Managing your Community Organisations Cost of Living Fund funding

Congratulations on getting funding from the Community Organisations Cost of Living Fund!

Here’s what happens next.

You should get your first payment within two weeks of our email confirming your grant is set up

This is the email we sent to confirm we got your signed offer letter and terms and conditions, as well as your budget table and bank statement. You can also find your payment schedule in the email. It will say if you’re receiving one or two payments. We’ve used the most recent budget table you sent us to schedule your payments.

If you are receiving two payments we will contact you and ask for a progress update before sending you your second payment.

When the funding arrives in your account, you can start spending it on the activities you told us about in your application.

You can only use this funding for costs incurred to 31 March 2024.

If you have any questions, or you do not want the funding anymore, email us at CommunityOrganisationsCostofLivingFund@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk.

Let people know about your funding and the amazing work you’re doing in your community thanks to Government funding.

Spread the word through social media

Remembering to tag the Government and us:

• X (formerly known as Twitter): @DCMS and @TNLComFund
• Facebook: @dcmsgovuk and @TNLCommunityFund
• Instagram: @dcmsgovuk and @tnlcommunityfund
• LinkedIn: Department for Culture, Media and Sport and The National Lottery Community Fund

When talking about and writing posts about your project, you should thank the Government and use our full name too.

For example, you might post something like:

‘Funding from the Community Organisations Cost of Living Fund delivered by The National Lottery Community Fund, has helped us to (write about what it’s helped you to do here). Thanks to the Government for making this possible.’

Sharing news about your project with your community can be a great way to keep them involved and engaged.

You could issue a press release to local media

If you write a press release, you should include this text to describe your funding:

‘The Government’s Community Organisations Cost of Living Fund is being delivered by The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest community funder in the UK. Grants will support charities and community organisations in England at the frontline of dealing with the increase in the cost-of-living’

Use the logo to help you promote your project and tell people about your funding

Find out how to use the logo when promoting your project.

You should use this logo on anything you promote around the funding awarded to you.

You should keep telling everyone about the difference your project is making throughout the life of your funding.

If you applied for retrospective costs your Funding Officer will confirm the amount you can claim. They’ll also tell you the date you need to submit your retrospective claim form and evidence by.

Please note that we may not pay claims received after 23 February 2024.

Complete the retrospective claim form

To make a claim, you should complete the retrospective claim form (Excel spreadsheet, 81 KB).

You must not claim for more than you included in the budget table you gave us when you accepted your funding. You should use the same cost headings as you used in the budget table.

Eligible retrospective costs are:

• existing delivery staff costs for the services you are applying for
• existing delivery volunteer costs for the services you are applying for
• the share of your organisation’s overheads for the services you are applying for: overall management, administration and support staff costs, rent and utilities.

You must send us evidence for all costs included in the claim

You can send us recent:

• copies of bank statements
• payroll information
• invoices or bills.

If the evidence you send does not meet our requirements we may ask for a refund of those costs.

Make sure that any personal information is removed from the evidence you provide, such as staff names on payroll information or contact details.

Tell us how many people were involved for the time covered in the claim

Including the numbers of people who directly benefitted from your work, as well as how many staff and volunteers were involved.

Email us the claim form and your evidence

Send your completed claim form to: CommunityOrganisationsCostofLivingFund@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk.

Once we have reviewed your evidence, we’ll contact you to discuss it or confirm we have the required information. We’ll make any payments before 31 March 2024.

As part of your application you told us the difference you wanted to make with this funding. We expect you to monitor and record your progress towards meeting your aims so you can tell us about it.

Record the number of people involved in your project

We’ll ask for the number of:

• people your project directly supported
• volunteers you worked with on this project and the number of hours they spent on this project
• your staff who worked on this project and the number of hours they spent on this project.

So make sure you keep records, as we may ask to see them.

If we give you retrospective funding (for the period from 24 July 2023 until the date you received your offer letter), we ask for these numbers in your claim form for the time covered by that claim.

For any work delivered after you received your offer letter, we will ask for these numbers in your end of grant report. In that report, we’d also like to understand what this funding has allowed you to deliver. We’ll ask you to provide an estimate of what those numbers are likely to have been for your existing services if you had not received this funding. These estimates should cover the period from the date of your offer letter to 31 March 2024.

