Grant eligibility
Can you apply for a grant after starting a project?
Check retrospective funding rules, separate past costs from future work and find out when you can start spending a UK project grant.
Sometimes you can apply for funding for future work in an existing project, but that does not mean a grant will repay money already spent. The National Lottery Community Fund's Reaching Communities guidance for England, for example, allows existing work but excludes retrospective costs. Before applying, separate what has already happened from what you want the grant to pay for, then check the programme's start-date rules. This guide is for UK charities and community groups facing that decision.
Separate past costs from the next stage of work
Retrospective funding means funding past expenditure. In Reaching Communities, the exclusion covers things you have already paid for. Its support for existing work is a separate provision: continuing an established activity and reimbursing its old bills are different requests. This is one programme's policy, not a rule for every UK grant.
Start with a cost list split into three groups: already paid, committed but unpaid, and proposed but not committed. Beside each item, note the activity date, order or agreement date, invoice date and payment date where applicable. This gives the funder enough detail to answer a specific eligibility question.
Do not assume an unpaid invoice makes a cost new. Ask how the funder treats an order already placed, a signed supplier agreement or a deposit. Describe the actual sequence of events; changing the heading in your budget does not change when the work happened.
Check what counts as permission to start
An award decision is not always the final permission. The National Lottery Heritage Fund's £10,000 to £250,000 receiving-a-grant guidance says not to begin project work until written permission arrives. It will not cover costs incurred by starting beforehand. The guidance describes further information and acceptance steps after an award, followed by an email giving permission to begin.
For your chosen programme, write down the event that makes spending eligible. Ask whether that is a specified date, a completed agreement or an explicit permission email. Keep the answer with the budget and make sure whoever books venues or orders equipment has seen it.
Also ask which preparatory activities are allowed. Gathering quotes, consulting participants, placing an order and delivering a session are different actions. Give the funder the details instead of relying on a broad question about whether you can “get started”.
A worked example: an existing community workshop
Imagine a community group has spent £600 on two trial repair workshops. It wants £4,800 for six further sessions. It has also paid a £200 venue deposit for those future sessions, included within that £4,800 budget. These figures are fictional.
- Completed trial: £600. Record it as past expenditure, separate from the proposed future sessions.
- Future-session deposit: £200. Flag the payment and booking terms for the funder to assess.
- Remaining future costs: £4,600. Show what they buy, when the work would happen and whether any orders or agreements already exist.
The group should not simply request £5,400 to recover everything. It should explain the trial, disclose the deposit and ask whether the next six sessions are eligible. Even the £4,600 is only a proposed request until the funder confirms that the activities, timing and costs fit its rules.
A clear future phase has its own delivery dates, activities and budget. Do not rename a completed project as a new phase. Use what you learned from the trial to explain the future need in your grant application.
Send the funder a precise timing question
Before completing a long application, send a short factual enquiry through the programme's published contact route. Adapt this outline:
“We run [activity] and are considering [programme] for [future work and dates]. We have already paid [amount and purpose] on [date], and agreed [unpaid commitments, if any]. We propose to request [amount] for [remaining costs]. Does this earlier activity or spending affect eligibility for the future work? Which costs, if any, must we exclude, and what written approval is needed before making further commitments?”
Attach a short cost schedule if the timing is complicated. Save the response and reflect it accurately in the application. If the answer depends on further approval, keep that condition visible; an eligibility enquiry is not itself an award.
Keep payment timing separate from cost eligibility
A grant paid after some delivery is not necessarily retrospective funding. For example, the Heritage Fund guidance sets out staged payments during and after an approved project, while separately requiring permission before work begins. A later payment does not remove that start condition.
Make two checks: whether a cost is eligible, and when cash would arrive to pay it. Put the expected grant receipts and supplier payments into a simple monthly forecast. If you would need to pay a bill before receiving the grant, identify how the organisation would cover that gap before committing to it.
Before applying or spending more
- Read the specific programme's exclusions and start-date conditions.
- Disclose past payments and existing commitments with their dates.
- Ask whether future work in an existing project can qualify.
- Keep excluded costs out of the grant request, showing them separately if the form asks for the wider project budget.
- Confirm permission to begin and expected payment timing before making further commitments.
Use OpenGrant's Charity / VCSE and Grant filters to find potential funders, then check their own rules. Those filters do not identify retrospective funding or confirm that an existing project qualifies. Our UK charity grants guide helps compare funding routes, and the full cost recovery guide explains how to budget for shared overheads once you know which future work is eligible.