Information for applicants offered funding
If you’ve been offered funding in our 2023-26 Investment Programme, find out more about the next steps and resources you may find useful.
Information for applicants offered funding
Your next steps
On Friday 4 November, we made conditional offers of funding. This funding will be confirmed once a funding agreement is negotiated.
If you’ve been made a conditional offer of funding, on this page you can find information about next steps and resources you might find helpful.
Mandatory templates
As part of funding agreement negotiation, you will need to provide an updated Activity Plan, Investment Principles Plan and Financial template covering the period 01 April 2023 – 31 March 2024. The deadline to submit updated plans is 20 January 2023. You must use the mandatory templates provided.
Accessing the templates
An important note on completing the Finances template:
For submission by 20 January 2023 organisations should complete the cashflow forecast template and the annual budget column (column L) of the Annual budget template. Any relevant notes can also be included in the notes on variances column (column P).
At this stage organisations should not complete the ‘current period’, ‘year to date’ and ‘projection’ columns in the budget template. These columns can be used should your organisation find the finance template a useful format for ongoing reporting to your board throughout the year.
Please refer to the ‘How to guide – Finance template’ at the link below for further guidance.
The templates have been designed and issued in Microsoft Excel, so that they’re compatible with our application portal, Grantium.
When you download each template, we strongly advise that you save the file first, before opening and editing it within the desktop version of Microsoft Excel. Please note, when you open the templates, you may be required to click ‘enable editing’ at the top of your screen in order to enter information into them.
If you try to open and edit the template in your browser, or with other spreadsheet software (e.g. Numbers), then certain functionality may be lost or restricted, which could affect your ability to submit correct and compatible data.
If you’re having difficulties downloading, saving or opening the templates, then get in touch as we may be able to offer you further support based on the system and software you’re planning to use.
Access support with your funding agreement
We’re committed to being open and accessible and recognise that some people may encounter barriers to negotiating their funding agreement with us.
There may be extra costs relating to your own access needs, or those of the people you’re working with, that you’ll need to pay to help you negotiate your funding agreement with us between now and when the funding period starts on 1 April 2023.
We can provide support if you, or the key people working towards your funding agreement are:
- D/deaf
- disabled
- neurodivergent
or:
- experience learning difficulties
- have a mental health condition, or have a long-term health condition
Some examples of the support we can provide are:
- specialist support worker (for example, a BSL interpreter)
- note-taker or scribe who is additional to your organisation’s paid staff
- someone to support you with additional needs when negotiating your funding agreement or using the online portal
Our Access Support information sheet explains more about the ways we can help.
If you require access support, please contact our Customer Services team who’ll be able to offer advice and support 10am – 4pm Monday to Friday:
- Telephone: 0161 934 4317
- Livechat: click the icon in the bottom right-hand corner of our website
- Email: enquiries@artscouncil.org.uk
- Contact form
We aim to respond to emails within five working days at the most – but we mostly respond within 48 working hours.
How we'll work with you
Relationship Frameworks
The Relationship Frameworks set out how we’ll work with National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs) and Investment Principles Support Organisations (IPSOs) funded through the 2023-26 Investment and Transfer Programmes. Please read the relevant Relationship Framework carefully as they provide important information on the following:
- who your point of contact at the Arts Council will be
- the role and responsibilities of your board
- how you’ll report on, and how we’ll monitor, your organisation and activity
- when, and how, we might make any interventions in the event that you’re not delivering on your funding agreement
Standard Terms and Conditions
Alongside this, we’ve also published our updated draft Standard Terms and Conditions. We’re sharing these with you now so you know what to expect if you’re offered funding, but we may make changes before issuing final funding agreements.
Resources
The Investment Principles Resource Hub provides blogs, podcasts, case studies, toolkits and more to help inform the development of well-run and future-facing organisations.
Have you met our Digital Culture Network? It’s here to develop your organisation’s digital skills and explore the benefits of technology. Tech Champions provide specialist support in digital strategy, digital marketing, social media, eCommerce, data analytics and insight, search engine marketing, websites, content creation, CRM and ticketing, and email marketing.
Environmental, audience and evaluation data collection tools
To help achieve Let’s Create, you’ll need access to good data collection tools as well as the right guidance and support to embed your ways of working. We ran an open and competitive procurement process to make sure you have free access to the best tools and support programmes possible. Find out more about the programmes below, we’ll be in touch before April to introduce how to use them.
Julie’s Bicycle will deliver our Environmental Responsibility Programme. The free-to-access suite of tools, resources and thought leadership programming is available to all NPOs. This includes the Creative Green Tools, a platform to allow you to collect your environmental data, calculate your carbon footprint and undertake carbon forecasting. Support will be available to help you make the most of the platform. Alongside this, the programme will include resources, support and training with a particular focus on environmental governance and climate justice. The programme will help you identify your organisation’s priorities for climate action and make measurable and tangible improvements over time.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) will deliver a new audience data collection and insights platform. You will be able to gather audience data through surveys and box office connections, and access meaningful insights about who engages with your activities. Automated functionality and a range of insights will be free to access and there will be resources and support to help you make the most of the tool. To simplify the data you submit to us, some audience and activity-related data currently collected through the Annual Survey will be brought into this platform too. You’ll be able to easily upload this information throughout the year and see your audience-related data in one place.
Counting What Counts will support data-led, quality evaluation through the Impact & Insight Toolkit (IIT). This tool captures data and provides users with insights into what audiences, participants, peers and creative practitioners think about the work they produce. Alongside this, there will be free access to resources, training and developmental support to enable organisations to explore and develop their quality evaluation processes through the framework
Complementing this will be an expansion of the Digital Culture Network. We’ll recruit two new Tech Champions who’ll help the sector make better use of data, particularly relating to in-person and online audiences.
Keeping in touch
As well as a named Relationship Manager (which will be confirmed to you in due course for the 2023-26 period), you can contact your Area Communications team or, if it’s a general question, our Customers Services team.