About the Know Your Neighbourhood Fund

In 2023, UKCF partnered with the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) to distribute £14 million of the Know Your Neighbourhood Fund.  Funding has been distributed throughout England to groups and activities that are enabling meaningful and impactful volunteering and tackle loneliness.

This learning-based programme is supporting people to access enriching opportunities that will help to improve their wellbeing, skills, confidence and social connections.

Additionally, participating community foundations are developing an understanding of what works to improve wellbeing and pride in place across the country.  This is being done by independently evaluating the funding of community initiatives that aim to increase volunteering and tackle loneliness.

  

  

  

The Know Your Neighbourhood Fund has been extended until March 2026

75 existing projects will continue their work to widen participation in volunteering and tackle loneliness through funding delivered in nine target areas of England by nine community foundations:

Wolverhampton, South Tyneside, Kingston-Upon-Hull, Blackpool, Stoke-On-Trent, Great Yarmouth, Fenland, County Durham, and Barrow-in-Furness.

Participating community foundations are:

Cambridgeshire Community Foundation

Community Foundations for Lancashire and Merseyside

Community Foundation North East

Point North

Cumbria Community Foundation

Norfolk Community Foundation

The Community Foundation for Staffordshire and Shropshire

Two Ridings Community Foundation

Heart of England Community Foundation

  

  

The objectives of the Know Your Neighbourhood Fund:

1. To increase the proportion of people in targeted high-deprivation local authorities who volunteer at least once a month.

2. To reduce the proportion of chronically lonely people in targeted high-deprivation local authorities who lack desired level of social connections.

3. To build the evidence to identify scalable and sustainable place-based interventions that work in increasing regular volunteering and reducing chronic loneliness.

4. To enable targeted high-deprivation local authorities, and the local voluntary and community sector in these places, to implement sustainable systems and processes that encourage volunteering and tackling loneliness.