DIARY OF A SUCCESSFUL LOTTERY BID

A story of how people can work together to make something good happen!

Mar 06 It’s over a year since IA decided to apply to the Big Lottery (formerly Community Fund). 

Apr 06 We knew that something had to be done to get more funding for IA’s work.  At this time there was no more money for Crisis Advocacy which helps people at really difficult times. Other funding would soon come to an end and there was no time to lose!  A lot of care was taken to explore different pots of money which IA could apply to.  One was Reaching Communities, part of the Big Lottery.  It seemed that all the things IA does and wanted to do in the future fitted in with this fund.  

May 06 Paul and Lorraine worked quickly to put together a first application. This was a short document which asked what sort of things IA wanted to do, who’d do them and how much money it would cost! 

 Jun 06 The Big Lottery liked IA’s ideas - it wrote back and asked us to fill in a much longer application form with more details about our project. There was now a lot of excitement in the office but we were only just over the first hurdle! We formed a working group of Lorraine, Paul, Colin & Sarah to get our ideas together.   

Brenda & Dorothy

Jul 06 Although the ‘bones’ of the project were now together in a kind of skeleton, we needed to put some ‘flesh’ on it.  We wanted to ask everyone involved with IA - members, Advocates, Partners and others what they thought about advocacy in Central Cheshire.  We did this by having two consultation meetings – one in Northwich and one in Crewe (Pictured left).  Lorraine did some presentations showing the ideas so far and people were asked what they thought.  Over 45 people attended the consultations and many said they wanted to be involved more.

Aug to Oct 06 This was a really busy time for IA.  All the information from the meetings was collected together with information from many other reports so we could answer the questions in the Big Lottery application.  A few of us worked together each week - we sent lots of emails discussing many things, we wrote and rewrote many of answers.  One of the big headaches was working out how much the project would cost - we needed money for staff and equipment. It worked out at over £200,000 over 5 years - that sounds a lot but we had to be realistic so that the Big Lottery would take us seriously.  

Oct 06 - This was the day, the application form was finished.  Lorraine kissed the envelope (which by now was a huge package) and sent it on its way!  

Nov 06 - Lorraine got a call from the Big Lottery.  Colin was there to support her.  She was on the phone for a whole afternoon explaining our application.  

Nov 06 to Mar 07 - We all crossed fingers and toes for a long wait.  We knew that only 1 in 5 applications were successful.  Would IA’s be one of the lucky few?  

Mar 07 - It was the day of the interviews for the new BILD post and a thick envelope from the Lottery arrived.  Debbie nervously opened it and… Yippee!!!  …We got it, we did it, we were successful!!!

There was lots of jumping around, hugging and celebrating.

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