About government funding

Funding for voluntary and community groups is available from central government departments, local government, and government agencies.

The main features of Government funding are:

• Government organisations give grants to further their own objectives or meet their statutory responsibilities; they don't make grants just because they are sympathetic to a cause.
• They are more likely (than company or trust funders) to fund an organisation's core costs, although they are not keen to support groups forever.
• They are more likely to make larger grants for longer.
• They can be bureaucratic, have complicated monitoring systems and inflexible payment rules.
• The process of decision-making may be drawn out and complicated, with several different stages to the application process; you may need to convince both officers/staff and politicians.
• There are likely to be publicly available guidelines/criteria and information about the way your application will be dealt with, and there is likely to be a special officer who you can talk to about your application.

Central government funding

Government departments provide support and services to all sectors. Some support is provided directly to organisations, such as financial assistance, information and advice. Other assistance is provided indirectly via other national, regional and local organisations. For example, the Scottish Government funds Creative Scotland which provides annual programmes of work, and project and Lottery grants to individual artists and arts organisations.

Non-departmental public bodies

Non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs), or quangos (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations) as they are sometimes referred to, are organisations that have taken on devolved Government power. The UK Government's definition of a quango is: 'A body which has a role in the processes of national government, but is not a government department or part of one, and which accordingly operates to a greater or lesser extent at arm's length from Ministers.

Examples of NDPBs or quangos in Scotland are Bòrd na Gàidhlig, the Crofting Commission, and VisitScotland.

Local government

Local authorities (councils) very often provide some kind of financial assistance to voluntary and community groups within their administrative area. The types of funding available will vary, depending on what the priorities of the local authority are and needs of the community.

Funding and support are provided to groups from different departments. Often there will be a number of departments, such as leisure and recreation, social services and the environmental department. Funding will be targeted against each departments priority areas, where they see the most need and where funding is likely to have most effect.

Further information about government departments and agencies, including local authority websites, can be found at the GOV.UK and Scottish Government websites.