Guidance

Know Your Neighbourhood (KYN) Fund: Intermediary Grant Maker Competition Application Guidance

Updated 20 September 2022

This was published under the 2019 to 2022 Johnson Conservative government

Applies to England

This document should be read in conjunction with the Application Form and Advert

1. Overview

Up to £14 million will be made available through the Know Your Neighbourhood (KYN) Fund for activities enabling volunteering and tackling loneliness in 6 to 9 high deprivation local authorities. In line with the missions set out in the Levelling Up White Paper, our primary ambition is to develop our understanding of what works to improve wellbeing and pride in place in these communities through volunteering and community initiatives tackling loneliness. Citizens will be able to participate in local projects which build their skills, wellbeing and social networks.

2. KYN Fund objectives

The objectives of the KYN Fund are, by March 2025:

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

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

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

• 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.

3. Role of Intermediary Grant Maker (IGM)

There are three core elements to this role:

• Designing and delivering a fair and open process for eligible Onward Grant Recipients (OGRs) to apply for funding from the voluntary and community social enterprise (VCSE) sector in the IGM’s selected 6 to 9 geographical areas, working in partnership with local people to help identify the relevant skills, activities and resources already existing in those areas to help strengthen and improve things locally. This will involve ensuring a balanced spread of funding is distributed to achieve the objectives.

• Administering grants to OGRs to carry out projects in the targeted communities that increase volunteering and support people to connect with others in their local area, reducing loneliness.

• Building the evidence to identify scalable and sustainable place-based interventions that work in increasing regular volunteering and reducing chronic loneliness. The IGM will need to play a significant role in ensuring the quality of the evaluation is high, by ensuring that all funded projects have an impact evaluation.

The evaluation for this programme will be split in two:

• An overarching evaluation commercially tendered by DCMS -  This will include qualitative research, synthesis of monitoring data and a value for money analysis. We also expect the evaluator to work with the IGM and OGRs to peer review and support experimental and quasi-experimental evaluation design and delivery.  The overarching evaluation report published will include a synthesis of the process evaluation and individual programme evaluations.

• Individual project evaluations commissioned by Onward Grant Recipients-  The IGM will ensure impact evaluations are carried out for all funded projects and administer the funding for these evaluations.  A budget of up to £1,080,000 (inclusive of VAT over the three year period) will be protected as a pot for the IGM to access for this purpose. It will be made available in monthly tranches by DCMS as and when we know what evaluation designs will be possible at a local level. The IGM will need to ensure that, at a minimum, theory-based impact evaluations are carried out at project level.  They should set out plans to ensure that grantees are incentivised to conduct experimental or quasi-experimental evaluations. We will also look favourably on bids that demonstrate that the IGM is able to bring in relevant evaluation expertise to advise and support OGRs on project-level evaluations.  We encourage partnerships with academics or other evaluators where this expertise does not exist in-house. Any of this pot not drawn down for evaluation will be reprofiled for programme spend.

4. Local projects in scope for onward grants

Projects in targeted high-deprivation areas should aim to use volunteering to help improve the wellbeing, skills, confidence or social connections of volunteers, and/or to support people to develop social connections within their communities.

The IGM should assess the onward grant applicants on their ability to:

• Provide access to volunteering opportunities in targeted high-deprivation neighbourhoods;

• Improve social connections within the community;

• Implement sustainable systems and processes that encourage volunteering and tackling loneliness;

• Build the evidence to identify scalable and sustainable place-based interventions that work in increasing regular volunteering and reducing chronic loneliness; and

• Represent value for money, with interventions expected to achieve a high benefit-cost ratio to be prioritised.

To illustrate what mix of projects could be funded, if we successfully achieve our objectives in a high-deprivation local authority:

People living in high-deprivation neighbourhoods will access enriching projects. These projects should aim to help improve their wellbeing, skills, confidence, or social connections and enable access (or remove barriers) to these opportunities to volunteer and participate. Types of projects could include:

• Time limited projects or events (eg. festivals, parades, family fun days)
• Environmental and green activities (eg. community gardens or litter picking)
• Food provision or community cafes
• Activities for young people (eg. outings, training, clubs)
• Activities to support children and families (eg. play sessions, support for parents)
• Befriending, or mentoring initiatives (online or in person)
• Social and wellbeing activities (eg. lunch clubs for the elderly or online communities of support)
• Employment or skills sharing activities (eg. computer skills, cooking, sewing, knitting, arts and crafts)
• Information, advice and support services for vulnerable groups (eg. money, debt and benefits)
• Activities to support carers and disabled people
• Resident and neighbour engagement and consultation events to develop and improve areas

Systems and partnerships will be stronger between local Voluntary and Community Social Enterprises (VCSEs), statutory partners and local citizens. We hope that through the programme, more systemic change will take place. For example:

