We’ve recently learned that Dudley projects are missing out on funding from Awards for All, a Big Lottery Fund programme that offers grants of between £300 and £10,000 for activities that run for 12 months or less.
You can learn more about Awards for All by watching this short video:
According to Big Lottery Fund, applications to Awards for All from Dudley are down compared with other boroughs. It’s important to say here that this might not necessarily be a bad thing; in this climate, we are encouraging people and organisations to think about different models of financing their work, which will ultimately reduce reliance on grants and build more sustainable communities. But this may also mean that some organisations are struggling to sustain or kick-start their work and we want to support those wonderful projects to get off the ground.
That’s why Martin and I are in the process of designing an event which will help people to complete the most important sections of the Awards for All application form. The event will happen in the New Year and staff from CVS, Big Lottery Fund and hopefully Dudley Council will be on hand to give hands-on guidance and support.
We’ve helped lots of organisations to run great activities in our communities by supporting them with applications to Awards for All, including Lye-based Diyya, featured on this blog earlier this year, and Seniors Luncheon Club, based in Stourbridge.
We’ll publicise details of the forthcoming event as soon as we can. In the meantime, have a look at the video and learn more about Awards for All on the Big Lottery Fund website.
Dudley CVS blog 
Thanks for sharing this Becky. You make a great point about reducing reliance on grants, I agree that it’s important to have a mixed income base, and to look around at what is already there which could be used in new and different ways to help achieve goals and outcomes – and may well be the stuff money can’t buy, like people’s passion.
Like you, I am also concerned that groups and organisations in Dudley borough might not be seizing all the opportunities around them to do amazing things. Based on my experience of being involved in managing grants funds in Dudley, I wonder if part of the challenge for groups is around innovation and change. Could the creativity which people in our local groups use to sustain activities year after year be applied to developing some new ideas to test out?
There are some great tools around now which can guide people through processes which help them to explore the problems they are trying to tackle and build the evidence base for new ideas they have for solving those problems.
One is the d.school design thinking virtual crash course (http://dschool.stanford.edu/dgift/) which everyone had great fun using at a CoLab session a couple of months ago. There are also great ideas and simple to use activities in d.school’s Bootcamp Bootleg (http://dschool.stanford.edu/use-our-methods/the-bootcamp-bootleg/).
Nesta have developed a DIY toolkit (http://diytoolkit.org), where DIY stands for Development Impact and You. The tools each consist of a single worksheet, with written instructions and nice short animated videos which introduce each tool and run through an example. There are also a number of case studies on the site. For groups and organisations looking at Awards for All funding the following tools might be worth a look:
– Fast Idea Generator (http://diytoolkit.org/tools/fast-idea-generator-2/) – could stimulate ideas for a new project, an innovation from existing work of a group (Awards for All want to fund new projects and ideas)
– Causes Diagram (http://diytoolkit.org/tools/causes-diagram/) – relates to Q15a in Awards for All application form
– Interview Guide (http://diytoolkit.org/tools/interview-guide-2/) -relates to Q15b
– Target Group (http://diytoolkit.org/tools/target-group/) – relates to Qs 15a and 20-25
– Marketing Mix (http://diytoolkit.org/tools/marketing-mix-2/) – relates to Q16a and b
I’m happy to share my experiences of running the virtual crash course in design thinking and anything else you might find useful from things I’ve been involved in. Also happy to develop a CoLab Exchange session or similar for the people who come to your workshop, if they would like something which focuses more on consideration of the problems they aim to tackle, evidence, and ideas for solutions.
Thanks Lorna the links will be really useful I’m about to embark on an application for my CIC twitter@recoveryshoots.
Hi Rhys
No problem, it’s so heartening to know time spent sharing is useful to other people, as well as being a great way of connecting and reflecting on things for myself.
Congratulations on your Unltd award for Shoots of Recovery, and your new role with Shelter. I’d love to meet and hear more about Shoots of Recovery. Also, have you visited Incredible Edible Todmorden? I’m working with a couple of groups planning a visit soon, you’d be welcome to join us (though you’d need to cover your share of costs, as they only have funding for their communities). I’ll tweet you re. coffee 🙂