Support Others > Funding Opportunities
Funding Opportunities for Walking Projects
This section provides details of the main funding opportunities available that may support community organisations needing to raise funding to deliver walking activities.
You’ll find:
- Key information about the different funding opportunities.
- Top tips on how to complete the different grant applications.
- Examples of successful grant awards.
National Lottery Community Fund, Awards for All
The National Lottery Community Fund’s Awards for All programme offers funding from £300 to £20,000. And can support your project for up to two years.
You can apply for funding to deliver a new or existing activity or to support your organisation to change and adapt to new and future challenges.
Projects funded through the programme must do at least one of these things:
- Bring people together to build strong relationships in and across communities.
- Improve the places and spaces that matter to communities.
- Help more people to reach their potential, by supporting them at the earliest possible stage.
- Support people, communities and organisations facing more demands and challenges because of the cost-of-living crisis.
A wide range of not-for-profit organisations can apply for the funding including constituted voluntary or community organisations.
Applications can be made at any time.
The application form asks three main questions. The funder provides a guide on how to answer the questions.
Section 1: Your idea- What would you like to do?
Here are some ideas of what to tell them about your project:
- What would you like to do?
- What difference your project will make?
- Who will benefit from it?
- How long you expect to run it for? This can be an estimate.
- How you’ll make sure people know about it?
- How you plan to learn from it and use this learning to shape future projects?
- Is it something new, or are you continuing something that has worked well previously? They fund both types.
You can write between 50 and 300 words for this section.
Section 2: How does your project meet their funding priorities?
They can fund projects that’ll do at least one of these things:
- bring people together to build strong relationships in and across communities.
- improve the places and spaces that matter to communities.
- help more people to reach their potential, by supporting them at the earliest possible stage.
- support people, communities and organisations facing more demands and challenges because of the cost-of-living crisis.
You can write between 50 and 150 words for this section.
Section 3: How does your project involve your community?
What do they mean by community?
- People living in the same area.
- People who have similar interests or life experiences but might not live in the same area.
- Even though schools can be at the heart of a community – they’ll only fund schools that also benefit the communities around them.
Tell them how your community came up with the idea for your project. They want to know how many people you’ve spoken to, and how they’ll be involved in the development and delivery of the project.
Here are some examples of how you could be involving your community:
- Having regular chats with community members, in person or on social media
- Including community members on your board or committee
- Regular surveys
- Setting up steering groups.
- Running open days
You can write between 50 and 200 words for this section.
The focus of this fund is on the outcomes listed in the first section. This is a different focus compared to Sport England’s Small Grants. Think carefully about which fund your project aligns to best.
Examples of organisations which have already received funding and what they need it for.
Sport England Small Grants
Sport England’s Small Grants Programme seeks to develop opportunities for communities to get more people physically active. Grants available are between £300 and £15,000. Sport and physical activities funded can run from two months to two years.
You can apply for funding to deliver a new or existing activity. Activities should support inactive and less active people become more active by doing at least one of these things:
- Recover and reinvent: recovering from the biggest crisis in a generation, to provide sport and physical activity opportunities that meet the needs of different people.
- Connecting communities: focus on sport and physical activity’s ability to make places better to live and bring people together to be physically active.
- Positive experiences for children and young people: a focus on positive experiences as the foundations for a long and healthy life.
- Connecting with health and wellbeing: strengthening the connections between sport, physical activity, health, and wellbeing, so more people feel the benefits and advocate for an active life.
- Active environments: creating and protecting the places and spaces that make it easier for people to be active.
They’ll prioritise projects that supports their focus of investing in those that need it most. The fund’s priorities are:
- The project will be supporting people who live in areas of disadvantage as defined by the Indices of Multiple Deprivation areas 1-3.
- The project is focused on tackling inequalities.
A wide range of not-for-profit organisations can apply. From small community organisations through to statutory bodies.
Applications can be made at any time.
Applications should explain why there’s a need for the project and how end users have been involved in developing the project.
Project Title.
