How long do funders take to decide, and what should I do while I wait?

England and Wales: This page sets out the position in full, and the nation is part of the answer rather than a footnote to it — the English large-grant programme is the slowest in the table. Scotland: covered in full, and the figures differ in your favour — both the small-grants and the large-grants programmes decide faster than their English equivalents. Northern Ireland: covered in full, with its own figures for both programmes, which sit between Scotland’s and England’s.

Funder decision times, sorted

The table sorts every published funder decision time, with the nation in each row. The figures are all published but never together, and side by side they do more planning work than any other table in this hub. The tracker this page builds starts from the copy you kept when you edited to the word limit and submitted.

Two things to read off it. The fastest route to money is a rolling small-grants programme, not a large one. And the slowest programme in the table is the largest English one, which is also the one most charities think of first.

How to plan around a funder’s decision time

The number that matters is not how long the funder takes. What matters is whether that is shorter than the time you have.

Work backwards. Take the date the money has to be in the bank and subtract the decision time. Then subtract the time it takes you to write the bid. What is left is the date you would have had to start. If that date is in the past, this funder cannot fund this project — however good the application is.

That is the honest use of the table. A project that has to start in the new school term cannot be funded by a programme that takes 40 weeks to decide. No amount of chasing changes that. The choice is a different funder, a later start, or bridging the gap from reserves.

The mistake this prevents is the common one, and it is made in good faith. The need is urgent, so the charity approaches the biggest available fund first. The answer arrives the better part of a year later, for a project that has already happened or already collapsed.

Decision times by nation

The same National Lottery Community Fund programmes decide at different speeds in each nation. That is why the decision-time table splits by nation even though the hub does not.

The National Lottery Community Fund runs the same two programmes in every nation under different names and different clocks. Scotland’s small grants and its large-grants programme, Community Action, both decide faster than the English equivalents. Northern Ireland’s small grants match Scotland’s, while Strengthening Communities sits between Scotland and England.

So the same charity, with the same project, gets a different answer to “how long?” depending on where it is. And the large-grants programme is named differently in each nation. That is why searching for the English name in the wrong nation turns up nothing at all.

Rolling programmes: no deadline, but the clock still runs

A rolling programme accepts applications at any time rather than in rounds with a closing date. The Heritage Fund’s programme in the table is one, and so are several of the other major funders’. There is no deadline to miss.

The clock still runs, though. It starts when you submit rather than when the funder closes a round. For a rolling programme, the decision time is the whole timetable, and the only date you control is the submission date.

A second effect is worth naming. A rolling programme can change, pause or close between the day you start writing and the day you send. Check the funder’s own page again before submitting, and treat anything you read in a grants directory as a lead rather than a fact.

What to do while you wait

Not much, done reliably.

• Answer the funder’s questions quickly. Most decisions that slip do so because an assessor asked something and waited. Name one person who watches the inbox the application came from, and make sure the whole team knows who that is.
• Tell the funder if something material changes. An important member of staff may leave, or a partner may pull out. The costs may move, or another funder may say yes to part of it. Assessors deal with this constantly. What they cannot deal with is finding out afterwards.
• Do not chase before the published timescale has passed. Chasing early does not speed anything up and it is remembered. Chasing a week after the published date is entirely reasonable. Send a short, polite email that quotes your reference number.
• Keep planning as though the answer is no. On the only published funnel in this guide, most applications that are eligible do not end in a grant. The step where you handle rejection and ask for feedback has the figures. The next application is easier to write while this one is still fresh.

The application tracker

A grant application tracker is a single table with one row per application. Each row records:

• the funder and the programme
• the amount requested, and what it is for
• the date you submitted
• the expected decision date
• the outcome, when it arrives

The expected decision date is the column that earns its place. It is the funder’s decision time from the decision-time table, added to your submission date. That turns a pile of applications into something you can plan around. It also tells you, at a glance, which applications are overdue and which only feel overdue.

Keep a link to the submitted copy in the same row. When the funder comes back with a question about answer six, you want to be reading answer six, not reconstructing it. The request was built on the figures from when you built the project budget. Those should agree with the charity’s own budget from when you built your first annual budget.

The tracker is also where the answer lands. A yes takes you to the next step, read and negotiate the grant agreement, before anything is signed. A no takes you to handle rejection and ask for feedback.

Common mistake: planning a start date that assumes a fast decision

It happens because the need is urgent, and urgency makes the biggest fund look like the obvious answer. Reaching Communities England takes 40 weeks, so a project that has to start within a few months cannot be funded by it. Check the decision time before you choose the funder, not after you have written the bid.

Worked example

Saltmarsh Trust needs money in place by September and starts looking in June.

Awards for All England, at 16 weeks, is tight but possible if the application goes in within a fortnight. Reaching Communities England, at 40 weeks, cannot work at all — the decision would arrive well into the following year. The Heritage Fund’s rolling small grants, at 8 weeks, are the fastest of the set, but only if the project is a heritage one.

So the shortlist is decided by the calendar before it is decided by fit. Saltmarsh applies to Awards for All now for the part of the project that has to start in September. It applies to the larger fund for the phase that begins next year. Splitting the ask by timescale is usually better than compressing the project to suit the fastest funder.