Big Lottery Fund

The Big Lottery Fund is a grant-making organisation in the UK. It allocates money raised by the National Lottery's good causes fund, replacing the former Community Fund and New Opportunities Fund on June 1, 2004.

The Big Lottery Fund supports projects which help to revitalise communities, particularly those in socially and economically disadvantaged areas. To do this, it operates three funding programmes:

• Open programmes, which provide funding for voluntary and community organisations (similar to the previous Community Fund programmes).
• National programmes, involving larger sums of money and more closely linked to the UK Government's own priorities (similar to the previous New Opportunities Fund programmes).
• Transformational programmes, which provide funding for major projects of national significance.

As with previous National Lottery schemes, the Fund's decisions have attracted both positive and negative publicity. It has been praised for supporting schemes across England to get school pupils involved in sporting activities, and has also made high-profile donations to projects supporting disabled people, film-makers and children with learning difficulties. However, controversies have included:

• The revelation in February 2005 that Comfort Afolabi of the Detainee Support and Help Unit (a charity which received £350,000 of lottery cash to help asylum seekers) offered to help a BBC Radio Five Live undercover reporter to get a fake passport and national insurance number.
• A decision in the same month not to award £300,000 to the ailing Sheffield branch of The Samaritans, on the grounds that it failed to target disadvantaged groups.

The Fund has offices in England (divided into 9 regions), Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Its current Chief Executive is Stephen Dunmore .