Spend your time with the community,
not the paperwork.
Your board has been trusted with up to £20 million for your neighbourhood. That means dozens of applications to read, check and score, and a budget to balance across nine themes. Grantmaker does the heavy lifting, so you're free to work with residents on the decisions that matter.
“When we looked into the amount of work our Early Wins funding round would involve, it felt overwhelming. Grantmaker has streamlined the whole process and saved the Board days of work. It has also given us peace of mind that the process is transparent and fair, and that due diligence checks are taking place.”
Choose fairly, spend it well, and stand behind every decision.
That's the job every Neighbourhood Board has taken on, with a community counting on you. Here's how Grantmaker helps with each part of it.
Give residents a say in what gets funded
Pride in Place works best when residents help choose what gets funded, not just what the priorities are. Grantmaker brings the community into the decision: residents vote on the projects they'd most like to see funded, and their votes count towards each project's score alongside the board's own assessment.
Be ready to explain any decision
Your board is part of the community it funds, so its decisions need to make sense to the people around it. Every assessment in Grantmaker comes with a written justification, the evidence behind it, who scored it and any changes the board made, so the reasoning is there for anyone who asks.
Know every grant fits the programme's themes
Every grant has to fit the nine Pride in Place themes. Grantmaker reads each application and identifies the themes it genuinely delivers against, with the evidence from the proposal, and puts its cost against the strongest one. Where one theme's budget runs short, a project's cost can be split across the themes it delivers.
Balance the budget across themes and years
Funding the top-scoring applications usually underspends capital, overspends revenue and concentrates the money in a few themes. Grantmaker balances your yearly theme, capital and revenue budgets by splitting costs across themes, moving start dates and funding smaller projects with what's left, then proposes a plan for you to adjust.
Hear from everyone, however they apply
Pride in Place asks boards to reach those less likely to be heard, and not everyone will want to apply online. With Grantmaker, applicants can use our online form to apply or submit a handwritten paper copy. Both are read into the same dashboard, so the board assesses every application alike. Follow-on forms collect monitoring details and funding agreements later, keeping the first form short.
One process for every applicant, registered or not
Pride in Place guidance encourages boards to hand budgets and delivery to local community groups, and many of them aren't registered anywhere. Grantmaker pulls details from the charity register or Companies House where it can, reads an organisation's website if it has one, and assesses groups with no public record on their application, so being on a register gives no one an unfair advantage.
What works in a Pride in Place round.
Lessons from the rounds we've supported, useful whether or not you use Grantmaker.
What to score projects on
Community input
Pride in Place is meant to give residents a real say, and they'll notice if their views don't change anything. A dot vote is a simple way to do it: each resident gets a few dots to place on the projects they'd most like to see funded, and each project is scored on its share of the dots.
Local priority
Your engagement told you what residents care about most, and the money should follow it. Rank the themes by how strongly residents raised them, then score each project on the highest-ranked theme it genuinely delivers.
Quick wins
An early round is the first chance to show residents the programme can make a difference, and results they can see soon help build that trust. Score projects on how many months until residents first notice a change.
Visibility
Pride in Place is about how people feel about where they live, and that feeling shifts most when residents can see things improving around them. Score the part of a project residents are most likely to come across: the more permanent and public it is, the higher it scores.
Match funding
Match funding stretches your budget and shows others already believe in the project. Score it as a percentage of the project's total cost, counting only money that has been awarded.
Collaboration
Projects delivered by several local organisations tend to reach more people, avoid duplicating existing work, and build working relationships that carry on after the funding has been spent. Count the organisations actively delivering the project, not those named as supporters.
Board moderation
Residents can tell you which projects they like. The board knows whether a project fits the programme, who's behind it, what else is already happening nearby and how it sits alongside everything else being funded. Give the board its own score on each project, so that knowledge can shift the ranking transparently.
Questions worth asking applicants
Confirmed match funding
Bids for other funding often fall through. Ask how much is confirmed, how much is still being applied for, and who from, so you know how much of the project is really covered.
Capital, revenue and costs
Your budget has separate capital and revenue limits each year. Ask for the split and a breakdown of costs, so you can check one against the other. Grantmaker can check they line up.
Benefit to your area
Many projects reach people beyond your boundary as well as within it. Ask roughly what proportion of the benefit stays in your Pride in Place area, offering ranges such as under 25% or over 75% so answers can be compared.
Timing
You need to know when residents will see a difference and which financial year the money falls in. Ask when the project starts and finishes, when the first change will be visible, and for longer projects how spending falls across the years.
Themes
Every grant has to fit the programme's themes. Ask which themes the project addresses and what it will actually do for each, so you can tell real delivery from a ticked box.
What the project depends on
Planning permission, a lease or a landowner's agreement can hold a project up for months. Ask what needs to be in place before it can start, and whether it already is.
What the monitoring return needs
Collect what MHCLG's monitoring return asks for, such as the project's postcode, who it's aimed at and how many people it will reach. A follow-on form for shortlisted applicants keeps the first form short.
Questions from boards like yours.
If yours isn't here, email us at hello@grantmaker.co.uk.
Request a demo
See Grantmaker in action. Book a personal walkthrough with the founding team and we'll show you how it can support your team to make the most of your fund.
- A guided walkthrough, tailored to your funding
- See eligibility, scoring, risk and budgeting in action
- Expert guidance on bringing AI to your grant-making
- No pressure, no obligation