Small grants to grow

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The Awards for All scheme is to be boosted at both ends, the white paper on lottery reform reveals. The England scheme is given authority to raise its upper limit on grants from £5,000 to £10,000. And it is charged with setting up a new scheme for handing out micro-grants of less than £500.

The white paper leaves it to the devolved administrations to decide on what to do about their small grants schemes, so these proposals only apply to England right now. Nor does the white paper stipulate whether the England distributors will be expected to double the A4A funding pot in line with the £10,000 upper limit. This will be a disappointment to A4A England, which had proposed in the lottery funding review that its funds should be top-sliced rather than being annually negotiated with five separate bodies.

Over the next year, A4A England will pilot a number of recommendations, with a view to rolling out new schemes in 2005, according to Mike Wilkins, A4A England director. Quicker turn-around times are one target: ‘We hope to reduce it to eight or nine weeks from our current 12 to 13,’ Wilkins says. On micro-grants, A4A is looking at trialling schemes in a couple of sub-regions, possibly in different parts of the country, and will include experiments with delegated grant-making as a more cost-effective alternative to direct grant-making. Currently, Wilkins says, each A4A application costs £152 to process and each successful grant costs £292, so he will be looking to try and reduce this overhead for giving out micro-grants.

A4A will also pilot initiatives for greater public involvement in deciding on who should get micro-grants.