Join The National Lottery Community Fund to find out more about our Community Power Partnership and becoming a partner.
We’re setting out a bold new vision for how we’ll support communities across England. We're putting community agency, power and control at the heart of our funding in England. And we’ll distribute at least £3 billion of life changing funds by 2030.
We’ll be making changes across all our funding in England from spring 2025.
These plans respond to what communities and third-sector organisations in England have told us is important to them.
Right now we are looking for partners for the development phases of three new approaches:
These approaches will focus on increasing the voice and resilience of communities and the organisations that support them. They’ll support communities to build power, influencing the decisions that affect them, and deciding where money and support should go.
Community Power Fund
We’re looking for 10 to 15 partners to work with us in the development stage of our Community Power fund. By community power, we mean local communities being able to influence and change the places they live. As well as the services they use, and decisions that affect their lives.
We’ve committed to a £100 million, 10 year Community Power fund. We aim to launch the broader programme in 2026.
For this development stage we have up to £1.2 million funding available over one year. This work will shape how the Community Power fund runs in the future.
As a partner you’ll deliver activities in and with communities to increase their agency, power and control. This can be new or existing work.
You’ll also work with us, and the other partners, to understand what works to increase community power. Including what the barriers are. And what support and learning is needed to improve community power activities over the long term.
To be a partner organisation you must:
- have experience of going beyond engaging communities by doing work to increase their community power
- work in and with communities that are the most excluded and marginalised, and the least empowered
- have experience of working in communities where the conditions are currently least suited to growing community power. For example where people have less trust in each other, do not feel they belong, or do not have places to meet
- show how the values and approaches of community power are central to your work.
We’re keen to hear from smaller community groups as well as larger or national organisations. We plan to work with a mix of partners. Find out more in who can apply.
We’ll fund partner organisations between £50,000 and £80,000 for the development stage. We expect this stage to run between spring 2025 and spring 2026.
We’ll open to expressions of interest on Wednesday 8 January 2025.
Sign up to attend the webinar and find out more about the opportunity here.