• Local people help identify relevant skills, activities and resources locally through an asset based community development (ABCD) approach. Recognising, identifying and harnessing existing ‘assets’ (i.e. things like skills, knowledge, capacity, resources, experience or enthusiasm) that individuals and communities have which can help to strengthen and improve things locally. Instead of looking at what a community needs or lacks, the approach focuses on utilising the ‘assets’ that are already there. Areas might choose to fund consultation activities or recruit and train community organisers to achieve this, particularly if there is little existing VCSE infrastructure locally.
• There are stronger links between voluntary and community organisations and the health system to enable social prescribing by ensuring that social prescribing link workers have information about the local services and activities available, and are able to identify gaps in provision and work with VCS organisations to address these.
• The VCSE sector and statutory partners are better able to strategically convene around emerging challenges locally and address barriers to social connection at a systems level. This might be by sharing information about local barriers to connection and taking joined-up approaches to identifying and supporting people at risk of loneliness (eg. applying emerging learning from the Department for Transport’s Tackling Loneliness with Transport pilots to support people to connect in their area).
• Existing local physical assets are better utilised for community use. This might be through stronger strategic partnerships with schools, the high street, arts, heritage or sports centres, opening up their spaces for wider community use.
• Hyperlocal community initiatives have better access to local infrastructure and funding support. This might include better access to funding in the long term or support writing funding applications. For example, a local, regional or even national VCSE organisation builds relationships with a new set of community initiatives and provides ongoing support for groups to sustain volunteering opportunities and community engagement activities in high-deprivation neighbourhoods.  Or businesses are more engaged and forge longer term funding commitments at a local level.

5. Activities in scope of KYN Fund

The following activities can be funded where they are essential for delivering relevant services:

• Staff salaries
• Project running costs
• Organisational running costs/overheads
• Goods and equipment which would not be capitalised (e.g. to develop enhanced physical environment and continue to deliver services)
• Organisational development

The following cannot be funded:

• Activities that make profits for private gain
• Campaigning activities
• Religious activities (we can fund religious organisations if their project benefits the wider community and doesn’t include religious content)
• Political or lobbying activities
• Loan repayments
• Debt repayments to HMRC or other crown debts
• Capital costs

6. Eligible geographical areas for funding

KYN Fund will take a place-based approach, targeting support to areas with higher levels of deprivation or community need. Local authority districts eligible for KYN Fund support are provided below.

This shortlist of 27 local authorities has been selected by combining two measures of local need - the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) and the Community Needs Index (CNI) - and ensuring an even distribution between different area types (large urban areas, medium urban areas, rural or small urban areas).

The IGM will select 6 to 9 local authorities to work with from this shortlist, including at least two local authorities from each area type. If a bidder wants to work in more than 6 areas they should demonstrate how they will ensure depth of impact and maintain a good mix of support for urban and rural communities in any additional areas they select.

Further information on the metrics used for place selection and the underlying methodology is provided in Annex A.

Large urban areas		Medium urban areas		Rural or small urban areas
Local authority district (2021)	Region	Local authority district (2021)	Region	Local authority district (2021)	Region
Knowsley	North West	Hartlepool	North East	Tendring	East of England
Tameside	North West	Kingston upon Hull	Yorkshire and The Humber	Great Yarmouth	East of England
Wolverhamp- ton	West Midlands	Halton	North West	Fenland	East of England
Sunderland	North East	Thanet	South East	County Durham	North East
Doncaster	Yorkshire and The Humber	Blackpool	North West	Torridge	South West
Barnsley	Yorkshire and The Humber	Middles- brough	North East	Bolsover	East Midlands
South Tyneside	North East	Burnley	North West	Barrow-in- Furness	North West
Rochdale	North West	Stoke-on- Trent	West Midlands	King’s Lynn and West Norfolk	East of England
Sandwell	West Midlands	Wakefield	Yorkshire and The Humber	Cannock Chase	West Midlands

7. Fund length

KYN Fund will commence from December 2022 and end by 31 March 2025.

The spend for each financial year of the fund is:

• Y1- 22/23- £1,600,000
• Y2- 23/24- up to £6,200,000
• Y3- 24/25- up to £6,200,000

Note: For each financial year the actual value of onward grants for the IGM to administer is the figure stated above, minus 10% for evaluation (both elements, as outlined in the assessment criteria and section 7 of the detailed guidance below) and minus the requested % administration fee included in your bid (admin fee of no more than 6% as per eligibility criteria).

All DCMS funded activities must have taken place and the expenditure incurred by onward grantees by 31 March in each financial year of the programme i.e. in year 1, £1,600,000 must have been delivered and onward grantees must have completed DCMS funded activities by 31 March 2023.

Successful applicants can use their match funds to support onward grantees beyond 31 March 2025 when this programme will end.

8. Who can apply

DCMS is inviting non-profit grant making organisations, such as charitable foundations, philanthropic institutions and Arms Length Bodies to apply to be the Intermediary Grant Maker for this fund. We also welcome bids from a consortia of charitable organisations, of which a lead organisation should make the application.

