[WiLT] Awards for All England to close

[WiL Admin]

Awards for All England to close

Awards for All England, the lottery grants scheme for community
groups, will close in its existing form in March.

The Big Lottery Fund has announced that Awards for All England will
close, but groups will still have access to equivalent levels of
lottery funding through programmes run by the four providers that
administer the current scheme.

Arts Council England, the Heritage Lottery Fund, Sport England and the
Big Lottery Fund will handle applications individually through
existing or new programmes.

The scheme, which has been running for seven years, offers grants of
between £300 and £10,000 to small groups and community organisations.

A spokeswoman for the BLF said the new system would make the
application forms shorter, but the total amount of money available
would remain the same.

Groups whose work falls into more than one category will be able to
apply to more than one provider, she said.

Ben Wittenberg, director of policy and research at the Directory of
Social Change, said there was a lack of transparency about how the
decision to implement the new structure was made.

"With all grant funding schemes, it's impossible to backtrack to see
if new systems are better than what came before them," he said.
"Thousands of organisations depend on these grants, so any kind of
administrative change will have a big impact on them."

The new system could create problems for some groups, which might now
have to apply for more than one source of funding, said Wittenberg.
The biggest concern was that there was no guarantee that funding
levels would remain the same, he added.

Awards for All will continue to run in Scotland, operated by the Big
Lottery Fund and Sportscotland. The Heritage Lottery Fund in Scotland
will give grants through its own schemes, while the Scottish Arts
Council will form a new organisation, Creative Scotland, to distribute
the money.

http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/News/DailyBulletin/859132/Awards-England-close/AB1E8BCC240F6CA7CB10A80A79992277/

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Statement Issued: Monday 3 November 2009

Lottery's Small Grants Scheme Set For Change

Following a review of the Awards for All England programme, changes
are to be made to the small grants scheme's existing format when it
comes to an end in March 2009.

Currently Awards for All England is a joint Lottery grants programme
supported by Arts Council England, Big Lottery Fund, Heritage Lottery
Fund and Sport England.

>From 1 April 2009 each of the lottery distributors supporting the
scheme will have their own small grants programmes up and running.
Applications can still be made under the current arrangements until 31
March 2009.

The change will mean that each distributor can better address the
needs of their applicants and the themes they support. Overall, across
all the distributors, it is anticipated that new money available for
small grants in 2009-10 will be comparable to money that was available
to community groups through Awards for All in 2008-2009.

To ensure this change will be as seamless as possible, the
distributors will each run their own small grants programme as
follows:
· Big Lottery Fund will launch a new small grants programme on 1 April
2009 awarding grants of £300 to £10,000 to local communities in
2009-2010.
· Sport England will provide small grants for sports ranging from
£300 - £10,000 from 1 April 2009.
· Arts Council England will provide small grants through their
existing 'Grants for the arts' programme, supporting awards between
£1,000 and £100,000.
· Heritage Lottery Fund small grants will be provided through the
existing 'Your Heritage' (£3,000 to £50,000) and 'Young Roots (£3,000
to £25,000) schemes.

http://www.awardsforall.org.uk/