A boost in confidence all round

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Our annual poll shows that the boards have raised their game and everyone loves Awards for All. Jane Taylor reports

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The results of another well-supported annual reader survey reveal a flood of criticism, but an underlying trend of increasing levels of confidence among those working on Lottery funding, both in the distribution boards and in their own roles. A highly encouraging 43% of respondents said they’d had more success with their Lottery bids this year than last, and another 39% thought they were doing equally well (fig Q5). Overall approval levels for boards have risen significantly, and there the forms are peppered with brief acknowledgements that ‘they’re getting better’. It probably shouldn’t surprise us that the role and departmental context of those working on Lottery funding is still pretty fluid (table Q2). In 1998 nearly half of survey respondents were located in leisure, sport, art or community departments, reflecting the traditional understanding of what the ‘good causes’ were about. That proportion has declined to 29% today, a few percentage points higher than last year’s level. But last year’s emphasis on ‘strategy and regeneration’ as the department context seems to have shifted in favour of ‘economic development’ or just ‘development’. Of course some of this could be renaming at your end, and some of it could be re-cat-egorising at our end. One-third of respondents still have ‘Lottery’ or ‘external funding’ in their job title.

One third of respondents again this year report an increase in staffing levels for Lottery work (fig Q4), and total numbers seem to be consolidating at a level of two to four staff (fig Q3). While you were clear about what’s still wrong with the Lottery system, the boards must be getting it right more of the time, because approval levels have leapt up, both for efficiency and clarity (table Q6/7). We broadened the latter question this year to encompass not just application forms but the ‘clarity of their application procedures overall’, which gave more opportunity for negative feedback, thereby making the actual results even better. Taking both criteria together, the runaway victor is Awards for All, scoring a very impressive 4.23 satisfaction out of a possible 5. The league table in descending order then goes: Community Fund, Sport, Heritage, NOF and Arts, trailing with 2.81. Note, we have decided to leave the Millennium Fund out this year. The majority of respondents didn’t provide information for it, reflecting its rapidly winding-down status.

The breakdown of satisfaction levels shows up some interesting variations. Arts attracts 34% disapproval for its efficiency; and NOF’s disapproval rating of 24% for clarity confirms many comments about the complexity of its programmes. The three strong performers on both counts are Awards for All, Community Fund and Sport. And there can be little doubt about the message conveyed in the dominance of Awards for All’s approval ratings: SIMPLICITY WORKS. 

Question 2
Question 3

Lessons still to be learnt
We asked two questions, one requesting more information about the distributors, the second asking much more generally what you thought were the three biggest problems facing the Lottery. The former yielded some useful feedback about specific boards, such as:

‘Sport England NW pre-application advice is extremely useful’ ‘Community Fund queries officer is unavailable’ ‘Arts still ignoring rural areas’ ‘I welcome the medium-sized grant pro-grammes from HLF and CF, which have made larger sums of money more accessible’ ‘Consultation with local authorities is poor and when attempted boards seem quite hostile and view us with a certain amount of contempt.’

The broader question about Lottery problems produced, predictably, a barrage of criticism. Here are the six top categories, and no apologies if they sound terribly familiar.

Communication failures
Remarkable though it may seem that anyone wants yet more Lottery information, this group of complaints suggests that the boards’ targeting of information, guidance and advice needs refinement. Typical comments: ‘guidance information is out of date’, ‘erratic information distribution’, ‘difficulty keeping up with changing information’ and ‘mixed messages’.

Questions 4 -7

Turnaround times
Almost all complaints here were about the long, drawn-out nature of the applications processes. For example: ‘Timescales for two-stage bids being too long after stage 1 approval’; ‘Length of process’; ‘timescales too long’; ‘Appraisal timescales too long’ and so on.

Lack of joint working
Here again, the clamour of critical voices was unambiguous: ‘the distributors still don’t work together enough’, ‘does not cater for cross-cutting projects’, ‘lack of joined-up thinking across programme areas’.

Bureaucracy and complexity 
Even once the specific criticisms have been sorted, a group of complaints still reflects the overall feelings of frustration that Lottery processes engender: ‘creates a complicated picture’, ‘still too much paperwork’, ‘lengthy, bureaucratic, placing obstacles upon obstacles’, ‘overcomplexity of assessment process, particularly NOF’.

Unfair targeting
This category did not feature strongly last year, but has attracted considerable concern this time. Some are concerned that non-priority areas will lose out altogether. Others narrow down the charge: that the increased tendency of pro-grammes to be targeted on areas of social deprivation means that communities in need in non-priority areas are the real losers. ‘Targeting disadvantages rural areas’, ‘Pockets of deprivation within affluent areas are missed’, ‘those local authority areas just outside the 20% will lose out, despite having serious pockets of deprivation’.

6. Cost of applications
Another new entrant in the league of top complaints. Clear concern is being expressed that the boards simply don’t appreciate the very real costs involved in submitting bids: ‘Requires too much up-front investment early in application process – needs Stage 1 check and endorsement on all major applications’, ‘The cost and work in doing a stage 1 application to HLF’, ‘Upfront expense of fees that can’t be recovered’, ‘no perception of the costs needed to get the information’, ‘bids can be very costly and aren’t guaranteed success’.