9. Assessment criteria

9.1 Essential criteria assessed as pass/fail - Bidders must:

• Be a nonprofit grant making organisation.
• Request the maximum DCMS budget of £14m.
• Ensure that the value of any grant requested must not represent more than 50% of the applicant organisation or consortium’s combined annual income for the financial year. Requests of more than 25% of annual income will be subject to additional financial due diligence.
• Ensure funds are directed to high-deprivation neighbourhoods within their selected 6 to 9 local authority areas from our long list of 27 areas, with at least two local authorities from each area type. (Full list available in Annex A below). Please note, funding is England only.
• Comply with the requirement for independent evaluation. This will include working with DCMS analytical teams and our contracted evaluator to ensure local areas are supported to develop and deliver high quality impact evaluations (using Randomised Control Trials or quasi-experimental methods where possible).
• Agree to participate in the wider governance of the Fund.
• Agree to report on onward distribution and management of the funds.
• Dedicate no more than 6% towards the administration of grants within the programme.
• Ensure funds are spent in line with DCMS grant terms and conditions and have adequate safeguarding policies in place. The DCMS draft terms and conditions for grant agreements are available as an attachment.

9.2 Essential criteria assessed through scored answers - Bidders must:

• Provide details of experience and suitability of expertise for the delivery of the programme (specifying a lead partner if bidding with a partnership or consortium arrangement).
• Set out clear project management, governance arrangements and responsibilities for the fund, including arrangements to report to DCMS on risk and issue management and any changes throughout the programme through regular monthly management meetings and reports.
• Have a clear plan for using interventions to build the evidence on what works in tackling loneliness and encouraging volunteering in deprived areas. In particular, applications should set out a credible plan for implementing quasi-experimental methods or randomised-control trials at a project level to build the evidence base. Applicants may wish to explore opportunities to work with academic partners in order to ensure methodological rigour in their plans.
• Carry out comprehensive due diligence and post event assurance reviews for all onward grantees.
• Include in the bid partnerships with local VCSEs with knowledge of the challenges and opportunities within the most deprived neighbourhoods within these communities.
• Ensure local groups have the capability to report on spend and project activity.

9.3 Desirable criteria for bidders - that they bring:

• Experience and knowledge of delivering/funding interventions specifically focused on increasing volunteering opportunities and/or tackling loneliness, or partnering with organisations who have this experience and knowledge.
• Experience of building and/or working in partnerships across sectors at a local level, and experience of community engagement to ensure user voices are represented in plans.
• Cash match-funds or in kind contributions. Our preference would be for any cash match to extend the life of the programme. If bidders are bringing substantial cash match funding (above 50%) they may set out plans to work in more than 9 of the 27 eligible areas.  Please see definition of in kind and match contributions in the below guidance.

9.4 Application form scoring approach and weighting summary

Section	Scoring approach/ weighting
Section 1 Application details	Required information, not scored.
Section 2: Eligibility check-list	Qualification criteria Pass/ Fail If you fail any of this criteria your application will not be scored further.
Section 3: Value for Money	Financial criteria The total score for this section is 15% See Annex B for guidance on the calculation.
Section 4: Strategic alignment and approach to target areas	Quality criteria The total score for this section is 25%
Section 5: Experience and capability to deliver	Quality criteria The total score for this section is 20%
Section 6: Project oversight and delivery approach	Quality criteria The total score for this section is 20%
Section 7: Evaluation approach	Quality criteria The total score for this section is 20%

More detailed guidance is set out per section in the detailed guidance tables below.

10. Key dates

The deadline for applications is 10am on Thursday 29th September 2022.

Applications received after this date and time will not be considered.  You will receive a confirmation email to acknowledge receipt. Please get in touch if you have not received this to ensure that your application has successfully been submitted before the deadline.

Applications should be submitted by email to [email protected]. Enquiries about the KYN Fund should also be directed to this address by 5pm on Friday 2nd September. We will respond individually to clarification questions up until this date and will update the gov.uk page with anonymised clarifications which have been shared shortly after this.

DCMS will hold a virtual engagement session for clarification questions from 10:30am - 11:30am on Wednesday 31st August 2022. Please contact the Volunteering and Tackling Loneliness team at [email protected] to request further information or to sign up for this event.

Shortly after the engagement session we will update the gov.uk page with information shared at the engagement session, anonymised clarifications to questions asked at the session and to questions received by email before 2nd September. Please check the gov.uk page for the clarifications before submitting your application.

Please note, as the application process is competitive, the DCMS team is not able to respond to requests for support in completing the application.

We may invite the leading organisation from up to 3-5 of the highest scoring bids for clarification interviews in mid October 2022.

Please be aware that there will be a pause between the interview stage and informing applicants of the outcome of up to two months. We expect to inform the successful applicant by late November/ early December.

Any changes to this timeline will be communicated on the gov.uk page.

