Changes have been announced to the Big Lottery Fund's very popular programme Reaching Communities. These are the key points:

• They want groups to contact the advice line early, discuss their ideas and get guidance before applying
• There is a new outline proposal form, where groups will need to add more detail at the first stage. It will take up to six weeks to assess
• Decisions on second stage applications will now be made every two weeks rather than monthly. 
• Fewer applicants will be invited to submit Stage Two applications, but those that do will have a much greater chance of success
• The upper grant limit of £500,000 has been removed creating flexibility to support larger projects.
• They now offer feasibility funding of up to £10,000 through Awards for All.
• Better support for supporting buildings projects

There is a new outline proposal form is available now. And at last it gives you space to talk about your plans and how they will work. There are more questions to help them decide at this stage which projects are more viable.

If you're in the middle of applying, don't worry. You can still use the old form. They will give notice of when they will only accept the new ones, but that won't be for a while yet.

Good news that they ask for more detail at stage one, leading to better stage two success rates. Concerns though that bigger grants may make it harder for smaller groups to get more modest support.

Don't forget that SYFAB are running a Reaching Communities masterclass on 15 October - this session will go through all the changes to the scheme. Book here.

Contact:

Big Lottery Fund

Telephone: 0845 4 10 20 30

Website: www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/prog_reaching_communities