The National Lottery provides a wide range of grant making programmes to the sector across the UK. Currently, there are 14 distributors of money covering arts, charities and voluntary groups, heritage, health, education, science and technology, the environment, and sports. Each distributor makes decisions about who shall receive awards independently of the government and according to guidelines established by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. The biggest distributor by far is the Big Lottery Fund (BIG), which distributes around half of the money raised for good causes from sales of lottery tickets.

Each grant making body has its own criteria and priorities, and independently decides which projects are awarded a grant. They also work to their own timescales, and decision-making can range from a few weeks for some small grants, to several months or even longer for larger schemes. Some distributors, such as Awards for All or the Sports Council, use national and regional/local criteria in their decisions – which could also have a bearing on the outcome of your application.

Lotteryfunding.org.uk is a joint website run by all the Lottery funders in the UK, and this site allows you to search information on current funding programmes across the UK. This can help you find the funding programmes that best match your project.

The funding search will take you through four questions:

• the location of the project
• about you as an applicant
• about the project itself
• the amount of money you are applying for