The National Lottery Community Fund (TNLCF) — formerly the Big Lottery Fund — is the largest funder of community activity in the UK. It distributes around 40p of every pound raised for good causes through the National Lottery, and funds everything from small grassroots projects to decade-long community transformation programmes.
If your organisation works in communities — whether that's a charity, community group, social enterprise, or CIC — TNLCF is almost certainly worth exploring. But the range of programmes it runs, each with different criteria and scales of funding, can make it hard to know where to start.
This guide covers the main programmes, who can apply, what the Fund prioritises, and what commonly causes applications to fail.
How much does TNLCF distribute — and to whom?
TNLCF awards over £600 million each year across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It funds organisations of all sizes — from community groups with a turnover of a few thousand pounds to established national charities — though its emphasis is firmly on community-led activity rather than large institutional service delivery.
Eligible organisation types include:
- Registered charities
- Community interest companies (CICs)
- Community benefit societies
- Constituted community groups (not legally incorporated, but with a governing document)
- Social enterprises and voluntary organisations
TNLCF does not fund: statutory bodies (councils, NHS trusts), activities that promote religion, political campaigning, or profit-distributing businesses.
Main funding programmes
Awards for All
Scale: £300–£10,000 Decision time: approximately 8 weeks For: small and medium community organisations running projects that bring people together
Awards for All is the entry-level programme — the fastest route to TNLCF funding and the one most accessible to newer or smaller organisations. Projects are typically under 12 months. The application is shorter than most other TNLCF programmes, and decisions are quicker.
It's well suited to: community events, short training programmes, equipment purchases, one-off projects. It is not designed for ongoing staffing costs or multi-year activity.
Each UK nation has its own Awards for All programme with slightly different criteria and funding amounts — Scotland runs a separate programme called National Lottery Awards for All Scotland, and Wales runs one in Welsh and English.
Reaching Communities
Scale: £10,000–£500,000 (occasionally more for transformational multi-year projects) Decision time: up to 6 months For: larger organisations running sustained community projects over 2–5 years or more
Reaching Communities is TNLCF's flagship programme in England. It funds longer-term, larger-scale projects that tackle entrenched issues in communities — employment, mental health, isolation, environmental sustainability. Applications are competitive and expect a strong evidence base: who the community is, what the problem is, how you know your approach will work, and how the community shaped the project.
The Fund can also provide development grants to help organisations build a strong application before submitting a full proposal.
Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland each run equivalent programmes under different names (People and Communities in Scotland, Community Fund Wales, etc.) with the same general intent but locally tailored criteria.
Climate Action Fund
Scale: up to £5 million (multi-year partnership grants) For: organisations working on community-led climate action
The Climate Action Fund is TNLCF's largest thematic programme. It targets areas including sustainable transport, community energy, food systems, and nature recovery. Grants at this scale are typically awarded to partnerships or coalitions of organisations rather than a single applicant.
Empowering Young People
Scale: varies, typically £10,000–£500,000 For: organisations working with young people facing disadvantage or exclusion
A strand within Reaching Communities specifically for young people aged 8–25. Emphasis is on youth-led or youth-co-designed activity, not services delivered to young people from a professional distance.
What TNLCF funds — its outcomes framework
TNLCF uses five national outcomes that all projects should link to. Understanding these is important because your application will be assessed against them:
- People have better wellbeing — mental and physical health, resilience, confidence
- People have more skills and opportunities — employment, education, volunteering
- Communities are more connected — social cohesion, reduced isolation
- Communities are environmentally sustainable — climate action, biodiversity, green spaces
- People are not left behind — equity, inclusion, tackling disadvantage
Most successful applications link clearly to at least two of these. The strongest applications show how the community was involved in designing the project — TNLCF calls this "equalities, diversity, and inclusion" thinking, and it runs through every stage of their assessment.
What causes TNLCF applications to fail
Lack of community voice. Projects designed entirely by professionals for communities, without meaningful community involvement in the design, rarely get funded. Even at Awards for All level, show how local people shaped what you're proposing.
Weak need evidence. "We believe there is a problem" is not enough. Use data — local authority reports, census data, your own survey findings — to demonstrate the scale and nature of the issue.
Unclear outcomes. TNLCF wants to know what will change and for whom. Outputs (we will run 12 sessions) matter less than outcomes (participants will report improved confidence in X). Spell out both.
Ineligible costs. Statutory activities, general running costs without a clear project link, or costs that benefit the organisation more than the community.
Financial instability. TNLCF assesses organisational health. If your accounts show financial difficulty without a clear explanation, assessors will flag it. Address it proactively in the application.
How to apply
All TNLCF applications go through their online portal at tnlcommunityfund.org.uk. For Awards for All, most organisations can submit without a development grant. For Reaching Communities and larger programmes, it's often worth contacting TNLCF's regional teams before submitting — they offer pre-application support and can tell you whether your project is a realistic fit before you invest weeks in an application.
TNLCF publishes regular funding summaries showing which organisations received grants, at what scale, and in which areas — worth reading before you apply to understand what gets funded in your region.
Finding TNLCF opportunities on Grants Hub
Grants Hub monitors TNLCF's live funding programmes daily and surfaces them alongside thousands of other UK grant opportunities. If you're a charity, CIC, or community organisation, you can search by sector, location, and organisation type to see which TNLCF programmes you're eligible for — alongside funding from 70+ other monitored sources.