Postcode Lottery

A different shape of funding, and a useful one. Postcode Local Trust, funded by players of People’s Postcode Lottery, gives unrestricted grants to small charities and good causes. Unrestricted is the word that matters: the money is not tied to a named project, so a new website is a perfectly legitimate use without having to justify it as a digital-inclusion outcome. That makes it one of the cleaner routes to a site, precisely because it fills the gap the dedicated digital funders leave.

• What they fund: Unrestricted funding for small charities and grassroots organisations, spendable on whatever the organisation needs, including a website.
• Typical grants: Up to £25,000, awarded as a single, unrestricted grant rather than against a project budget.
• Who can apply: Charities and good causes with annual income under £1 million, with preference for those under £500,000. Postcode Local Trust covers the West of England. The rest of the country is served by sibling trusts: Postcode Places Trust (east), Postcode Neighbourhood Trust (north), Postcode Society Trust (south), and People’s Postcode Trust (Scotland). Use the postcode finder on their site to land on the right one.
• The angle: Your organisation’s work needs to fit one of the trust’s four funding themes, but the website itself does not need defending as a digital project. The fit test is about the charity, not the line item.
• Worth knowing: Funding is awarded in fixed rounds, not on a rolling basis. There are three rounds in 2026, each open for only a few days with a cap on the number of applications accepted, so prepare your answers in advance using their downloadable question list and apply the moment a round opens. There is no multi-year funding at present, and activities such as promoting religion or medical research are excluded.