About the Know Your Neighbourhood Fund
Source: gov.uk (2025-09-30)

This page provides more information about the Know Your Neighbourhood Fund.

The Know Your Neighbourhood (KYN) Fund was originally scheduled to run until March 2025 delivering up to £30 million. In April 2025, the KYN Fund was extended until March 2026, with an additional up to £4.5 million of government funding. This funding will uplift existing grant awards to organisations in the 27 eligible delivery areas that had previously received KYN funding between 2022 and 2025, to enable them to continue delivery up until March 2026. It will build upon the original KYN objectives with funded projects also aimed at reducing loneliness stigma and building community cohesion.

Of the up to £4.5 million, UK Community Foundations (UKCF), in partnership with 9 community foundations, will deliver up to £2.6 million, Arts Council England will deliver up to £1.5m and Historic England will deliver up to £250,000.

Details of how the KYN fund operated between January 2023 and March 2025 are given below.

About the fund

In January, 2023 the government confirmed the launch of the Know Your Neighbourhood (KYN) Fund, an up-to-£30-million package of funding designed to widen participation in volunteering and tackle loneliness in 27 disadvantaged areas across England.

Of this up to £30 million, £19 million of government investment, and over £1 million of match funding has supported people living in disadvantaged areas to connect with others in their community and engage in volunteering, with the aim of improving wellbeing and pride in place. The National Lottery Community Fund has also invested up to £10 million to support their existing projects working across the same target areas.

Following a competitive process, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) confirmed in January 2023 that £14 million of the total £19 million government funding would be delivered by UK Community Foundations (UKCF) and a consortium of local community foundations across 9 local authority areas. These are: Wolverhampton, South Tyneside, Kingston-upon-Hull, Blackpool, Stoke-on-Trent, Great Yarmouth, Fenland, County Durham and Barrow-in-Furness. This funding was targeted at people who had not had opportunities to volunteer before, or who were experiencing loneliness. They were supported to access enriching opportunities with the aim of improving their wellbeing, skills, confidence and social connections.

DCMS sectors offer opportunities for people to participate in volunteering and connect with others in their areas. The remaining £5 million of government funding was therefore invested in supporting people to participate in volunteering and connect with others through expanding the existing offer of arts, culture and heritage activities across the 27 KYN target areas. This funding was delivered by Arts Council England (ACE) and the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF), in partnership with Historic England.

ACE delivered funding to arts and culture organisations across the 27 areas through partnership working with three delivery bodies: the Association of Independent Museums, Creative Lives, and Libraries Connected. NLHF worked in partnership with Historic England to deliver additional funding through their established High Street Heritage Action Zones programme.

A key focus of the programme is to generate and share learning on how people in disadvantaged areas can be supported to volunteer and improve their social connections, which will help to support sustained action beyond the lifetime of the fund.

The objectives of the Know Your Neighbourhood Fund are, by March 2026:

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

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.

For further details of organisations awarded grants through the KYN Fund up to March 2023, see Major fund to tackle loneliness and boost volunteering in disadvantaged areas launched (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/major-fund-to-tackle-loneliness-and-boost-volunteering-in-disadvantaged-areas-launched).

For further details of organisations awarded grants through the KYN Fund from April 2023 onwards, see Volunteering boost for charities, libraries and museums (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/volunteering-boost-for-charities-libraries-and-museums).

Since then, further grants were awarded up to March 2025. For details of these grants, see the spreadsheet below.

(https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67e53bf055be617e1490d605/Know_Your_Neighbourhood_Fund_grantees__March_2025.ods)

Know Your Neighbourhood Fund grantees March 2025 (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67e53bf055be617e1490d605/Know_Your_Neighbourhood_Fund_grantees__March_2025.ods)

ODS, 34.2 KB

This file is in an OpenDocument (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/using-open-document-formats-odf-in-your-organisation) format

Details of further grant awards up until March 2026 will be published in due course on this page.

Selected places and methodology

We recognise that a fund of this size would not be able to reach every area in need of support. We therefore decided to take a targeted approach, identifying the areas most in need.

We identified the below 27 target areas using data on:
- people and local economy factors (for example, household incomes, local labour markets, economic and multidimensional deprivation)
- strength of civil society and community factors (for example, depth and breadth of local VCSE activity and funding, level of volunteering and community participation)
To identify high-need areas based on people and local economy factors we have used the 2019 English Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD). To identify high-need areas based on the strength of civil society and community factors we have used the Community Needs Index (CNI).

We have ensured that the list of eligible areas represents a balance of both rural and urban areas.

Eligible areas
- Barnsley
- Barrow-in-Furness
- Blackpool
- Bolsover
- Burnley
- Cannock Chase
- County Durham
- Doncaster
- Fenland
- Great Yarmouth
- Halton
- Hartlepool
- King’s Lynn and West Norfolk
- Kingston upon Hull
- Knowsley
- Middlesbrough
- Rochdale
- Sandwell
- South Tyneside
- Stoke-on-Trent
- Sunderland
- Tameside
- Tendring
- Thanet
- Torridge
- Wakefield
- Wolverhampton
Research and evaluation

Links to evaluations relating to the Know Your Neighbourhood Fund can be found here.

Interim overarching evaluation report (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/interim-overarching-evaluation-report-on-the-know-your-neighbourhood-fund)

Barrow-in-Furness: place-based research (https://www.ukcommunityfoundations.org/media/wcrlp4je/25-09-2025-furness-for-you-place-based-report-kyn-fund-ukcf.pdf)

Great Yarmouth: place-based research (https://www.ukcommunityfoundations.org/media/clee5qol/25-09-25-great-yarmouth-place-based-report-kyn-fund-ukcf.pdf)

Thematic Evaluation - The Impact of Improving Digital Skills on Increasing Social Connections (https://www.ukcommunityfoundations.org/media/hdqibxar/22-07-2025-kyn-thematic-evaluation-report-forever-consulting.pdf)