Please note, this fund is now closed to new applications.
About the fund
This fund made awards of up to £10,000 using National Lottery funding, from a pot of £7 million, to help community sport and physical activity groups create or improve facilities in their local area.
Working with projects across the country, Places and Spaces was a match-funding initiative, delivered in partnership with Crowdfunder.
We were especially interested in receiving bids from areas that were experiencing high levels of deprivation, the impact of coronavirus (Covid-19), loss capability and capacity in community organisations.
We launched a similar national fund in May 2020 – Active Together. We saw some incredible campaigns that really helped to activate a community and ease the burden that the coronavirus pandemic had across our sector.
Places and Spaces used a similar model to unite communities and leave a legacy from the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.
Why consider crowdfunding?
Running a crowdfunding campaign isn’t only a great way to raise essential funds, but also offers many additional benefits – such as:
- raising the awareness of what you do in the wider community
- improving the understanding among current members or supporters about the financial pressure of keeping things going
- encouraging new members, supporters and volunteers
- learning skills and building confidence in areas like social media, marketing, content writing and video creation
- creating new connections and relationships with local businesses and experts.
We are very happy, we of course benefitted financially from the campaign but more importantly we really have brought about new interest from the wider community, which we did not anticipate.
Crowdfunder host regular free webinars where you can hear from other organisations who've successfully run crowdfunding campaigns, with Q&As and lots of useful hints and tips about your own campaign.
