A few years ago I have a go to list of 15-20 funders that would cover most groups activities and wider more detailed searches only needed for more specific bits of work or where they had exhausted other funds. Things have moved on a lot and it is now rare that i can give standard funder lists to groups, as they now need far more careful investigation and research.

What has become noticeable is a growth in local grant opportunities, and this i would strongly encourage any group looking for funding to do as one of the first steps. Look at what the local Community Foundation has available, and/or grants managed by the local authority. These will have less competition than most national grants, and frequently use the same form, so information can be quickly copied from application to application.

Charity Excellence will allow you to run searches on a local area, as will idox Funder finder – but this is no free. In Wales there is the wcva funding pages and also funding cymru – which is free for groups in Wales.

AI can also be of use to help identify local funders, but when doing ask for information in stages rather than a single request for local funders, that fund a certain type of work and specific amounts, as this allows more errors to creep in.

The downside is that many local funds are smaller, which increased administrate burdens, so ensure you put in costs for monitoring and evaluation. On the plus, if you can secure local grants it will help your case in national grants as you will not need to as as much and local grants are a great way of showing local support for your work