for a grant, one of the most important things is to prove that the grant is needed… to show there's a genuine need.”

The National Lottery Community Fund’s plans, presented together in the organisation’s new Evidence and Impact Strategy, aims to help make this process easier. As Walters explained: “We want to work together with third sector organisations to gather clear and robust evidence and take collective action to transform society. To use evidence and learning more effectively. To tackle poverty, disadvantage, and discrimination. To inspire social change.”

Some of the new commitments from the funder include:

• Setting up an online learning bank for best practice where communities will find new ideas, easy to access evidence, and applicable real-life solutions, and discover new opportunities to collaborate.

• Making it easier for grant holders to access networks; toolkits; and mentoring, coaching, and learning opportunities offered by the Fund and partners across the UK.

• Establishing a diverse panel of community advisers from across the UK – advising The National Lottery Community Fund on learning and co-designing new ways and safe spaces in which communities can learn, connect, and develop.

• Making better use of evidence to promote positive change and demonstrate the difference that communities make with the help of National Lottery funding.

As part of these proposals, The National Lottery Community Fund pledges to ‘practice what it preaches’ and put in place better internal systems and processes needed to listen to and learn from what it hears from communities – as a whole organisation. And then, to share this with others.

Tom Walters continued: “Communities are our North star. They’re the reason we do what we do. And while we’re the largest funder in the room, we’re rarely the expert. Especially when it comes to lived experience. That’s why we’re making a promise to ourselves, too. To put in place better systems and processes needed to listen to what our communities tell us. To grow from it. As a whole organisation. And then, to share this with others.

The Fund’s new Evidence and Impact Strategy stets out five key priorities to focus on. These are:

• Learn with communities – to collectively gather and share evidence and create more opportunities for communities to learn, connect and develop.

• Lead with evidence by harnessing evidence and learning to make the biggest difference to society’s serious challenges

• Enable our equity-based approach so that we use learning about poverty, disadvantage, and discrimination to target our funding and communications

• Demonstrate our impact - using evidence and data to show the reach of our funding, and the impact this has on communities, and to make better funding decisions in future

• Take an evidence-based approach to funding – by using evidence and learning from outside and inside The Fund to make decisions.

The National Lottery Community Fund will be developing its plans for the community learning panel over the next few months. Charities, grassroots groups and organisations serving communities with protected characteristics that might want to get involved can get in touch via community.learning@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk.

In the last three years, The National Lottery Community Fund has funded projects in every local authority and, last year, awarded over half a billion pounds of game changing grants to nearly 14,000 projects.

To find out more visit tnlcommunityfund.org.uk.