The Big Lottery Fund has produced seven good practice guides for organisations working with young people. The guides have been produced from good practise examples taken from projects delivering the Young People’s Fund. The Young People’s Fund ran across the UK and invovled children and young people in planning and delivering youth services.  

The good practice guides cover the following areas:

• Encouraging active citizenship
• Actively involving young people
• Reducing anti social behaviour and working with young people who have offended or are at risk of offending
• Improving behaviour in schools
• Reducing cases of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET)
• Working with young carers
• Working with care leavers

You can download the guides here

The Community First Endowment project is now open for donations.  Under the scheme, which aims to support community projects, the Governemnt will donate 50p for every £1 that is raised by companies and individuals. Funds will be distributed by the Community Development Foundation who will work with the Community Foundation Network. From 2015, funding will be paid out to 56 Community Foundations  across the UK.

The Office for Civil Society has announced £3.1 million in funding from dormant bank accounts for new projects to support investment in local communities. The Big Society Investment fund which has been set up in advance of the launch of Big Society Capital (formally the Big Society Bank), will invest in four projects including supporting vulnerable young adults to enter employment and the creation of the social stock exchange.

The four organisations receiving funding are:

• Franchising Works
• Triodos Bank
• Community Generation Fund
• The Social Stock Exchange

More investments will be considered by the Big Society Investment Fund at the Investment Committee in February with Big Society Capital due to be fully functional by the end of March 2012.

The Children’s Play Programme Evaluation was commissioned by the Big Lottery Fund in September 2008. The final report of the three year evaluation is now available.

The Children’s Play Programme was funded by the Big Lottery Fund and was part of a wider £155 million Children’s Play Initiative, with the aim of raising the profile of children’s play. The evaluation found that the Children’s Play Programme played a significant role in raising awareness of children’s play at a local level. The programme also led to an expansion of open access play, and engaged children and families in decision making about play spaces.

While engaging local communities was seen as a sucess factor in promoting play opportunities, nearly a fifth of portfolio leads survyed for the evaluation cited negative attitudes to play amongst residents.

You can read the full report here

The health and social care volunteering fund is sponsored by the Department of Health and aims to help voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations deliver an effective role within their community. The volunteering fund provides local grants to organisations supporting volunteers, as well as to organisations with a national remit to deliver strategic or developmental volunteering projects.  The volunteering fund is being jointly managed by Ecorys, PrimeTimers, Attend and CSV.   

A volunteering fund evaluation tookit has been produced for projects funded by the scheme and covers:

• What is evaluation and how it differs from monitoring  
• Types of evaluation
• How to evaluate
• How to interpret, report and disseminate findings

The toolkit can be downloaded here

The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and the Calouste Gulbenikan Foundation have provided funding for an independent audit of the Big Society, to be carried out the think tank Civil Exchange in collaboration with Democratic Audit and DHA.

A range of think tanks, government departments, academics and voluntary organisations have been sent a consultation document on the design of the audit. The document identifies the three key areas of the Big Society of community empowerment, opening up public services and encouraging social action and capital. Each key area has a number of outcomes associated with its measurement.    

It is hoped that with future funding, the audit will be repeated in subsequent years.

The Big Lottery Fund has announced £6 million of funding for civil society organisations to support social investment proposals. Next Steps will fund proposals which improve the lives of communities and people who are most in need, through the development of robust social investment vehicles, and through learning more about social investment in practise.

Social investment is described as funding that leads to positive social change and seeks a financial return. The Big Lottery Fund defines social investment vehicles as, “a specific financial product (for example, social impact bond)  or fund (for example, a portfolio of loans).” 

Further details on the Next Steps fund can be found: here

The Principles of Good Impact Reporting is a consultation document from New Philanthropy Capital, the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO) and Charity Finance Directors Group (CFDG). The document is based on collaboration with seven organisations and sets out some principles of good impact reporting, based on two themes of, ‘how charities should communicatet their impact,’ and ‘what charities should communicate.’    

An agreed set of impact reporting principles will be launched in February 2012 following a consultation with all the groups involved in charities’ reporting.    

The full document and how to repsond to it can be read here

The Big Lottery in partnership with Channel 4 is asking the public how it should spend £10 million of Lottery funding.   The findings from the debate will help to influence which projects and charities will benefit from Big Lottery Funding.

The cash will come from the Millenium Now programme which aims to fund initiatives which reflect the five millenium themes of, encouraging environmental sustainability, investing in education, places, connecting communities and promoting science technology and health.

You can find out how to be part of the Big Decision here

An £110 million funding package has been announced by the Big Lottery Fund targeted at initiatives which support older people. Up to 30 organisations will be able to access the first wave of funding worth £10 million. The progress of these organisations will determine the direction of funding for the remaining £100 million.

The Silver Dreams Fund is seeking applications from organisations which pioneer ways to help vulnerable older people deal more effectively with life changing events.

Applications for funding can be made up to 28 October 2011.

Details of how to access the fund can be found here