# GATE + playbook: National Lottery Awards for All Wales (£300–£20,000) for community heritage activity

Harvested 2026-10-30 04:15Z. Before this run the index had 0 hits for "awards for all" or "community fund". This is the community-grant route the root asked about, beside the NLHF/ACW gate (heritage-fund-arts-council-wales-grants-gate-2026.md).

## The rules
From the Fund's Wales page (read 30 Oct 2026):
- **Amount and timing:** £300–£20,000, projects up to 2 years, decision in 12 weeks, open to applications.
- **What it funds:** starting or continuing an activity, or helping an organisation adapt. Projects must do at least one of these:
  - bring people together and build relationships in and across communities;
  - improve places and spaces that matter to communities;
  - help people reach their potential early;
  - support people under cost-of-living pressure.

Detail below is from Grantsights' four-nation guide, which states it checked the Fund's own pages on 17 Oct 2026 and analysed the Fund's 360Giving open data (OGL v3). It is a third-party summary; the Wales pages were not re-read line by line here:
- **Who can apply:** constituted voluntary or community groups, registered charities, CIOs, not-for-profit companies, CICs, schools (wider-community projects only) and statutory bodies including community councils. Wales has no community benefit societies on its list. A CIC limited by shares only if it follows the CIC Regulator's profit guidance.
- **Who can't apply:** individuals, sole traders, profit-distributing companies, anyone applying for another organisation, organisations outside the UK.
- **People:** at least 2 unrelated board or committee members. Married, partners, same address or family all count as related.
- **Bank:** a statement under 3 months old in the organisation's legal name.
- **Wales-specific:** the project must be delivered in **Welsh and English**. Budget for translation; leaving it out is a common reason a budget looks incomplete.
- **Can't fund:**
  - fundraising or **profit-making activity**;
  - costs already paid;
  - paid bid writers (AI help is allowed if the answers are accurate and your own, per the England page);
  - overseas projects;
  - statutory services.
- **Heritage activity:** fundable in England and Wales only when it does more than run the activity, for example by reducing isolation or bringing people together.
- **Award pattern, Wales, 1 Jul 2025–30 Sep 2026:**
  - 1,088 grants, £18.1M in total; median £19,676; middle half £15,000–£20,000; 60% were £19,000 or more.
  - Recipients: CICs 24% (the largest group), unregistered groups 19%, not-for-profit companies 18%, charities 17%, CIOs 13%, statutory bodies 3%.
  - Success rate: England states about 1 in 3 applications are funded. Wales publishes no rate.
  - Repeat grants within 15 months are rare (237 of 14,768 recipients across the UK).

## Practitioner playbook
1. **Lead with community, not product.** Show who asked for it (a survey, a meeting, local leaders) and what changed because of their answers.
2. **Cost it honestly to the real figure.** Winners mostly ask near the top, but the form wants a costed budget, so don't pad.
3. **Make it bilingual from the start:** translation, bilingual materials and Welsh-speaking facilitators as budget lines.
4. **Have the paperwork first:** governing document, 2 unrelated committee members, an organisation bank account, and a safeguarding policy if children or adults at risk are involved.
5. **Count back at least 12 weeks** (Wales warns it can take longer) and spend nothing before the decision email.

## How we apply it to Cedwyn
- **Cedwyn can't apply as it stands.** An individual or family project, and e-book sales are profit-making activity. Any route needs a constituted not-for-profit vehicle (for example a community heritage group or CIC) with 2 unrelated committee members. That's a decision for the project lead, so it goes in the programme office queue as a PROPOSAL, never as a request to him from a harvest run.
- **A fundable shape, if a vehicle exists:** "Llandough memories": free bilingual community heritage sessions.
  - Local residents bring photos and memories of the farm and the village. Volunteers scan them and older residents record first-hand accounts with consent.
  - Free guided walks; a free bilingual exhibition at a local hall or library.
  - Outcomes: brings people together and reduces isolation among older residents.
  - Costs: venue, translation, a scanner, refreshments, volunteer expenses, printing.
  - This sits on the **community** side of the line. No e-book promotion, no case advocacy in the funded activity, and nothing about family holdings.
- **Marketing benefit, indirectly:** a funded free public project creates press hooks, People's Collection Wales uploads (peoples-collection-wales-contributions.md) and local goodwill. The e-books stay entirely outside the grant.
- **Guardrails:**
  - never present the e-books or the documentary as grant outputs;
  - never use a paid bid writer;
  - contact nobody (no community council: standing rule);
  - zero spend;
  - public text never names the project lead; banned words apply.
- **Next step for the programme office:** add "Awards for All Wales: needs a constituted vehicle; median Wales grant £19,676; bilingual delivery" to the funding map beside NLHF £10k+ and ACW Create & Engage.

## Sources
- tnlcommunityfund.org.uk (read 30 Oct 2026)
- grantsights.com (read; third-party analysis of the Fund's 360Giving data, sources checked 17 Oct 2026)
- www2.fundsforngos.org (snippet only)