Leicestershire FAN is a sub-regional FAN with a single co-ordinator, set up at the end of 2006. The FAN is led and chaired by Leicestershire County Council and came about following the set up and success of the Leicestershire Funding Toolkit, an online one stop shop for funding information and advice in Leicestershire (www.fundingtoolkit.org) supported by Leicestershire Together the local strategic partnership for the county.Membership of the FAN is open to anyone with a job or interest in funding advice in Leicester, Leicestershire or Rutland. It has over 50 members, including funding advisers based within VCOs and local authorities.

Member organisations include CVSs, local and District Councils, regional bodies, for example Engage East Midlands, and even a local newspaper. It has a steering committee which discusses the needs of the FAN including planning forthcoming meetings, providing useful contacts and sharing responsibility for arranging speakers. They aim to tie meetings in with other local events. The steering committee has representatives from District Councils, CVSs and local government.

The FAN meets once a quarter with meetings including invited speakers who provide perspectives from other regions, best practice experiences or information on new funds or funding from outside the shire (e.g. national grants). In the meantime the FAN uses mainly email communication for members of the network to share local funding news and good practice. One issue that members have mentioned is lack of time and resource to attend meetings. However, they are trying to address this by tying in meetings with local funding fairs and focusing the meetings on specific funding themes in order to sustain interest. The FAN pools resources from its members to enable the delivery of meetings and networking events.