Third sector organisations are to have their say on what the focus of funding will be in the second round of the Big Lottery Fund’s BASIS programme. A 12-week consultation has been launched to identify funding priorities for phase two of BASIS, which awards grants to organisations supporting the third sector.

Through round one of the programme, over £100 million of the £155 million programme has been distributed to increase the effectiveness of voluntary and community organisations. In phase two, funding will be more tightly focused to ensure it strengthens the areas that need addressing most.

Using the knowledge it has gathered since BASIS was launched, BIG has identified which services have the highest priority both nationally and regionally. The consultation is asking third sector organisations for their views on these priority services to be targeted in round two. Following the consultation, a final list of services the programme will fund will be established.

Sanjay Dighe, Chair of the Big Lottery Fund’s England Committee, said: “Since we launched the BASIS programme, Capacitybuilders, as well as national and local infrastructure organisations, have done a lot of work on needs assessment and identification of gaps.

“This means that we are in a much better position to identify clearly the services we want to fund and, in many cases, the organisations who can best provide them. We think that this is a better approach than opening up the programme to a large number of applications in a relatively unprescribed way. I urge the third sector to respond to the consultation. “

The consultation is running for 12 weeks until 16th November 2007. Organisations can reply online via www.biglotteryfund.org.uk, by email, or by post, until 12:00pm, 16th November, 2007. Consultation events will also be run across the country.  Please contact the Big Lottery Fund office in the England region relevant to your work for further details of these meetings, or Kevin Ashby for information about England wide consultation events.

Further information

Big Lottery Fund Press Office: 020 7211 1888
Out of hours contact: 07867 500 572
Public Enquiries Line: 08454 102 030
Textphone: 08456 021 659
Full details of the Big Lottery Fund programmes and grant awards are available on the website at www.biglotteryfund.org.uk

Notes to Editors

• The Big Lottery Fund rolls out close to £2 million in Lottery good cause money every 24 hours which together with other Lottery distributors means that across the UK most people are within a few miles of a Lottery-funded project.
• The Big Lottery Fund, the largest of the National Lottery good cause distributors, has been rolling out grants to health, education, environment and charitable causes across the UK since its inception in June 2004. It was established by Parliament on 1 December 2006.
• Since the National Lottery began in 1994, 28p from every pound spent by the public has gone to Good Causes. As a result, over £20 billion has now been raised and more than 250,000 grants given out across the arts, sport, heritage, charities, health, education and the environment.