Supporting what matters most to different communities across Wales

We believe ‘It Starts with Community’ - with people connecting and working together to make a positive difference to people’s lives and communities across Wales. We want to build on supporting amazing community-led projects and that’s why we are refreshing our funding offer in Wales in line with the direction of travel set out in our new strategy.

When we announced our new strategy, ‘It starts with community’ in June 2023 we said we would support what matters most to different communities by targeting delivery across our four community-led missions and focusing on where there is greatest need and we have set out ambitious targets in our new Corporate Plan which sets out how we will deliver our strategy over the next three years.

John Rose, Director for Wales said: “We are looking to make a bigger difference in the years ahead and to be more focused across our four new missions which are supporting communities to come together, be more environmentally sustainable, help children and young people thrive and enable people to live healthier lives.

“We will be applying a sharper focus on tackling inequality meaning we will focus more on the places, people and communities who experience poverty, disadvantage and discrimination in Wales. We will also be supporting environmental action across all our funding, investing in environmental sustainability and supporting projects to consider the environment even when it isn’t their main focus.”

“We are therefore refreshing our funding offer in Wales to ensure we build on what the public and stakeholders told us were their key priorities for The National Lottery Community Fund in Wales. We have already made changes to the award size of grants through National Lottery Awards for All to a maximum of £20,000, and we’re currently refreshing People and Places and in the early days of developing a new funding stream to focus on the link between children’s wellbeing and the natural environment.”

The last few years have been like no other and meant responding to the COVID-19 crisis in 2020-21 followed by significant increases in the cost-of-living. Since 2022 we have awarded £9,891,262 to 269 projects addressing the cost-of-living challenges. Over the last 12 months the data shows overall demand has reduced, with the majority of awards made for projects providing food such as through breakfast clubs, food pantries or food banks. In response to this trend, we have streamlined priorities for cost-of-living funding to focus on direct impacts in relation to food, heating and short-term liquidity challenges. Find out more

John Rose added: “We know that our crisis response over the past two financial years has played an important role in helping to mitigate the sudden shock of the cost- of-living on Wales’s communities. Our funding will remain responsive to these needs that have been exacerbated by the cost-of-living, but we will focus more on considering how we can support our grant holders to develop their resilience to potential future risks.”

Our current open funding streams in Wales include:

National Lottery Awards for All Wales
A quick way to apply for smaller amounts of funding between £300 and £20,000.

People and Places: Medium grants
Funding capital and revenue community projects from £20,001 to £100,000 and can also fund up to £50,000 projects that directly meet the challenges of cost-of-living

People and Places: Large grants
Funding capital and revenue community projects from £100,001 to £500,000.

Supporting great ideas
Supporting Great Ideas awarding grants from £20,001 to support innovative and strategically important project ideas that encourage positive social change in Wales.

The UK Fund
Funding organisations that want to do more to help communities come together and help make us a better-connected society. Awards start from £500,000 to £5million

Climate Action Fund - Our Shared Future
With this funding we want to involve more people in climate action. And we want to inspire bold and exciting change. It’s suitable for formal partnerships, working across sectors. Led by community and voluntary organisations or public sector organisations.

Funding size

The minimum you can ask for is £500,000. We expect to fund most projects for between £1 million and £1.5 million over 3 to 5 years. We may fund a small number of larger or longer projects. Contact us if you would like to discuss this. We aim to fund up to 25 projects across the UK.

To keep informed of developments to our funding in Wales, please sign up to our monthly grant holder newsletter grant holder newsletter and visit our funding programmes in Wales.

Over the last financial year, The National Lottery Community Fund has made over a thousand awards to community groups and charities across Wales amounting to a total of £36,772,113. These awards are made possible thanks to National Lottery players.