11. Detailed guidance

Guidance	Assessment criteria
Section 1: Applicant details
1.2 If your organisation has more than one website please specify which one will be used most for the activities being funded. 1.5 e.g. Charity registered on the charity commission website, a corporate body (ltd), a community interest company, a cooperative, an independent provident society, new charitable incorporated organisation (CIO), other. 1.13 Grants may be awarded to organisations working together in a partnership arrangement or consortium, but there must be a lead organisation on behalf of whom this application is being made with expertise and experience in charitable grant making. We would like one application per a consortium or partnership bid. Organisations may apply more than once if they have an alternative proposal to deliver individually or a different partnership arrangement. An organisation can be involved in a maximum of two bids. 1.14 E.g. Consortium, joint venture, unincorporated association, partnership, other types of joint application etc. 1.15 For each joint application member provide the following details: • Organisation name: • Website: • Role in the project: • Contact name: • Contact email: • Partnership agreement (or similar) in place: 1.16 For each delivery partner provide the following details: •Organisation name: •Website: • Role in the project: • Contact name: • Contact email: 1.18 All successful applicants will be subject to comprehensive due diligence reviews and other database searches, including fraud risk indicators. To aid this, we will review the annual report submitted. These should include: • Income and expenditure • Restricted reserves • Unrestricted reserves • Current liabilities and long term debts • Any outstanding taxes owed to HMRC or other crown debts. Please note, in the event your last financial year end was more than six months ago we may request further accounting information at a later date as part of our due diligence process. 1.19 Exceptional circumstances could include: •Recent press coverage • Recent management changes • Recent investigation, regulatory or legal action by: the Charity Commission, Companies House, Insolvency Service or other regulator, police force or government authority • Any county court judgements, or ongoing criminal or civil litigation • Any of the above in relation to onward grantees 1.20 Amount/ nature of match funding your organisation will bring (if applicable) Applicants are encouraged to bring cash or in kind match contributions. However, this is not a prerequisite for applicants. Please indicate the amount of cash match funding here, or the nature and financial value of in kind contributions. Please note that match funding will not be assessed in this section, the assessment of match funding is in section 4.1 where you are asked to outline how any match funding included in the application will strengthen your approach to meeting the Fund’s objectives. 1.21 Provenance of match funds (if applicable) It is essential that any sources of cash and in kind contributions used as the basis for the match are legitimate and not sourced by means of unlawful or unethical practices, or from unlawful or unethical sources. In kind match funding can include non-cash contributions to your project, such as materials or services that are provided free of charge or at a reduced rate. For example, this might include donated equipment, services donated from other companies or organisations, the use of premises or office space for the project, or carer support for people with, for example, disabilities. In kind contributions do not include spending which forms part of the core costs of your organisation. Before the grant is awarded, you will be asked to provide evidence of the source of funds for any cash match and evidence of the source of any in kind goods or services to be provided.	Information required but not scored

