Managing funding over £20,001

Once you’ve been awarded over £20,001 of funding from us, here’s what to expect. This page will also let you know about the things you need to do too.

As a grant holder, you’re now required to make sure you recognise the National Lottery support your project has had. You can do this by using our grant holder logo on your website, social media and across any printed materials.

How to manage your funding

What we need

We ask for one bank statement dated within the last three months. So, we can check the account you want us to pay the grant into.

We'll not be able to assess your application if you do not have a bank account and bank statement that meet our requirements below and you’ll need to reapply once you have these set up. If you’re not sure contact us

We need:

1. A bank account that meets our needs in our Financial Controls and Financial Governance Guidance
2. A bank statement that meets our needs.

Our bank statement needs 

We need to see a copy of your recent bank statement as soon as possible. This is so when we’re ready to start making payments, we’re sending them to the right account. This is what we're looking for on your statement.

You should share the good news with your community and your local elected representatives (like your MP/MSP/AM/MLA):

• Tell the world about your funding via social media.
• Get in touch with your local press.
• Download our logo to tell people about your National Lottery funding.
• Order free plaques, stickers, bunting and more.

We encourage you to keep telling everyone about the difference your project is making throughout the life of your funding.

You need to decide when you’d like to start your project. If you’re not sure you can always talk to your funding officer about it.

It has to be within six months of the date we offered your funding. This date will be on the offer letter we sent you. If you can’t remember the date, contact us.

When recruiting staff with the funding we’ve awarded you, make sure that:

• you’ve advertised openly for all roles
• you’ve used our logo in all job adverts
• people can ask for applications in more than one way – like by phone and email
• people have at least two weeks to apply after the job advert is published
• there’s no discrimination against anyone applying
• if you’re a registered charity – the job advert includes your registered charity number.

This is where you’ll have a conversation about your plans. And to figure out how you’ll work together.

Before the funding induction chat, you might want to tell them about:

• any match funding you have (and if you definitely have the match funding sorted, or you’re still waiting for a decision)
• if you plan to hire people for your project
• whether you need a lead in payment to hire people or to set things up.

They’ll keep you up to date on what’s going on, how to get the ball rolling, and support you with your funding from start to end.

You don’t need to wait for your funding officer to get in touch with you
If you have any questions at all, talk to your funding officer. They’re there to support you, from your first conversation, right through to the end of your funding with us.

You’ll get most of your funding through regular payments – as agreed with your funding officer. But if you need some money to get the project started, tell your funding officer so they can arrange an earlier payment.

For capital costs (such as vehicles, land or buildings), you’ll need to claim the money back from us when you need it.

How to claim back capital costs
Send us:

• an email telling us about the costs (for vehicles, you’ll also need to mention where you got your quotes from. We normally need at least two quotes, unless you’re buying specialist equipment. And a copy of the vehicle registration documents, once you get them)
• the original invoices (or similar evidence of your payment).

For land or buildings costs, remember to also send us interim certificates from your architect – if you have them.

So that’s all of your income and spending – including invoices and bank statements. As we might ask to look at this information at any time during your project.

If you have over £20,001 of National Lottery funding from us, for a project that lasts two years or more, we’ll ask you to tell us how your project’s going every year - including what you’re learning.

The date you start your project will become the marker for when you’ll send us your yearly progress updates. And there’s more information about what we’re looking for from your updates here.

Learning as you go will also help your project and your community. We have some information on how to gather learning that’s useful for you - as well as tools that will help you gather and use evidence and learning.

What do we mean by evidence?
Evidence is information that's been collected and analysed according to a plan.

Good evidence is based on information that isn’t biased, and represents the range of people or topics you want to find out about.

Your evidence should be appropriate and proportionate. This means how much evidence generation you want to do, is likely to depend not only on what you want to use it for, but also the amount of funding you have.

Generating evidence will help inform your learning and any decisions about changes.

How will evidence help me?
Evidence can help you better understand your community or your work. It can help you answer questions you might have, or test any assumptions you might have made.

Have a look at our evidence principles and step-by-step guide to generating evidence.

We don’t expect things to always go exactly to plan, that would be pretty unrealistic. And changes can be really good for your project - as you might learn new things that mean you have to change the way you work.

Contact your funding officer (if you have one) or contact us.

Some bigger changes we need to know as soon as you find out about them:

• if you do anything that goes against your terms and conditions (for example, your organisation merges with another organisation).
• if you need to change your budget for paying staff – there might be extra costs that crop up like maternity pay, paternity pay, adoption and sick leave. Your organisation might have employment policies that offer more than just the statutory amount. So, if you do need extra money for paying staff, let us know.
• If you want to change your senior or main contact.
• If you want to change your bank account.

If you want to change your organisation, run it by us first - for example:

• you want to change your organisation type (maybe you’re a charity and you’re planning on becoming an incorporated company)
• you want to change your governing document
• you want to change your organisation’s name.

Funding awarded from 1 January 2021 is subject to subsidy control.