Big Lottery Fund Publishes Building Better Opportunities Guide

The Big Lottery Fund has published a programme guide on how the Building Better Opportunities Programme will operate when it opens for funding this summer.

The Building Better Opportunities programme is bringing together funding of approximately £440 million from the Big Lottery Fund and the European Social Fund (ESF) to help tackle the poverty and social exclusion faced by the most disadvantaged people in England. The funding is expected to be available in England over the next four years, starting from summer 2015.

The money is being divided among 39 Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) areas, each of which will have a strategy for how the money will be spent. The number of projects and the amount of funding will vary according to the LEP area. The LEP are partnerships between local authorities and businesses set up to help determine economic priorities and lead economic growth and job creation within local areas. Organisations that are interested in applying for funding should check the priorities for their LEP area. This can be done by clicking on the relevant LEP link on the map located on the Big Lottery Fund website

Projects are expected to be delivered by partnerships and lead organisations should have:

• A clear vision for responding to the priorities of the local area, backed up by appropriate expertise.
• A proven track record of managing complex projects, relative to the size of any partnership and the amount of money involved.
• Good connections for ensuring a wide cross section of organisations are able to get involved.
• Strategies for managing and coordinating any partnership throughout the planning, set-up and delivery of the project.

Applications will need to be made in response to one of the project outlines which will describe each specific funding opportunity that is available through the programme and set out what each project aims to achieve and the areas or groups of people that it needs to target. Funding will only be available for one project per project outline. Although each project outline will be different, there are five key principles that unite them.

Projects must:

• Help the most disadvantaged - some groups of people are more disadvantaged than others when it comes to finding work and it is these individuals that Building Better Opportunities aspires to help.
• Tackle social exclusion - rather than just treating the symptoms, projects must help address the root causes of poverty and exclusion that are barriers to an individual seeking work.
• Be focused on the capabilities of each individual - projects are expected to build on people's strengths by developing their skills and talents to help them overcome the challenges they face.
• Lead to better coordinated services - in the main, services will need to be delivered in partnership between organisations that already have expertise in working with those most in need.
• Create new opportunities for work - it is therefore essential that there is engagement with employers to ensure there are pathways for people to progress into work.
• There will be a two-stage application process. Stage one is fully open and competitive. Applicants who are successful at this stage will be invited to go to stage two. A support team will be available to work with organisations as they develop their stage two plans.

BIG will publish a project outline for each specific funding opportunity that will be available through Building Better Opportunities. These will be published in two rounds during 2015.

Further information can be found on the Big Lottery Fund website

Information courtesy of J4Bcommunity.co.uk