Guidance	Assessment criteria
Section 2: Eligibility check-list
2.1 This grant will be made using section 70 of the Charities Act. Bidders must be charitable, benevolent or philanthropic institutions. 2.2 Applicants must be UK entities only and they must have been trading in the UK for more than 12 months.
In the case of a consortium or partnership application, the lead partner must be a UK entity and have been trading in the UK for more than 12 months. For additional partners, this is a preference but not essential. If submitting an application including partners who are UK entities but have not been trading in the UK for 12 months then please outline in section 4 ‘Strategic alignment and approach to target areas’ and section 5 ‘Experience and capability to deliver’ how working with these partners will enable you to meet the KYN Fund objectives. Please also include your contingency planning in the event that one or more of these partners are unable to meet their commitments in delivering the grant objectives. 2.3 Applicants must be UK entities only and they must have been trading in the UK for more than 12 months. In the case of a consortium or partnership application, the lead partner must be a UK entity and have been trading in the UK for more than 12 months. For additional partners, this is a preference but not essential. If submitting an application including partners who are UK entities but have not been trading in the UK for 12 months then please outline in section 4 ‘Strategic alignment and approach to target areas’ and section 5 ‘Experience and capability to deliver’ how working with these partners will enable you to meet the KYN Fund objectives. Please also include your contingency planning in the event that one or more of these partners are unable to meet their commitments in delivering the grant objectives. 2.4 With reference to the section 6 ‘Eligible geographical areas of funding’ and Annex A of this document please confirm that this application is to deliver the full £14m KYN Fund exclusively in these areas. 2.5 The IGM must comply with the requirement for independent evaluation. This will include working with DCMS analytical teams and our contracted evaluator to ensure local areas are supported to develop and deliver high quality impact evaluations (using Randomised Control Trials or quasi-experimental methods where possible). Further specific requirements: • Publication of 360giving compliant grant data. • Regular reporting of financial/expenditure data, using specified formats; • Coordination of Data Sharing Agreements, committing the grantee (and any sub-grantees) to sharing the anonymised beneficiary-level records required for us to assess impact at fund level; • A commitment to coordinating input from grantees and any sub-grantees into the fund-level evaluation. This will include the appointment of an evaluation Single Point of Contact (SPOC) to support, for example, the sampling and recruitment of qualitative research participants among grantees (our external evaluator will do the majority of the work, the burden would be minimal on individual projects). 2.6 We will form an advisory board that will oversee the whole Fund. Successful applicants must be willing to attend and contribute to the advisory board, and further invite any consortium/ partnership delivery partners as needed as attendees. The advisory board will provisionally be made up of Deputy Directors from DCMS, delivery partners and the independent evaluators (both those commissioned by DCMS and any commissioned or at an individual project level). The advisory board will meet quarterly (or as needed) to review progress against shared objectives, share learnings arising from the programme and coordinate publicity and communication activity. Formal Terms of Reference for the advisory board will be drawn out after grant agreements have been completed. 2.7 Successful applicants will be required to: Design the grant application process with DCMS While DCMS will not be a decision-maker on which onward grantees receive grants, we expect to be consulted and provide approval for the design of the onward grant competition process. We will also want to attend decision-making panel discussions as an observer. Carry out post event assurance (PEA) DCMS expects successful applicants to formulate a PEA plan that is fit for purpose. PEA should outline plans to quantify the level of fraud and error, and outline steps to clawback relevant grants identified in those areas. This should include due diligence on the onward grantees; privacy notices on data usage; fraud and clawback clauses in grant agreements. Provide on-going monitoring data Successful applicants will be expected to provide monthly (switching to quarterly post March 2025 if the Fund is extended through cash match funding) monitoring data providing detail on the grants being made, including for each onward grant: • Value committed • Value disbursed • Geography served by grantee • Type of service provided by grantee • Particular beneficiary groups served by grantee (including number of beneficiaries supported, activities they have participated in and basic demographic data) • Where appropriate, number of volunteering opportunities created, the frequency of those opportunities (specifically, whether volunteering takes place at least monthly) and the duration of opportunities (i.e. volunteer retention data) • Where appropriate, number of chronically lonely individuals reached In addition, those awarded sub-grants will be expected to survey participants to assess each participant/beneficiary’s wellbeing and loneliness prior to their engagement in an intervention, three months after the start of their engagement (or at the end of the engagement for shorter interventions) and on at least one further occasion (likely nine months post-initial engagement to enable assessment of the durability of wellbeing changes). We envisage that a standardised survey(s) would be created by the IGM for this purpose, with the potential to adjust the content where required for specific projects. The standard pre-engagement participant survey could also be used to gather relevant demographic data. Data requirements may be refined once grant agreements have been finalised. All successful applicants must work with the DCMS independent learning and evaluation partner to support design of the evaluation and collection of relevant data for the overarching process and impact evaluation (if possible following feasibility study) to be delivered across the whole KYN Fund. Attend monitoring meetings All successful applicants will be expected to report as follows: • Through attendance at monthly monitoring meetings to report on progress of grant awards (based on the monitoring returns outlined above) and update on risks /slippage on spend. DCMS will also hold quarterly internal project and performance meetings which the Intermediary Grant Maker may be asked to report to. • Quarterly updates on progress of matched funded element from 1 April 2025 if applicable 2.8 Ensure you are able to spend the grant in line with DCMS grant terms and conditions and have adequate safeguarding policies in place. The DCMS draft terms and conditions for grant agreements are available as an attachment. 2.9 Please see 1.13 above for guidance regarding partnership bids.	Qualification criteria: minimum requirements to qualify to apply. Assessment: Pass/ Fail

Guidance	Assessment criteria
Section 3: Value for Money
3.1 Proposed administration fee to deliver the fund We allow for administration costs of no greater than 6%. We expect administration costs to cover activities such as post event assurance, grant management and participation in governance arrangements with DCMS. The admin fee cannot represent more than 6% of the full £14m fund. The admin fee is part of the overall £14m fund, for example: An admin fee of 5% would be £700,000. The total amount of onward grants to deliver would then be £14m, minus 5% admin fee (£700,000), minus evaluation costs of up to 10% (£1.4m), equalling £11.9m of onward grants. 3.2 Detailed budget In your answer: • Please attach your project budget in a table including key areas of spend (eg. staff costs, full cost recovery contributions) • Please ensure your project budget shows costs broken down per month and per year over the course of 3 years, 2022/23 to 2024/25 • Please make monthly and financial year totals clear - DCMS pays in arrears and works to a financial year of 1 April - 31 March. Funding available for each financial year of the KYN Fund is: • Y1- 22/23- £1,600,000 • Y2- 23/24- up to £6,200,000 • Y3- 24/25- up to £6,200,000 Note: For each financial year the actual value of onward grants for the IGM to administer is the figure stated above, minus 10% for evaluation (both elements) and minus the requested % administration fee included in your bid.	The total score for this section is 15% Financial criteria: Assurance of value for money included in the administration fee and project budget. Please see Annex B for details of scoring.

