Restricted funding
Restricted funding: grant money tied to specific purposes
Restricted funding is money that can only be used for the purpose or conditions attached to it. For grant teams, the risk is treating restricted money as flexible budget cover.
Teams deciding where to spend application time
Charities, CICs and community organisations tracking grant conditions, restricted income and application budgets.
Make the first review more concrete
Understand restricted funding and how it affects grant budgets and readiness.
Review workflow
What FundingLens helps you do
Keep source facts, caveats and next actions together so your team can decide what deserves attention before application work starts.
Separate unrestricted income, designated funds and restricted grant money so project budgets do not hide spend conditions.
Record funder purpose, eligible activity, reporting obligations, variation rules, repayment risk and end-of-project treatment.
Check whether a new grant would create restricted income that affects cash flow, reserves reporting or board approvals.
Readiness checks
- Restriction purpose and source wording saved.
- Eligible spend and reporting conditions understood.
- Budget lines mapped to restricted grant purpose.
- Variation and repayment risk reviewed.
- Finance or trustee review assigned where needed.
Eligibility caveats
- This is funding-readiness guidance, not legal or accounting advice.
- Trustees and finance advisers decide final accounting treatment.
- Restricted funding can overlap with eligible costs, but it is not the same concept.
Source references
Use reserves guidance when a grant decision needs to consider restricted funds, match funding, cash flow and financial resilience.
Official sourceGovernment grant agreements standardUse the grant agreement standard to explain purpose, eligible expenditure, payment, reporting, audit and recovery clauses.
Official sourceModel Grant Funding AgreementUse the model agreement as a source for common grant terms, conditions, reporting, records, audit and repayment language.
Related FundingLens pages
Eligible costs explained for grant applications, covering staff time, capital, VAT, match funding, retrospective spend and opportunity-specific rules.
Grant guideGrant agreements: terms, spend and reportingGrant agreements explained, covering purpose, eligible spend, payment, monitoring, audit, variation, repayment and source-specific terms.
Grant guideGrant budget template with eligible-cost checksBuild a grant budget template that checks eligible costs, overheads, VAT, match funding, evidence and funder-specific exclusions before you apply.
Grant readiness checklistGrant readiness checklist for small organisationsUse this grant readiness checklist to decide whether a funding opportunity deserves application time, evidence gathering and internal approval.