Frequently asked questions
You can nominate if you work with a charity or CIC that has:
- Activities that improve health and wellbeing in England, Scotland and Wales
- An annual income of £300,000 or less
- Been running for 2 years or more
- A bank account in the organisation’s name
Visit the Community Choice page to nominate.
No, you must use the form. Please visit the Community Choice page for more information.
There is some information that will need the input from the organisation. It will be tricky for you to answer a question about what the money will be spent on if you are not part of the organisation. Please ask someone involved in the organisation to complete the form.
Many organisations have multiple volunteers and staff members, if multiple people nominate the same organisation this is acceptable. We will not accept multiple nominations from the same person for the same organisation.
Community Choice is one of several different ways we will give out funding in 2026.
We know competition for funding is fierce and many funds close early because the funder is overwhelmed by nominations. We don’t want to do this. We are planning a variety of different methods of distributing funds and Community Choice is a fair and time efficient way of gathering nominations from smaller organisations. Thanks to players of The Health Lottery, during 2026 we have many different rounds of funding planned. As well as Community Choice this will likely include at least one large open application round for larger grants and closed application rounds.
You can nominate if you work with a charity or CIC that has:
- Activities that improve health and wellbeing in England, Scotland and Wales
- An annual income of £300,000 or less
- Been running for 2 years or more
- A bank account in the organisation’s name
Visit the Community Choice page to nominate.
You will get the money as soon as we have verified that your organisation meets the criteria. Likely within 4 weeks.
The Health Lottery Foundation distributes money raised by The Health Lottery players. A minimum of 20% of every lottery draw ticket and online scratch card purchased goes towards good causes.
The Health Lottery operates on behalf of The Health Lottery Foundation. We are responsible for making sure that the money flows into communities in a way that makes a real difference to people’s lives.
Yes. You are not restricted from applying for funding if you have already received a grant from us.
The first open round was under the theme ‘young people’ and closed on Friday 27 June 2025.
We will direct funding to other areas across the year. If you are a voluntary organisation that has projects that cover a broad range of themes you may find multiple opportunities to apply over the year.
This is our first year of operating and we are working to understand where we need to distribute funding to make the most difference. This means that we cannot tell you now what each round will be and who we will support. We understand that this may be frustrating for you. Over time we aim to give more notice about grant rounds and themes.
When we say ‘voluntary organisation’ we mean:
- Charities or Community Interest Companies (CICs)
- Community groups, such as local clubs and associations (for example, youth groups and environmental clubs)
- Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs)
- Social enterprises, businesses with a social or environmental purpose
- Faith-based organisations
We accept applications from any of the above.