Guidance	Assessment Criteria
Section 4: Strategic alignment and approach to target areas
4.1 Outline how you will meet the KYN Fund objectives, including your approach to targeting funding to create the greatest place-based impact and your approach to partnership working Please demonstrate in your answer: • How you will meet the objectives of the KYN Fund, including how you ensure funding distribution is well balanced across the fund objectives. • Your approach to delivering onward grants to beneficiaries in order to meet the KYN Fund objectives, including delivering £1.6m of grants by the end of March 2023 • A clear understanding of the needs in underserved areas and communities within each local authority area they plan to work in • Your approach to selecting local authorities to work in with a balance of the three area types in Annex A. This will be between 6 to 9 local authorities, with at least 2 local authorities from each area type. If a bidder wants to work in more than 6 areas they should demonstrate how they will ensure depth of impact and maintain a good mix of support for urban and rural communities in any additional areas they select. • Your approach to using any match funding included in your application (if applicable) to strengthen your approach to meeting the fund’s objectives. • If bringing significant cash match funding (eg. over 50%), please: detail whether your additional funding can be delivered in your selected 6 to 9 areas over a longer period of time, and if so for how long, or detail how you will proportionately distribute the additional funding to more than 9 areas from the list of 27 eligible places. • Your approach to partnership working, including your ability to build links with local authorities, local organisations and the project team at DCMS and your ability to engage citizens in the most deprived neighbourhoods within the local authorities you have selected to work in. • Your approach to ensuring that funded interventions prioritise additionality (e.g. engaging new rather than existing volunteers) Your approach to assuring you are considering the impact on all groups described in the Public Sector Equality Duty. As a reminder, the objectives of the KYN Fund are, by March 2025: • To build the evidence to identify scalable and sustainable place-based interventions that work in increasing regular volunteering and reducing chronic loneliness. • To increase the proportion of people in targeted high-deprivation local authorities who volunteer at least once a month. • To reduce the proportion of chronically lonely people in targeted high-deprivation local authorities who lack desired level of social connections. • To enable targeted high-deprivation local authorities to implement sustainable systems and processes that encourage volunteering and tackling loneliness. Please refer to the list of eligible areas and further guidance in Annex A.	The total score for this section is 25% For this section, we will be assessing how well bidders demonstrate their ability to achieve our spending objectives to increase volunteering and support the chronically lonely in high-deprivation areas. Quality criteria: Assessed on the information provided to answer the application questions and each question response will be evaluated and marked on a scale of 0-5 where: • 0 – Serious concerns: e.g. does not meet requirements, and/or raises serious concerns • 1 – Minor concerns: e.g. meets some requirements but with gaps and/or some minor concerns • 2 – Adequate confidence: e.g. meets most/all requirements, but lacks sufficient detail or evidence in some areas • 3 – Good confidence: e.g. meets all requirements and provides a detailed response but lacks evidence in minor areas • 4 – Excellent confidence: e.g. meets all requirements, provides a detailed response and evidence which demonstrates a particularly strong understanding of the requirements • 5 – Above and beyond: e.g. meets all requirements with excellent confidence, fulfilling desirable criteria and exceeding all requirements.

Guidance	Assessment Criteria
Section 5: Experience and capability to deliver
5.1 Please demonstrate that your organisation has experience in grant management and the assessment and monitoring of onward grants Please provide evidence to demonstrate that your organisation has: • Delivered large grant funding programmes of a similar scope and / or scale at a local level; • Sufficient technical experience and skills to assess, award and monitor funded projects in a timely manner; • Key personnel responsible for delivery and oversight; • An existing appropriate IT system to support grant management services. Please note our desirable criteria: • Experience and knowledge of delivering/funding interventions specifically focused on increasing volunteering opportunities and/or tackling loneliness, or partnering with organisations who have this experience and knowledge. • Experience of building and/or working in partnerships across sectors at a local level, and experience of community engagement to ensure user voices are represented in plans. 5.2 Please demonstrate that your organisation has sufficient capacity to deliver the projects within each financial year Provide evidence to demonstrate that: • You have links to existing networks that will help your organisation to deliver each round of projects effectively within each financial year, especially £1.6m in the 22/23 financial year. • You have sufficient technical, financial, human and logistical capacity within the 2022 - 2025 financial years, to liaise with the target areas across England and administer a potentially large volume of grant agreements.	The total score for this section is 20% Applications will be assessed on how well they demonstrate capacity and experience to manage, administer and deliver grants. Bids should incorporate local partners in their delivery approach. Quality criteria: Assessed on the information provided to answer the application questions and each question response will be evaluated and marked on a scale of 0-5 where: • 0 – Serious concerns: e.g. does not meet requirements, and/or raises serious concerns • 1 – Minor concerns: e.g. meets some requirements but with gaps and/or some minor concerns • 2 – Adequate confidence: e.g. meets most/all requirements, but lacks sufficient detail or evidence in some areas • 3 – Good confidence: e.g. meets all requirements and provides a detailed response but lacks evidence in minor areas • 4 – Excellent confidence: e.g. meets all requirements, provides a detailed response and evidence which demonstrates a particularly strong understanding of the requirements • 5 – Above and beyond: e.g. meet all requirements with excellent confidence, fulfilling desirable criteria and exceeding all requirements.