Keep accurate and full records of the things you spend your funding on

And track how these match with the costs you asked for in your application.

This will help you manage your budget effectively and we will ask you to report on how you spent your grant and if you have any grant unspent.

We may ask to see evidence of how you’ve spent the funding

This could include:

• bank statements
• original paper or electronic receipts
• invoices
• payroll documents.

You only need to send us this evidence if we ask for it

We could ask to see it at any time during the project, or for up to seven years after it has finished. You should make sure that you keep your records and evidence safely for this time.

DCMS may also carry out assurance checks to make sure that you’ve spent your funding in accordance with our grant agreement with you. The supplier that DCMS choose to undertake assurance checks may contact you about this after your grant has been made or spent, and we may provide the supplier with your contact details for this purpose.

We do not expect things to always go exactly to plan, and changes can be a positive thing for your project. You might learn new things that mean you have to change the way you work.

Changes that we need to know about before you make them

You should tell us in advance if you:

• do anything that goes against your terms and conditions (for example, your organisation merges with another organisation)
• want to change your senior or main contact
• want to change your bank account
• want to change your organisation - 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.

If you find out about any of these changes you must email us at CommunityOrganisationsCostofLivingFund@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk.

The terms and conditions of your funding give more information on what you must do if you want to make changes.

You must spend your funding by 31 March 2024.

When your project ends, you need to complete the end of grant report which includes your final spend table

Showing how you spent the funding and if you have any funding left.

We’ll ask for the number of:

• people your project directly supported
• volunteers you worked with on this project and the number of hours they spent on this project
• your staff who worked on this project and the number of hours they spent on this project

We’d also like to understand what this funding has allowed you to deliver. In this report we’ll ask you to provide an estimate of what those numbers are likely to have been for your existing services if you had not received this funding. These estimates should cover the period from the date of your offer letter to 31 March 2024.

You can download the end of grant report (Excel spreadsheet, 137 KB).

You must send us your end of grant report within four weeks of your project ending and no later than 28 April 2024

You should send your completed end of grant report and final budget table by email to CommunityOrganisationsCostofLivingFund@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk.

We will ask you to return any of the funding you have not spent

We’ll contact you to let you know how to do this.

DCMS will carry out an evaluation of grants made under the Community Organisations Cost of Living Fund (which may include your funding).

When you signed your grant offer letter, you agreed that you will work with the evaluators appointed by DCMS to obtain and publish evidence, data and learning from the Community Organisations Cost of Living Fund.

We may pass your organisational contact details to the evaluator for this purpose.

This may include your organisation taking part in the following evaluation activities:

• a short survey about your experience of the Fund's service to you (customer satisfaction)
• an end of grant survey, this will include questions on: the number and type of activities you’ve run using the Grant funding, the number of beneficiaries reached due to the Grant funding, number of volunteers mobilised due to the Grant funding, the difference the Grant funding made, what you achieved, who you worked with and whether this Grant funding gave you access to funding from elsewhere
• sending a survey to your volunteers and/or beneficiaries about their experience
• a smaller sample of grant holders will be invited to take part in more in depth, qualitative research
• sharing learning and insight for other organisations who received grant funding from the Community Organisations Cost of Living Fund.

You must adhere to the terms and conditions of your grant

You can read the standard terms and conditions on our website. We might have also included some additional terms and conditions for your project. If we did, they will be in your grant offer letter.

Our funding to you must comply with Subsidy Control rules

As a public body, we need to make sure that our funding to you complies with Subsidy Control rules. As long as you tell us in advance about any changes you want to make, there’s nothing you need to do. We’ll only contact you if we need more information.

If you’ll be working with children, young people or vulnerable adults

You must comply with our safeguarding policy. You need to have a policy in place that explains how they'll be safe and we might ask to see this policy.

We do checks on the information you give us

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

What happens to your data

Our privacy notice explains what personal data we will collect when you apply to the Community Organisations Cost of Living Fund, and how and why we’ll use it.

You can contact us.