Leaders with Lived Experience Pilot Programme

We can fund a wide range of items for up to two years. Below are some examples of these. This list is not exclusive, so you should contact us if you’re unsure.

We can fund:

• equipment (e.g. office equipment)
• one-off events
• staff costs
• training costs
• transport
• utilities/running costs
• volunteer expenses

We can’t fund:

• statutory activities
• contingency costs, loans, endowments or interest
• electricity generation and feed-in tariff payments
• paying someone else to write your application
• political or religious activities
• profit-making/fundraising activities
• recoverable VAT
• alcohol
• building purchase or refurbishment – also known as capital funding (if you require capital funding some of our other funding programmes can support this; you should contact us if you would like to discuss).

This application process will have two stages:

First stage:

About your project

You need to tell us:

• the name of your project
• where your project will take place
• all the costs involved in your project
• whether your project targets a specific group of people and, if so, who?

What you want to do

You’ll have the opportunity to tell us what you want to use the funding for. You can do this in writing or by filming a short video.

We will consider two key areas when making a decision on your application:

1. Whether you meet at least one of our funding priorities, which are to:

• pilot and learn about different ways we can develop leaders with lived experience
• support work to change the way lived experience is viewed and valued in decision making
• encourage innovative examples of how you can develop lived experience at all levels of an organisation

2. Whether your organisation is led by lived experience leaders.

Second stage:

The National Lottery Community Fund gives out money that has been raised by players of the National Lottery. For this reason, we have rules about what information we need in order to fund you. We won’t ask you to provide the below financial and legal information in the first stage of the application process. If you are successful in the first stage then we will ask you for this information in the second stage. Once we have received and checked this information fits with our requirements you will receive the funding.

These details are required in order to receive any funding from The National Lottery Community Fund, and lots of other funders. It is worth ensuring that you have this information or begin to work towards having this information to help you progress through this process.

Details we will need

Contact details

We need the information below for two unconnected people from your organisation, one of whom will be the legally responsible contact for any grant awarded. By ‘unconnected’ we mean not related by blood or marriage, in a long-term relationship, or living together at the same address.

• full name
• Address/telephone number or email
• date of birth.

Organisation details

• Organisation type (e.g., charity, community interest company, social enterprise)
• Your organisation’s full legal name, address and postcode.

Accounting details

To be eligible for funding you need to produce annual accounts, or have set up your organisation less than 15 months ago and not yet produced them. We will need to know:

• your accounting year end date
• total annual income.

Bank statement

To be eligible for funding you need to have a UK bank account in the name of your organisation.

If you get through the first stage, you’ll need to send us a copy of a recent (within the last three months) bank statement from your organisation. It must show your:

• organisation’s legal name
• address the statements are sent to
• bank name
• account number and sort code
• date

See more detailed guidance on what we look for on your bank statements (PDF, 600KB)

This pilot programme 2019 is now closed

We're no longer accepting applications to this programme. Following the pilot we launched the Leaders with Lived Experience 2020 programme and this is now also closed to applications.

Applications for the pilot programme 2019 (now closed)

If you are successful in the first stage of funding, we’ll be in touch to find out some more information about your organisation. Once we have received this information, we will conduct our checks and will be able to inform you about whether you are successful or not.

We are keen to support small organisations. To achieve this, we'll consider your organisation's income as part of our overall decision.

We aim to let you know our final decisions by the end of April 2019.

Checks

As an organisation that gives out public funds, we carry out some checks on the information you provide us. Learn more about our checks.

Get in touch

If you need more information, advice or support in completing your application (or need the application materials in an alternative format) please contact us at livedexperience@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk or call our advice team on 0345 4 10 20 30.

Text relay users, please use 18001 plus 0345 4 10 20 30.

We’d also love to hear your feedback on how you found the experience of applying.

Application questions to be answered via word document or video. Video applications may be accompanied by a budget table and contact details. Videos must be no longer than six minutes and word documents no longer than four pages of A4.

1) What is the name of your organisation (if you have a charity number please provide it)?

2) What role does lived experience play in your organisation?

We are only interested in organisations that:

• were set up by a lived experience leader and/or
• are run by lived experience leaders and/or
• whose leadership reflects those they seek to support

We are interested in the way that lived experience informs the work you do, and we want to know how it is embedded in your project and/or organisation. We understand that lived experience provides valuable insights and knowledge for positive change. We don’t need to know the details of your own personal history, or story.

3) What do you want to do and how do your project activities fit with one or more of the programme priorities?

The three funding priorities are to:

• pilot and learn about different ways we can develop leaders with lived experience
• support work to change the way lived experience is viewed and valued in decision making
• encourage innovative examples of how to develop lived experience at all levels of an organisation

We’d like to hear about your project proposal, what you want to do, how you’re going to do it, and what you will achieve at the end of the project.

We imagine the types of proposals we will get might include:

• leadership programmes or schemes such as peer support, mentoring, training or coaching
• ways to embed lived experience leadership within an organisation so that it can become more sustainable, e.g. succession planning, support packages for wellbeing, improving governance structures
• challenging and championing the best ways to embed lived experience leadership in service design and delivery
• projects bringing lived experience expertise to a theme, location, service or sector where this hasn’t been the case before

4) Where in the UK will your project be working?

Please list every area you will be delivering this work. You can list by local authority or geographical area or town/city e.g. Staffordshire or West Midlands or Lichfield.

5) Please tell us the costs you would like us to fund

You should use budget headings, rather than a detailed list of items.

For example, if you're applying for pens, pencils, paper and envelopes, using 'office supplies' is fine.

6) Who does your project aim to support

e.g. people/communities who have experienced homelessness, addiction, a health issue

7) Who is the person leading on your application?

• Name :
• Contact email:
• Telephone number:

Please submit your application to livedexperience@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk

Personal Data

Our Data Protection and Privacy Notice gives information about how we store and use personal data and the lawful basis for this. Please read the full notice on our Data Protection page or contact us to request a hard copy. The notice may be updated from time to time.