In early June, we launched our 2030 funding strategy. In the blog below, our directors of grants Alex Sutton and Klara Skrivankova provide more information on how we will approach funding and decision making.
The launch of our new strategy marked the end of a year-long process of engaging with over 140 individuals and organisations to understand how we can best achieve our mission of ending poverty and inequality in London. We heard that it’s important to be intentional and not stretch our funds too thin, and to provide the organisations we fund with the resources and support they need.
The strategy makes clear that eradicating poverty and inequality is a matter of economic and social justice. A focus on justice underlines our commitment to fund work that supports those experiencing immediate harms of poverty and inequality, as well as work to change the conditions in our society that force people into poverty in the first place.
Achieving both economic and social justice is the cornerstone of the strategy. Underneath we have seven priorities, which set out what we want to fund. These are:
- Decent work
- Tackling the housing crisis
- Improving social security
- Ending the poverty premium
- Ending migrant destitution
- Racial justice
- Disability justice
In many ways, this strategy is an evolution of our previous one. The causes of poverty and inequality haven’t changed. However, in our new strategy we are more explicit about the changes we want to see and will direct our funding into each of these seven areas.
How we’ll make funding decisions
When deciding what to fund we don’t look at applications in isolation. We look at two main things: how well the application fits with our goals, and what we already fund. Under each of our seven priorities sit specific impact goals, which set out the changes we want to see in that area. Everything we fund will need to align with these goals. You can read about our impact goals and priorities on our funding pages.
We know change will take time and will not be achieved by a single organisation or approach. To progress towards the goals we set out we'll need to be strategic with our limited resources. We will need to fund a mix of organisations in each area using different approaches and tactics in a complementary way. For example, we expect to fund service delivery organisations working alongside campaigners, researchers, policy experts and community organisers.
This means in each area we will have to weigh up new applications against work we or others already invest in, and consider how new work being proposed complements, adds value or strengthens existing work.
For example, we currently invest nearly £6.5m in our work to strengthen social security. But less than 20% of this goes towards research, policy or influencing work to improve the social security system. Over 80% of our funding goes towards advice work to ensure individuals have access to the benefits they need. This is vital work, but in the near future we will want to ensure we have a balance of work going towards influencing the system as well as supporting those struggling within the system.
The same is true of our work in migration, where 77% of our funding goes towards ensuring people have access to high quality immigration advice, but a much smaller percentage goes towards campaigning for an end to the hostile environment which has dictated migration policy.
When looking at applications, our grants managers will carefully consider these factors – what work we already fund, and where – along with how well the application fits our impact goals.
Being more transparent about what we want to fund
We know that it takes a lot of time and effort to write a funding application. We want to be much more transparent about what we want to fund under each of our seven priorities. In the months ahead our grant managers will be releasing a series of blogs which take a deeper dive into each priority, highlighting the work we currently fund in that area, and what applications we want to see more of.
All the organisations we speak to do incredibly valuable work. Unfortunately, our resources are limited – we have less money to give out than we had in the past few years, so we can only fund a small number that apply to us. We hope that being more explicit about our goals, and more transparent about what we prioritise in each area will save valuable time, effort and resources. And for those we do fund, we hope we can add value to your work by bringing together organisations working in the same area to collectively achieve change.
