Wellbeing Fund: analysis of awards

3. Overview of applications and awards

The Wellbeing Fund Open Application Process was open for two rounds of applications. In Round One there were 1,004 applications to the fund, applying for a total of £25,073,599. In Round Two there were a further 559 applications for a total of £11,497,638. Across both rounds there were a total of 1,563 applications for a total of £36,571,237.

In the first round, 557 awards were made with a total value of almost £13.95 million. In the second round, 398 awards were made with a total value of £7.63 million. Fund assessors recommended 955 projects for funding, awarding a sum of £21,582,333.Overall, across the two rounds, 61% of all the applications were successful.

Applications in the second round were substantially more likely to be successful than applications in the first round. In Round One 55% of applications were successful, compared with 71% in Round Two. Review of the first round highlighted a number of areas where the fund criteria could be clarified and communicated better. In addition, all applicants were given feedback on their applications. As a result, around 100 organisations that were unsuccessful in Round One resubmitted their applications based on detailed feedback, and were successful in Round Two. We provide further analysis of the reasons why applications were unsuccessful below.

The average application request size across both rounds was £23,398.

Analysis of the distribution of application values (Figure 1) shows that many were for relatively low amounts.Five percent of applications were for less than £5,000, and therefore not eligible for funding from the Wellbeing Fund (see above for how these applications were handled). More than half (59%) of the applications were for values between £5,000 and £20,000. Just 16 per cent were for values of £50,000 and above.

The average award size of successful applications was £22,599.

Overall, the distribution of award values (Figure 2) reflected the distribution of application values, with two thirds of awards being made for smaller projects of £20,000 or less, and 36% for projects of £10,000 or less.^[6] Comparison of the distribution for applications and awards suggests that applications for smaller value projects were slightly more successful than those for larger values.