Open and flexible grant-making

We are one of over 90 funders who have signed up to be a #FlexibleFunder, committing to open and trusting grant-making as part of a campaign run by IVAR and London Funders.

Through the following eight commitments, we want to make life easier for our partners and the organisations we fund.

Our commitments

Do not waste time:

Our funding priorities and guidelines are published on our website. We encourage applicants to have a conversation with us before they spend time filling in a form, to make sure their application broadly meets our funding criteria and priorities.

We provide feedback on draft applications to make sure our trustees have all the information they need. We do not ask our Delegated or Opportunities Fund holders to complete an application form for each new grant.

Ask relevant questions:

We will only collect information that we need to make funding decisions. We review our application forms and guidelines on a regular basis and incorporate feedback from grantees or applicants. We will continue to ensure the information asked for in application forms is proportionate to the size of the grant.

Accept risk:

We will make sure risk measures are proportionate to the size of the grant and the size of the organisation, by talking with them and being clear on expectations. We are open to funding new approaches or piloting new ideas. Where trustees feel the risks are too high to award the grant, we will provide feedback and be clear about what we would like to see in any revised application.

Act with urgency:

We are flexible with our application timeline. We assess small grants on a rolling basis. We hold regular meetings for trustees to assess larger applications and have the flexibility to ask for these to be assessed over email if the timeline in tight.

Be open:

We provide tailored individual feedback on applications, particularly those that are rejected. We will continue to publish our grant information on 360Giving. We conduct an annual grants survey to get feedback on our performance as a grant-maker and make changes to our grant-making practice in light of this feedback.

Enable flexibility:

We are committed to making sure a significant proportion of our funding is multi-year and unrestricted. We contribute towards the essential operating costs of an organisation, not just towards direct project costs. If a grantee’s circumstances change, we are open to adjusting reporting deadlines, project timelines, budgets etc.

Communicate with purpose:

Our grant offer letters to grant holders are clear on reporting requirements and time commitments. We look forward to receiving and reading all reports and acknowledge to grantees that we have done so.

Be proportionate:

We tailor our application and monitoring processes to ensure they are proportionate to the size of grant. Most grantees only report once a year.