Your short title should be related to your project and provide a glimpse into what is to follow in your application. For example, “Walking Into Well Being”. Don’t include the name of your organisation in the title.
Section 1: Briefly outline your project
Build on the project title. Include a simple explanation detailing what the activities will be, where and when they will happen and who the target audience is. If there’s space outline what the main costs will be.
There are plenty of examples in the attached sheet which show how other groups have described their projects. Here is one example:
“This project will provide funding for a walking project for Muslim women from across Bradford. This will be for 20 walks and hopefully recruit 20 local women per walk. The project will also include the training of 10 local Muslim women to be walk leaders.”
You can write up to 100 words for this section.
Section 2: Why are you motivated to make this project happen?
For this section write about the things that have led you to applying for funding for this project. You could include information about the people you want to support. What do you know about them and the things that are important to them to enable them to become active. Is there a gap in provision in your area for what you want to do. Or is there nothing or very little happening for the people you want to work with.
Detail whether it will be a new service or activity, or if you’re repeating or altering an existing activity. How have you decided this approach is best for the people you want to support?
You can write up to 500 words for this section.
Section 3: What do you want to achieve by making the project happen?
How will the project benefit the people involved? What might they feel or experience from being involved in the project? What difference do you hope the project will make? For example:
- Will physical activity levels or habits change during the project and beyond?
- Will the people involved feel more connected to their community?
- Will the project help to bring people together to be physically active?
- Will the project improve people’s physical and mental health?
- Will the project help to build / strengthen social relationships?
- Will the project help to reduce inequalities?
- Are there any environmental benefits?
Do you have any targets for the number of people you hope to become involved? How have you estimated your figures?
At the end of your project, how might the people involved continue to be physically active in their lives?
If your project is altering a facility or detail, how the alteration can support more people to be physically active.
Are there any other benefits you think your project can achieve?
You can write up to 500 words for this section.
Section 4: How will you make it happen?
The best way to approach this question is to prepare a simple project plan. You could use a template such as this one: click here to open the document in Microsoft Word. Click here to open the document in Microsoft Excel.
This will help you think about all the steps you need to take to deliver the project. It will help you think about all the costs that you will need to cover.
You can upload the plan with your application form. This will help the assessor see that you have thought about the different aspects of the project. It will give them confidence that the project it is well planned.
Use the information to help you populate this and other sections of this application form. For this section, include information about how the project will take place, who is responsible, when and where the activity will take place and how often?
Explain why any non-direct delivery costs are required to make it happen. These could include marketing cost, management, and administration costs to help you to organise the activities such as hiring coaches and booking venues.
You can write up to 500 words for this section.
Section 5: Project Costs
It is good to tell Sport England more about the project costs and how they have been calculated. This could be done as part of the project plan detailed in the section above. But you could back up that information by completing this section.
This section also gives you the opportunity to tell Sport England about any further support they might be able to provide, such as advice or further guidance on the delivery of your project.
You can write up to 500 words for this section.
Examples of organisations which have already received funding and what they need it for.
Other Funders – Derbyshire
Foundation Derbyshire currently manage over 60 individually named funds on behalf of local philanthropists. Each Fund has its own story and criteria that reflect the donors’ range of charitable aims and interests. Some of these funds will support walking projects.
Grant awards tend to be up to £2,500.
The best way to approach Foundation Derbyshire is to phone them first. Telephone 01773 525860.
Click here for more information about the fund.
Examples of walking related projects which received grants through this fund.
Derbyshire County Council operate a scheme to provide small grants to community, voluntary, youth and other local organisations. It’s aim is to support worthwhile projects and initiatives that will benefit local communities. The scheme is designed to meet one-off costs.
Each of the 64 County Councillors (N.B. not Derby City Councillors) are allocated an annual fund of £7,720 which can be used to support projects in their division. This allocation is reviewed each financial year; therefore it is not guaranteed that this funding will be reopened in 2024/25.
Organisations seeking support under the scheme should contact their local county councillor explaining the nature of the project, the amount sought, what other funding may be available, and how it will benefit the community.
It is for the local county councillor to recommend which projects should be supported under the scheme.
