Lottery Environment and Heritage grants are available for projects that will benefit the community, hapū and iwi and contribute to:
- increasing our access to New Zealand's cultural heritage
- preserving and protecting New Zealand's natural environment
- preserving New Zealand's history for future generations.
Outcomes / Ngā Hua
Organisations receiving grants are expected to demonstrate how their projects will contribute to one or more of the following outcomes:
Mid horizon outcomes Ngā pae tata:
- Cultural wellbeing is enriched through arts, culture, heritage and national identity
- Environmental wellbeing is protected and enhanced
- Māori will design and develop initiatives as defined by and for Māori
- Intergenerational connections and learning are promoted.
Priorities / Ngā kaupapa matua
Lottery Environment and Heritage prioritises organisations that support the needs of groups named in the Gambling Act 2003:
- Māori
- Pacific people and other ethnic communities
- Older people, women, youth, and people with disabilities
- People facing barriers to participation in society.
What we fund / Ngā kaupapa ka tautokona ā-pūtea
This fund provides grants for plans, reports and one-off projects that will protect, conserve and promote New Zealand's natural, cultural and physical heritage.
- Natural heritage projects promote, protect or keep our native plants (flora) and animal life (fauna) safe from harm, including the on-going costs of pest and predator control.
- Physical heritage projects restore, protect and/or conserve places, structures and large built objects that are important to our history.
- Cultural heritage projects conserve, protect and/or promote collections and stories that are important to our cultural heritage and identity.
The Lottery Environment and Heritage committee makes grants for:
- small projects, where the grant requested is for less than $250,000. This includes feasibility studies, conservation plans, condition reports, maintenance plans, structural engineering reports, fire reports, ecological restoration plan and specialist reports to guide heritage restoration projects
- large projects, where the grant requested is for $250,000 or more
- the on-going costs of pest and predator control.
- a one-off project may be a discrete stage of a larger, ongoing project, or a single, stand-alone project.
The Committee prefers grant requests that demonstrate thorough planning and adherence to best practice standards for protecting, conserving, restoring, or displaying our natural world, heritage sites, and cultural property.
Partnership funding
All projects must have secured at least 1/3 of the total costs as partnership funding prior to submitting a request.
Partnership funding is not required with requests for:
- Natural heritage projects under $150,000 and do not involve capital works,
- feasibility studies, conservation plans and specialist reports to guide heritage restoration projects.
What we don't fund / Ngā kaupapa kāore e tautokona ā-pūtea
Lottery Environment and Heritage does not fund:
- items that are listed by the Lottery Grants Board (Board) as ineligible for funding, see Lottery Grants Board does not fund
- individual people
- projects to conserve, restore or protect privately or commercially owned land, buildings, structures or large built objects
- projects to plan, develop or create historic gardens
- routine maintenance that is not part of a larger restoration project
- individual people, including projects undertaken as part of a university qualification
- projects to landscape or beautify an area, that do not have a conservation, restoration or educational value
- operating expenses, such as administration, staffing, or ordinary upkeep and maintenance (on-going costs for Natural Heritage projects such as pest and predator control may be considered on a case-by-case basis)
- projects to build or restore historic replicas, including copies of vehicles, equipment or buildings
- projects to install or upgrade services such as kitchens or toilets that are not part of larger construction or restoration projects
- purchases of bare land
- recycling schemes or related projects
- research projects (but requests for applied research that show a clear community benefit may be considered)
- reunions.
- Some costs are also out of scope for plans, studies and reports, legal services
- architectural design (other than preliminary designs to inform a feasibility study)
- planning approval
- fundraising campaign plans
- business plans
- feasibility studies that have been completed by the funding round closing date.
Additional funding for projects
In addition to the fund's annual allocation the Board approved an additional $8 million across the 2024/27 years for projects where ‘environmental wellbeing is protected and enhanced’.
These will mainly be in the natural heritage projects category.
The Committee may consider grants for projects that:
- support natural environments with thriving ecosystems to be preserved for the future
- support ecosystem services such as clean air, clean water and food sources to be enhanced
- allow cultural connections to the natural environment (kaitiakitanga) to thrive
- enable environmental education and training opportunities to grow
- progress climate change mitigation
- advance climate change adaptation
- support Pacific leadership in environmental preservation and restoration, and
- enable hapori Māori-led environmental protection initiatives to prosper.
The priority for the additional funding will be larger projects which may not otherwise be funded.
Requests for the additional funding will be considered in the normal Lottery Environment and Heritage funding rounds.
How to apply
- Understand your group's eligibility based on legal entity status, see What funding options are available for non-registered or informal groups
- Set up a personal profile and an organization profile in the grants management system, see Logging into the grants management system
- Complete an application in the online grants management system, and provide the required supporting information:
Important funding dates
Find out about the next opening and closing dates for Lottery Environment and Hertiage requests and committee decision meetings: