- Increasing the maximum grant size, where there is evidence that this is limiting recipient’s ability to deliver the most they can (for example, where a lot of funding proposals have been at the current award maximum)
- Supporting greater local capacity by:
- Directly funding or commissioning a programme of training and support for local groups, e.g. in governance, community engagement, project development/management, or fundraising.
- Directly funding or commissioning a community development worker post that can support local groups, develop projects, etc.
- Introducing a new strand to the Fund that comprises small, easy to access grants for groups to be used specifically for capacity building and project development activity.
- Increased/ wider Fund promotion (if not already sufficient).
- Exploring the potential for placing some funds into an endowment so they can begin to, ideally, generate further capital for disbursement in future.
- Widening the area of benefit or allocating a minimum or maximum percentage to a wider area, even temporarily, to allow funding of activity that benefits neighbouring communities. Whilst this runs the risk of undermining historic arrangements and/or creating dissent locally, if the area of benefit is such that it limits effective fund spend then there may well be logic in opening this discussion up.
