This year our Lotteries Grant application was successful and as a Group we received a total of $160,000. This was an increase from the $150,000 we received in 2019 but still substantially less than we would have liked.

In total Playcentres applied for more that $2M in this funding round, so it was a challenging task to distribute such a small amount among so many centres. A lot of thought went into how we would distribute; would we do an even split among the more than 200 applications? Or a pro rata based on the size of application? But in the end a unanimous conclusion was reached that a targeted approach for the centres who are most vulnerable, would have the greatest impact.

We have looked carefully at each centres financial health alongside the kaupapa of their funding request and have worked to make the allocations equitable, rather than equal. We have been able to allocate between $200 – $3,000 to every centre that applied. Centres with large financial reserves may be disappointed with a smaller allocation, but please be assured that the additional funding is going where it is most needed.

Centres who applied twice were only considered once. Unfortunately, a small handful of centres have not identified themselves at any point in their application so we have not been able to allocate them any funding. At this stage we have not received the funds from Lotteries into the Playcentre Aotearoa bank account, so we don’t have the exact date of payment.

Moving forward we will be putting some further guidelines for centres around the lotteries funding, as some of the applications were far out of the scope of what would have been allocated under the COGS system that this grant replaces. Funding requests need to be realistic and have a defined purpose to have the best chance at being successful. It certainly has been a learning curve for us, and we will continue to try and make this process as simple and effective as possible for centres.

The full list of applications and the amount and purpose allocated can be found below:

https://www.playcentre.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/2020-Grant-split-final.pdf