Trustees Report

Supporting our partners

For the year ended 30 September 2023

Over COVID, the Foundation signed up to the London Funders commitments and then to the Institute for Voluntary Action Research (IVAR). The commitments were well received by the Partnership Fund grantees and evidenced the Foundation’s commitment to open and trusting processes. We opted not to renew our commitments this year but remain steadfast in ensuring our systems and processes reflect the values we represent to be open, fair, transparent and conversational in our approach to communicating with our fund recipients and applicants

Don’t waste time

We will not waste their time – we will explain our funding priorities clearly; we will be open and transparent about all our requirements and exclusions.

Ask relevant questions

We will only ask relevant questions – we will only collect information that we must have to make funding decisions; we will test our application forms rigorously to make sure our questions are clear and do not overlap.

Accept Risk

We will accept our share of risk – we will be realistic about how much assurance applicants can reasonably give us; we will clearly explain how we assess risk when we make our funding decisions.

Act with Urgency

We will act with urgency – we will seek to work at a pace that meets the needs of applicants; we will publish and stick to our timetables; we will make our decisions as quickly as possible.

Be Open

We will be transparent about our decisions – we will give feedback; we will analyse and publish success rates and reasons for rejection; we will share our data.

Enable flexibility

We will enable them to respond flexibly to changing priorities and needs – we will give unrestricted funding; if we can’t (or are a specialist funder), we will make our funding as flexible as possible.

Communicate with purpose

We will be clear about our relationship from the start – we will be realistic about time commitments; we will ensure that our contact is positive and purposeful.

Be proportionate

We will commit to light touch reporting – we will ensure that our formal reporting requirements are well understood, proportionate and meaningful.

The commitments served to guide us at a time when the sector was facing uncertainty but we are now in a
period of growth and our grant streams are generating higher than ever interest. We continue to evolve our practices based on feedback from those interacting with our grants. – Read more