[WiLT] Big Lottery (UK) consultation on funding priorities

[WiL Admin]

A BIG chance to have your say on priorities for funding

The Big Lottery Fund is urging organisations and individuals across
the UK to engage in the debate on how BIG's funding should be
allocated through its grant programmes between 2009 and 2015. BIG is
expecting to distribute over £2 billion over the coming years.

Big thinking (http://www.big-thinking.org.uk), the Fund's public
consultation launches on Monday, 17 November 2008 and is open to all
individuals and organisations across the UK. The fund is responsible
for distributing half of the UK's good causes Lottery cash.

Sir Clive Booth, UK Chair of the Big Lottery Fund said, "We must
ensure that BIG can make the best possible contribution to communities
and people most in need over the next six years.

Sir Clive Booth continued: "The financial turmoil of the past weeks
has been unsettling for communities across the country. All the
evidence shows that it is the worst off who will be affected most.
This makes our Big thinking conversation even more important. We want
to hear from you how Lottery funding can best benefit communities.
Make your voices heard and help influence where Lottery money goes."

Big thinking is giving everyone the chance to have their say through a
series of national, regional and local face-to-face events and online
channels including questionnaires, blogs and videos at
www.big-thinking.org.uk. It will look back at what has been achieved
from the accumulated experience of more than ten years of Lottery
funding and what the Fund can do even better with guidance and opinion
from the general public plus voluntary, charity and public sector
organisations.

Central to the public consultation will be ten 'BIG Questions' plus
specific questions to reflect the individual priorities of England,
Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Questions include:-
* Do you agree we should have a greater focus in our funding to
benefit those most in need?
* After 2012, when our 60-70 per cent undertaking ends, should we
continue to guarantee a percentage of our funding to the voluntary and
community sector?
* How can BIG best help build lasting partnerships and networks that
support communities and people most in need?
* Are there opportunities for joint funding that BIG should take up?
* Do you agree that the theme of isolation provides a useful starting
point for our funding?

Peter Wanless, UK CEO of the Big Lottery Fund commented, "Everyone's
opinion counts and will help form our funding strategy for the next
six years. A fascinating feature of the consultation is the learning
we can draw from being a UK fund that - within common principles and
values - is developing in significantly different and distinct ways in
each of the four countries of the UK. In Scotland, we have
experimented with a 'single front door' for lottery applications. In
Northern Ireland we have just launched Building Change Trust, a ten
year commitment to support change in the voluntary and community
sector."

Peter Wanless continued: "We listened and learnt from our last
consultation by introducing significant improvements to how we fund,
pioneering full cost recovery and extending the length of our typical
awards up to five years, offering community organisations far greater
opportunity to plan for a sustainable future. Now is the time for
everyone to get involved in what happens next."

Online Consultation survey
http://www.big-thinking.org.uk/consultationsurvey.aspx


See also: Big Lottery Fund 'should be exclusive to the sector' - from
Third Sector Online, 18 November 2008

Community and voluntary organisations should be the only recipients of
Big Lottery Fund money, charity umbrella groups have claimed.

In a consultation about future funding launched yesterday, the BLF is
asking whether it should extend its current commitment to give 60 to
70 per cent of its money to the voluntary sector, which ends in 2012.

In a response to the consultation called Big Thinking, four national
umbrella bodies - the NCVO, Nicva, SCVO and WCVA - have demanded a 100
per cent financial commitment to the sector.

Stuart Etherington, chief executive of the NCVO, said: "In the current
economic turbulence, Big Lottery Fund money will be a vital source of
support to enable the sector to weather these rocky times. This means
putting funding of the sector even more at the heart of what the Big
Lottery Fund does."

Peter Wanless, chief executive of the Big Lottery Fund, said other
institutions such as schools could also have a claim on the money.

"The voluntary sector is hugely important to us," he said. "But we
need to debate whether 100 per cent of our spending should go there.
We've asked the question and we'll have to see what people say."

Wanless faced questions from more than 200 people at the Big Thinking
launch in London yesterday, with international and environmental
issues high on the agenda.

"We had some feedback on the public's attitude to what the National
Lottery should be about, and they put a low priority on international
development," he said. "The public also felt that other people were
active in environmental issues and that they shouldn't be a priority
for us.

"We do need to prioritise. If we emerge from this consultation with
everything having been labelled a funding priority, we won't have done
our job very well."

http://ecm.hbpl.co.uk/re?l=evzokfI450l1k5Iz