The Nichols Award 2027 will recognise individuals, community projects, small businesses and social enterprises which are making a meaningful difference with a prize fund of £20,000.
Announced by the transformational change consultancy the Nichols Group, entries to the award will open tomorrow on 30 September 2026.
The prize will enable the winner to help grow its work, extend its reach and take its impact even further.
The last recipient of The Nichols Award in 2022 was The Washing Machine Project, a UK-based social enterprise tackling the often-overlooked burden of washing clothes by hand. Its off-grid manual washing machine has helped transform the lives of tens of thousands of families across 13 countries.
Advertisement
Entrants will be assessed against three core criteria:
Vision – thinking differently and demonstrating creativity, innovation and an entrepreneurial spirit.
Values – being driven by a clear set of values, whether focused on sustainability, community, wellbeing, diversity or another area of positive change.
Impact – delivering, or having already delivered, meaningful change.
Kathryn and Frances Nichols, Directors of Nichols, said:
“At The Nichols Group, we have always believed that people are the most powerful force for change. Every day, individuals and organisations are coming up with new ideas, challenging convention and finding ways to make a real difference, often without the recognition or support they deserve.
“The Nichols Award is about celebrating that work and giving people the opportunity to take it even further. We are incredibly excited to see the ideas and stories that are nominated this year.”
Image: Nichols Group
About the Nichols Group
Led by sisters Frances and Kathryn, the Nichols Group is an independent company of strategic change makers, “bringing vision to reality”. For over 50 years, the company has worked in partnership with clients on major programmes, complex projects and business change initiatives across sectors including regeneration, infrastructure, technology and the environment.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.
Stay ahead of the curve
Join thousands of other top UK fundraisers by registering for our newsletter to get all the latest news, advice and opinion from the world of fundraising.
These cookies are for internal use which allows Cloudflare to identify production issues on clients.
session
cf_chl_rc_m
These cookies are for internal use which allows Cloudflare to identify production issues on clients.
session
__cfruid
Used by the content network, Cloudflare, to identify trusted web traffic.
session
__cf_bm
Cloudflare's bot products identify and mitigate automated traffic to protect your site from bad bots. Cloudflare places the __cf_bm cookie on End User devices that access Customer sites that are protected by Bot Management or Bot Fight Mode. The __cf_bm cookie is necessary for the proper functioning of these bot solutions.
session
__cflb
When enabling session affinity with Cloudflare Load Balancer, Cloudflare sets a __cflb cookie with a unique value on the first response to the requesting client. Cloudflare routes future requests to the same origin, optimizing network resource usage. In the event of a failover, Cloudflare sets a new __cflb cookie to direct future requests to the failover pool.
session
_cfuvid
The _cfuvid cookie is only set when a site uses this option in a Rate Limiting Rule, and is only used to allow the Cloudflare WAF to distinguish individual users who share the same IP address.
session
cf_clearance
Whether a CAPTCHA or Javascript challenge has been solved.
session
__cfseq
Sequence rules uses cookies to track the order of requests a user has made and the time between requests and makes them available via Cloudflare Rules. This allows you to write rules that match valid or invalid sequences. The specific cookies used to validate sequences are called sequence cookies.
session
cf_ob_info
The cf_ob_info cookie provides information on: The HTTP Status Code returned by the origin web server. The Ray ID of the original failed request. The data center serving the traffic
session
cf_use_ob
The cf_use_ob cookie informs Cloudflare to fetch the requested resource from the Always Online cache on the designated port. Applicable values are: 0, 80, and 443. The cf_ob_info and cf_use_ob cookies are persistent cookies that expire after 30 seconds.
session
__cfwaitingroom
The __cfwaitingroom cookie is only used to track visitors that access a waiting room enabled host and path combination for a zone. Visitors using a browser that does not accept cookies cannot visit the host and path combination while the waiting room is active.
session
cf_chl_rc_i
These cookies are for internal use which allows Cloudflare to identify production issues on clients.
session
Formidable Forms is a powerful WordPress plugin for creating advanced forms and data management solutions.
Name
Description
Duration
frm_form_
Saves the ID of the form and the time the entry was submitted.
2 hours
Google reCAPTCHA helps protect websites from spam and abuse by verifying user interactions through challenges.
Name
Description
Duration
_GRECAPTCHA
Google reCAPTCHA sets a necessary cookie (_GRECAPTCHA) when executed for the purpose of providing its risk analysis.
179 days
Statistics cookies collect information anonymously. This information helps us understand how visitors use our website.
Google Analytics is a powerful tool that tracks and analyzes website traffic for informed marketing decisions.
Used only with old Urchin versions of Google Analytics and not with GA.js. Was used to distinguish between new sessions and visits at the end of a session.
End of session (browser)
__utmz
Contains information about the traffic source or campaign that directed user to the website. The cookie is set when the GA.js javascript is loaded and updated when data is sent to the Google Anaytics server
6 months after last activity
__utmv
Contains custom information set by the web developer via the _setCustomVar method in Google Analytics. This cookie is updated every time new data is sent to the Google Analytics server.
2 years after last activity
__utmx
Used to determine whether a user is included in an A / B or Multivariate test.
18 months
_ga
ID used to identify users
2 years
_gali
Used by Google Analytics to determine which links on a page are being clicked
30 seconds
_ga_
ID used to identify users
2 years
_gid
ID used to identify users for 24 hours after last activity
24 hours
_gat
Used to monitor number of Google Analytics server requests when using Google Tag Manager
1 minute
_gac_
Contains information related to marketing campaigns of the user. These are shared with Google AdWords / Google Ads when the Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts are linked together.
90 days
__utma
ID used to identify users and sessions
2 years after last activity
__utmt
Used to monitor number of Google Analytics server requests
10 minutes
__utmb
Used to distinguish new sessions and visits. This cookie is set when the GA.js javascript library is loaded and there is no existing __utmb cookie. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to the Google Analytics server.
30 minutes after last activity
Marketing cookies are used to follow visitors to websites. The intention is to show ads that are relevant and engaging to the individual user.
OptinMonster is a powerful lead generation tool that helps businesses convert visitors into subscribers and customers.