Guidance	Assessment Criteria
Section 6: Project oversight and delivery approach
6.1 Please outline your proposed project management approach. Provide a clear description of the activity that will be carried out using the funding, including timelines and resources needed. Please set out: • Your project structure, proposed milestones, outcomes and outputs • Project management arrangements including risk and fraud risk management • Internal governance arrangements in addition to the overarching governance arrangements for the programme (eg. safeguarding policies and partnership or consortium management arrangements) In your answer, you may want to attach a project plan. Please also ensure you include: • How you will meet the key strategic objective and deliver the key outputs • Responsibilities of each partner in the consortium (if applicable) • How you will manage assessment and award of a large volume of projects • How you have adequate resources to provide monitoring to DCMS • The reporting systems that you intend to use with onward grantees. 6.2 Please outline how your organisation will undertake due diligence and post event assurance approach Successful applicants will be responsible and accountable for onward distribution of the funds (including post event assurance). Please outline your organisation’s existing counter-fraud processes/protocols, such as Fraud Risk Assessments (FRAs), Fraud, Bribery and Corruption Due Diligence, and Post Event Assurance (also known as FMA) policies.	The total score for this section is 20% Applicants will be assessed on the quality of their project delivery approach, project management, financial management and governance systems. Quality criteria: Assessed on the information provided to answer the application questions and each question response will be evaluated and marked on a scale of 0-5 where: • 0 – Serious concerns: e.g. does not meet requirements, and/or raises serious concerns • 1 – Minor concerns: e.g. meets some requirements but with gaps and/or some minor concerns • 2 – Adequate confidence: e.g. meets most/all requirements, but lacks sufficient detail or evidence in some areas • 3 – Good confidence: e.g. meets all requirements and provides a detailed response but lacks evidence in minor areas • 4 – Excellent confidence: e.g. meets all requirements, provides a detailed response and evidence which demonstrates a particularly strong understanding of the requirements • 5 – Above and beyond: e.g. meet all requirements with excellent confidence, fulfilling desirable criteria and exceeding all requirements.

Guidance	Assessment Criteria
Section 7: Evaluation approach
7.1 Approach to evaluation Please demonstrate in your answer your approach to building the evidence base on interventions that increase regular volunteering and reducing chronic loneliness, and how they could be scalable and sustainable. Specifically: • Your approach to supporting impact evaluation at the project/individual grantee level. • Your process for allocating evaluation spend of up to £1.08 million (inclusive of VAT over the 3 years) for these impact evaluations. These project level evaluations must build the evidence base of ‘what works’ to tackle loneliness and increase volunteering at a local level. • How your project team will be resourced and structured to ensure that high quality project-level monitoring data is collected in a timely fashion and is collated and aggregated in a way that supports DCMS oversight and effective evaluation. • How you will work with grantees to expand the evidence base on what works in volunteering and loneliness interventions in deprived areas. 7.2 Approach to working with the independent evaluator Please provide evidence in your answer of experience working with research organisations/partners to deliver robust evaluations of grant funding programmes, including: • Collecting and sharing data from grant recipients, • Coordinating data collection across multiple grant recipients in a timely manner • Handling and transferring data in a way that is compliant with research ethics principles (i.e. protecting the anonymity of respondents) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). • Coordinating sampling and recruitment of qualitative research participants (e.g. making initial contact with possible participants and gaining their informed consent to hand over details).	The total score for this section is 20% The highest scores will be reserved for bids that set out credible plans to ensure funded projects utilise experimental or quasi-experimental designs wherever possible (3 or above on the Nesta Standards of Evidence scale)[footnote 1] The highest scoring bidders will demonstrate that they have the capacity and expertise available in-house or through a partnership/consortium to carry out these plans effectively and provide the required support to grantees. Quality criteria: Assessed on the information provided to answer the application questions and each question response will be evaluated and marked on a scale of 0-5 where: • 0 – Serious concerns: e.g. does not meet requirements, and/or raises serious concerns • 1 – Minor concerns: e.g. meets some requirements but with gaps and/or some minor concerns • 2 – Adequate confidence: e.g. meets most/all requirements, but lacks sufficient detail or evidence in some areas • 3 – Good confidence: e.g. meets all requirements and provides a detailed response but lacks evidence in minor areas • 4 – Excellent confidence: e.g. meets all requirements, provides a detailed response and evidence which demonstrates a particularly strong understanding of the requirements • 5 – Above and beyond: e.g. meet all requirements with excellent confidence, fulfilling desirable criteria and exceeding all requirements.

12. Annex A: Target area selection methodology

This annex provides further details on the methodology and selected metrics used to develop the shortlist of local authority areas provided below.

The approach to place selection is based on the objectives of the Know Your Neighbourhood (KYN) Fund which aims to target interventions in high-deprivation areas.

For the purposes of this fund, deprivation or place-based need is defined with reference to two broad dimensions:

1. People and local economy factors (e.g., household incomes, local labour markets, economic and mutli-dimentsional deprivation); and
2. Strength of civil society and community factors (e.g., depth and breadth of local VCSE activity and funding, level of volunteering and community participation).

12.1 Metrics

To identify high-need areas based on people and local economy factors we have used the 2019 English Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (now the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities, DLUHC).

To identify high-need areas based on strength of civil society and community factors we have used the Community Needs Index (CNI), published by Local Trust and Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion (OCSI). The CNI is based on 19 indicators split across three categories - “An Engaged Community”, “Civic Assets” and “Connectedness”. For more information on the indicators that are included in the CNI please see Local Trust and OCSI’s 2019 report.^{[footnote 2]}

We have chosen to combine these two indices for the following reasons:

• Combining the IMD and CNI provides a good coverage of indicators relevant to the objectives of KYN fund, and our associated definition of deprivation/place-based need.
• Both indices have a good degree of geographical granularity.
• Our approach combines national statistics on deprivation, with a well-known measure developed outside of government which was used in the Levelling Up White Paper.

