The Big Lottery Fund has unveiled the new initiative to support those who want to make digital progress

A new £15m digital fund will be used to support projects throughout the country.

The Big Lottery Fund has announced that it will launch the new fund on 22 October to offer dedicated digital funding support to the third sector.

The fund will operate for two years and will award grants of up to £500,000. The first funding phase is open to applications from 22 October to 3 December and has two funding strands.

The first of these is aimed at digital pioneers - established charities, with a minimum income of over £500,000 per year, that want to use digital to take a major leap forward.

The second funding strand is aimed at digital natives - more recently-established organisations that are successfully using digital, but now need help scaling this up.

Dawn Austwick, chief executive of the Big Lottery Fund, said: “We are delighted to launch our new £15m Digital Fund. It will help both digital natives and digital pioneers maximise their impact, by putting people at the heart of their digital services. This is an exciting stage in our own journey to be an effective digital funder.”

Initial funding decisions will be made at the start of next year, with projects falling outside of the remit of the fund still eligible to apply to the Big Lottery Fund’s other programmes.