Help identifying and securing funding
Before you can apply for funding you need to be clear about what you want funding for. We can help you with developing your ideas, identifying funding sources and help with developing your funding application.

Sources of funding
There are a number of different sources of funding that groups and organisations can apply to, some are open to any type of group, others are restricted to, for example, registered charities or particular areas of work or geographical area.

The most popular sources of funding include:
• Local authority grants
• Government supported bodies for example SNH (Scottish Natural Heritage)
• Big Lottery Fund - a number of different funding programmes that are very popular with community groups and voluntary organisations
• Trusts and Foundations - usually only fund registered charities. Examples include Lloyds TSB, Robertson Trust, The Volant Trust (JK Rowling's Trust)
• Company giving - through their trusts and foundations (as above) donations, sponsorship

How do you know which is best for your group?
Groups and organisations have to do some homework before they decide who to apply to for funding for their project.

It is a bit like dating, you need to find out who is a good match for your organisation and your project.

You need to be clear about what you are looking for funding for and then you need to identify which funders support that type of activity.

The questions you may need to ask include:
• Do they only fund registered charities?
• Will they fund new organisations?
• Do they fund the type of work that you do?
• Do they support work with the particular group of people that you work with?
• Do they only support groups working in a particular geographical area of the UK?
• Do they fund capital items, revenue items or both?
• what are their application deadlines

These are some of the questions that you need to ask when looking for potential funders that match you and your project.

Check you are looking at the most up to date information
From time to time funders change their guidelines, their criteria, the types of work that they fund and the difference that they want to make with their funding. It is really important that you make sure that you are looking at the most up to date information so that you don't waste your time applying for a fund that no longer exists.

So where do you start?
You can start with some of the most popular funders and see if they support the type of work that you do.
You can talk to other organisations and groups who do similar work to you and find out where they get their funding from.

Funding Search
You can ask us to do a funding search for you. This will provide you with information on potential sources of funding that you can apply for.

The first step is to download the Funding Search Request Form (Microsoft Word document) and complete it. If you need help to complete it, please phone us on 01324 692000.

Our funding search database contains over 7,000 funding opportunities. It will provide a list of potential sources of funding plus detailed information on all the key facts about that funder, what they support and don't support, deadline dates and so on.

Developing your ideas and applying for funding
We can help you when you are developing your funding applications. We have a range of training sessions on funding in our Training Programme and we offer one to one surgery sessions to help you as you progress your application. We can also help you identify different sources of funding.

Some of the more popular funding sources include:
• BIG Lottery Fund
• Awards for All
• Heritage Lottery Fund
• Children in Need
• Coalfields Regeneration Trust
• Comic Relief
• Esmee Fairbairn Charitable Trust
• Falkirk Environment Trust (FET)
• Henry Smith's Small Grants Programme
• LEADER
• Lloyds TSB Foundation
• Foundation Scotland (Formerly known as Scottish Community Foundation)
• Tesco Charity Trust
• Tudor Trust

We post a lot of funding information in our news pages - click to see a list of funding related news items.