- Release date:
- 2 2 2012
The beneficiaries of a new £30 million fund to help transform and modernise local charity support services have been announced today by Nick Hurd, Minister for Civil Society.
More than seventy partnerships of local support and development organisations across England have received grants to transform their services and provide high quality, joined up support to frontline charities. These projects will also make it easier for organisations to forge better links with local businesses, develop stronger partnerships with local public sector bodies and for people to volunteer.
Minister for Civil Society Nick Hurd said:
"This fund is not designed to support 'business as usual' - it's about making things better for the frontline. It's about supporting organisations with innovative business plans who want to play their part in modernising the landscape of local infrastructure.
"One of our main priorities is making it easier to run a charity. We will ensure that we back the highest quality infrastructure support so that charities get guidance which is local, relevant and enables them to improve their service delivery."
The projects funded by the Transforming Local Infrastructure Fund focus on bringing together different charity support providers to offer high quality local services at lower cost. There will also be new initiatives to make it easier for people to volunteer, help for social entrepreneurs who want to make a difference in their communities, support for charities to take over and run community assets, and initiatives to increase support, donations and gifts in kind from the private sector.
The Transforming Local Infrastructure Fund is being managed by Big Fund, the non-lottery funding operation of the Big Lottery Fund.
Dharmendra Kanani, England Director for the Big Lottery Fund, said, “Transforming Local Infrastructure will provide strategic funding for organisations that support the voluntary and community sector in England. As a result community organisations and groups will be able to respond more flexibly to an ever-changing funding environment, to plan for the future and become more effective.”
Big Lottery Fund is planning a distinct and additional investment in funding support services for voluntary organisations of at least £20 million. Detailed proposals about their plans will be published during 2012. It is planned that the majority of this investment will go to frontline voluntary organisations in order to give them greater choice and control over the support services which they need.
NAVCA (National Association for Voluntary and Community Action) has offered to work with any area which has not been awarded a grant from the Transforming Local Infrastructure Fund to explore alternative approaches and sources of support for fulfilling the activities set out in their proposals.
Notes to editors
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- The Big Lottery Fund investment will be based on the principles of the Building Capabilities for Impact and Legacy discussion paper, which was published in December 2011. The paper can be viewed at www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/buildingcapabilities. Responses to an online survey about how best to turn these principles into action can be submitted until 15th March 2012.
- The Big Lottery Fund distributes Lottery funding to health education, environment and charitable causes across the UK. It also uses its expertise in grant-giving to distribute non-lottery funding. Full details of the Big Lottery Fund programmes and grant awards are available on the website: www.biglotteryfund.org.uk.
- The Transforming Local Infrastructure Fund is being managed by Big Fund, the non-lottery funding operation of the Big Lottery Fund. For further details please see: www.bigfund.org.uk/tli
- The Transforming Local Infrastructure programme was announced in the Giving White Paper. The programme closed for applications on 31st October 2011, and all projects will be up and running by March 2012.
A full list of awards can be viewed 
here
- 35KB.