12.2 Methodology

KYN Fund will be targeted at the level of local authority districts (LADs), although we expect the IGM and delivery organisations to further target high-need areas or communities within LADs.

The following methodology was used to extract and convert the data sources, and combine them into a single metric for assessing place-based need at the local authority level. Our selection metric is also stratified to ensure a balance of area types, further detail of which is provided below.

• IMD data is taken from the “local authority district summaries” data file (File 10) of the English indices of deprivation (IoD2019) produced by MHCLG in 2019. The “Rank of average rank” summary measure was used for our combined metric to ensure standardisation between IMD and CNI. Further information on the average rank summary measure is provided in the IoD2019 statistical release.^{[footnote 3]}
• CNI data was provided to DCMS by OCSI, analysis of which has previously been published by Local Trust and OCSI in 2019^{[footnote 4]} and 2020^{[footnote 5]}. CNI data is provided at a ward level, so a “CNI average rank” metric was calculated using the same approach as the IMD (using wards instead of Lower Layer Super Output Areas). This involved calculating a population-weighted mean rank of all the wards within each local authority (further information on the IMD “average rank” methodology is provided in the IoD2019 technical report on p.114^{[footnote 6]}).
• A combined metric was produced by summing the average ranks of the IMD and CNI for each LAD, such that: KYN Fund selection metric = IMD (rank of) average rank + CNI (rank of) average rank
• To ensure a balanced distribution^{[footnote 7]} between area types the nine highest-need local authorities were selected from the following three area categories using the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) Rural-Urban Classification of LADs^{[footnote 8]}:
  • Large urban areas: combines ONS’ “Urban with Major Conurbation” and “Urban with Minor Conurbation” categories
  • Medium urban area: ONS’ “Urban with City and Town” category
  • Rural and small urban areas: combines ONS’ “Mainly rural”, “Largely rural” and “Urban with Significant Rural”.

The shortlist of 27 target areas is provided below.

Large urban areas				Medium urban areas				Rural and small urban areas
Local authority district	Region	IMD average rank	CNI average rank	Local authority district	Region	IMD average rank	CNI average rank	Local authority district	Region	IMD average rank	CNI average rank
Knowsley	North West	3	13	Hartlepool	North East	25	12	Tendring	East of England	32	2
Tameside	North West	23	8	Kingston upon Hull	Yorkshire and The Humber	9	32	Great Yarmouth	East of England	24	15
Wolverhamp- ton	West Midlands	19	19	Halton	North West	39	7	Fenland	East of England	51	23
Sunderland	North East	33	11	Thanet	South East	34	18	County Durham	North East	65	17
Doncaster	Yorkshire and The Humber	41	5	Blackpool	North West	1	51	Torridge	South West	67	20
Barnsley	Yorkshire and The Humber	38	16	Middlesbrough	North East	16	37	Bolsover	East Midlands	58	36
South Tyneside	North East	26	28	Burnley	North West	11	45	Barrow-in- Furness	North West	44	84
Rochdale	North West	17	41	Stoke-on-Trent	West Midlands	15	47	King’s Lynn and West Norfolk	East of England	79	50
Sandwell	West Midlands	8	52	Wakefield	Yorkshire and The Humber	64	4	Cannock Chase	West Midlands	126	6

13. Annex B: Financial criteria: Assurance of value for money of the administration fee included in the application.

This is weighted as 15% of the overall assessment of the application and the maximum mark will be awarded to the applicant submitting the lowest price for the administrative costs.  The remaining applicants will receive marks on a pro-rata basis from the lowest to the highest price.

The calculation used is the following:

Score = ( Lowest administration costs (£)/Administration costs (£) ) x 10 (Maximum available marks)

13.1 Calculating administration costs (£):

• An application with an administrative fee of 5% of the £14m grant has administration costs (£) of £700,000.
• If you are providing cash match funding, please do not include administrative costs you will cover through your match funded element. Please only provide the administrative fees for the £14m DCMS grant element you will be claiming.

Any match funding provided will be scored as part of Section 4: Strategic alignment and approach to target areas.

1. Page 33, Using Research Evidence for Success - A Practice Guide (Nesta, 2016) ↩

2. Local Trust and Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion (2019) Left behind? Understanding communities on the edge. ↩

3. Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government (2019) English Indices of Deprivation 2019. ↩

4. Local Trust and Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion (2019) Left behind? Understanding communities on the edge. ↩

5. Local Trust and Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion (2020) Interim set: Summary findings. ↩

6. English Indices of Deprivation Technical Report (2019) ↩

7. Selecting an equal number of LADs for each of the three area types is broadly in line with the distribution of population in England across these area types. ↩

8. Office for National Statistics (2016) 2011 Rural-Urban Classification of Local Authority Districts and Similar Geographic Units in England: Methodology. ↩