In 2011/12, over 77% of all the grants we made were for Awards for All projects, but all of these combined only came to about 10% of our funding.
Compared with the funding made available through other programmes, Awards for All offers access to support for a wide range of (usually small) groups that helps them to do what they want to do. The application process is simpler and grants are smaller.
While we know that Awards for All is well-known and popular, we don’t know much about the real differences it makes and indeed what sort of differences are important to the people who benefit, to the groups that apply to us, and to other funders and policy-makers in the voluntary and community sector.
So in late 2012 we commissioned a partnership between Rocket Science and CM International to investigate:
- patterns of applications and funding across the four Awards for All programmes (in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales), identifying trends and gaps;
- what BIG staff, other funders, policy-makers and voluntary and community sector organisations think is important about Awards for All; and
- what Awards for All applicants and grant-holders think is important – and what their experience of working with us has been like.
We will use the findings from this process to refine the way we manage and understand Awards for All across the UK. We will also consider how to make sure that we record, report and measure what is important and relevant to different groups. The study began in December 2012 and will end in spring 2013.
As part of the study, the researchers will produce a set of case studies to illustrate how different groups have used our funding, what they’ve achieved, and how our support has affected them and their beneficiaries more widely.
We will publish more information about the study and its findings here.
Please contact us if you have any comments or questions.