BIG Lottery Fund
BIG Lottery Fund has streamlined their grant application process making it easier for good causes to apply for BIG lottery millions. By using AchieveForms to provide an online process, the BIG Lottery Fund has also saved time and money in the administration of the People's Millions Project.
BIG Lottery Fund is responsible for giving out half the money raised by the National Lottery in the UK for good causes.
BIG Lottery Fund rolls out close to £2 million in Lottery good cause money every 24 hours and has been rolling out grants to health, education, environment and charitable causes across the UK since its inception in June 2004.
The People's Millions project is an exciting partnership between the BIG Lottery Fund (BIG) and ITV in which viewers vote for projects they want to see receive funding from the National Lottery. Since the competition launched in 2005, a total of £13.6 million has been shared between 229 projects across the UK.
Business Need
The People's Millions project normally receives thousands of applications for funding each year. Traditionally, the application process has consisted of printing off a PDF copy of the 14-page application form, completing it by hand, signing it and then posting it to BIG Lottery Fund. This system presented many obstacles for applicants and was time-consuming for the administration team processing the forms.
Missing or incorrect data on the application form meant a significant amount of time was spent chasing corrections through the post leading to a delay in processing.
Once the paper application was received by BIG Lottery Fund, the information on the form had to be re-keyed into computer back-office systems; this was time-consuming and inevitably led to inputting errors.
For the 2007 People's Millions, BIG Lottery Fund wanted to make the application process easier and more widely accessible to encourage even more community groups to take part in the competition.
Solution
BIG Lottery Fund chose AchieveForms for the development and deployment of an online version of this complex application form.
AchieveForms was chosen because of its rich functionality and ease of deployment. The online application form was developed with a full database back-end configuration. A welsh version of the form was also created using AchieveForms' translation features.
The Results
For the first time, community groups seeking to take part in the People's Millions competition had the luxury of being able to complete the application process directly from their PCs. Using the form, applicants could log onto the website, enter the project details, and submit their entry entirely online following a simple and secure step-by-step application process. .
AchieveForms allowed the form to be saved at any step of the completion process, allowing applicants to comeback and complete their application at a later time, which was particularly important for such a large and detailed form.
Project information entered on the online form was validated for inaccuracies prior to submission, saving time for both BIG administrators and applicants, as applicants were not able to submit applications with missing details, reducing the need to return incomplete forms for further completion.
Once submitted, the project details went directly into BIG Lottery Fund's back-office systems for review, avoiding the traditional challenges of having to re-key data from paper forms. The turnaround for processing the forms was quicker, easier and cheaper.
"Not only is the system easier and more convenient to use, it also speeds up the time it takes to process applications."
-- Stephen Dunmore, Chief Executive, BIG Lottery Fund
The online version of the form proved extremely popular. BIG Lottery Fund received over 50% of all applications online. The success of the project has lead to the consideration of using AchieveForms for other BIG Lottery projects.
"This is the only BIG programme where people can apply online, but in the future we are looking to roll out online application forms for a selection of other programmes, which will revolutionise the way people apply for grants from BIG."
-- Stephen Dunmore, Chief Executive, BIG Lottery Fund
AchieveForms will be used again for the 2008 People's Millions project with a focus on getting even more applicants using the online form.
