This page has the transcript of the webinar held on 17 September 2025. There are also links to watch the recording and additional questions we gave written answers to during the webinar, or have responded to after the webinar.
Webinar recording and additional Q&A
- Watch the recording and download the presentation
- Additional questions - these were given written answers either during or after the webinar.
Speakers
- Genevieve Ford-Saville, Funding Manager - A Fairer Future
- Jenny Dadd, Funding Manager Lead - Our Natural World
- Rosa Sulley, Funding Manager Lead - Creative, Confident Communities
- Luna Dizon, Communications Lead (Q&A support)
Welcome and housekeeping
Genevieve Ford-Saville
Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to this pre-application Q&A. We're really pleased so many of you can join us, and we hope you find today useful. I am Genevieve Ford-Saville. I'm a Funding Manager for A Fairer Future, and I'm here with my colleagues, Jen and Rosa and Luna, and we'll spend the next half an hour sharing information about our grant funding, what we're looking for and how we make decisions, we're going to use the rest of the time to answer your questions, which Luna is going to facilitate for us. And our colleagues, Hannah, Gillian and Hikmat are also on hand in the background to help with the Q&A. And Johnny, Director of Social and Impact investment, is also here. So if you've got questions about our social investment, please do share them to look at for accessibility.
We have Nana and Altan, who will be providing BSL interpretation and interpreting what is spoken live. To make sure they're always on view, we recommend keeping your view on gallery view, including where the slides are being shared. We've also asked speakers to describe themselves and where they are, and I will start. So I am a middle aged phone presenting woman with brown skin. I have dark brown eyes and dark brown hair. I'm seated in a meeting room right now, and I'm wearing a navy blue top, got pearl rings on and blue flower in my head.
Luna Dizon
Hi everybody, so I'm Luna. I'm a Southeast Asian woman. I've got long black straight hair, and I'm wearing black and burgundy, and I've got yellow tassle earrings on.
Jenny Dadd
Yeah, Morning, everybody good to good to have you along. So I'm a white, middle aged woman. I'm of middling height and middling shoe size, and I live in the Midlands, so there's an awful lot of middling going on in me. Today, I'm in the Esmee office. I'm not in the Midlands. I'm in the Esmee office in London, in a room that is white in color and has quite a lot of gadgets and a very nice plant in it.
Rosa Sulley
Morning, everyone. My name's Rosa. I'm a short white woman with long blonde hair. I'm wearing a grey jumper and a pink lanyard, and I'm in the same meeting room as my buddies.
Genevieve Ford-Saville
Great. Thanks, team. Okay, so a bit of housekeeping, a few practicalities before we start. Live captioning is available for this session. There is a link in the chat if you'd like to see the captions in a separate window, you can also click the closed captions button at the bottom of this window to see them within zoom. You can post questions at any point using the Q&A facility which you can find at the bottom of your screens, I would encourage you to vote for questions submitted by another participant if you'd really like to see that one else. So up vote if you like, if you like, stuff you're seeing other people are talking about. You can do that up voting by clicking on the thumbs up icon next to the question.
As mentioned, we'll have Luna, Hannah, Gillian, Hikmat and Johnny typing responses to questions in the Q&A, and we'll try and answer as many questions as possible. We'll prioritise the questions that get uploaded. If there are any questions that we miss, we'll answer them afterwards. We'll also be using this to update our FAQs on the website, so you may find the answer to a question might already be there. We are expecting a lot of questions, so please don't worry if you miss anything. We're recording this webinar, and we're going to share the transcript with the additional questions covered on our website as soon as we can after this webinar.
So, let's get started. Get into it, as they say on the TikToks.
Welcome again, everybody. It's really good to have you with us, and thank you all for the time you've taken to join us. Today, we started holding pre-application Q&A webinars, because we know that you want to ask us questions before you apply to Esmée, and we can't speak to all individually, exactly. So, and we found we've had over 400 people sign up this webinar. So we know there's a lot of demand, so hopefully this is a good way to answer as many of your questions as possible, and we've made changes after every webinar based on the feedback that you give us, and we'll ask for your thoughts following this one too.
So the plan for today's session is here on the slide you can see on the screen. So we're going to do a quick introduction to Esmée, then we'll take us through what we don't fund and what we look for. We're going to walk you through how we make decisions and how we do our application process the stages after that, and then we'll move on to the Q&A session with plenty of time for you to ask questions. We're aware that we need to strike a tricky balance today.
We want to be more transparent, but we also need to be absolutely honest. We are not holding this webinar to encourage more applications as we continue to make a similar number of grants. Need is rising in the sectors that we support and as a funder that is open, we've been receiving more applications, so we want to do more to save people from spending time, and we know your time is precious. Saving time in applying to us, it's not likely that we're going to fund your work. So we hope that this webinar will be helpful for you in deciding whether or not you should invest that time in applying to us, or whether you want to put your efforts elsewhere.
We want to answer as many questions as possible, but we know the main question for many of you is, Will Esmée fund my work? And I'm sorry, but the answer for most of you is going to be no. We won't be able to give you one to one advice or feedback about your own organisation, but we do hope to give you a clearer picture of what we're looking for and how we make decisions and how we use our application process to do that decision making. So now I'm going to hand over to Jenny.
About Esmée - slides 3, 4, 5 and 6
Jenny Dadd
Okay, now we're best known, and of course, the reason most of you will be here is to learn about our philanthropy through making grants. So this is where the money goes, down to the Esmée door to support our funding partners, or otherwise known as grantees, and the great work that they do. Our grantmaking pivots around three main aims, Our Natural World centres on land environment work. A Fairer Future has a focus on social justice and Creative, Confident Communities about strengthening bonds in communities. This is the basis of our strategy, which is scheduled to run until 2027. Social investments, is referenced at the bottom of the slide.
Just to explain a little bit, social investments are different from grants. If there's any funding come back, comes back into Esmée and into a revolving fund. So it is where the work proposed aligns to what we are trying to achieve in either nature communities or social justice, but where we can have social and environmental impact and get repaid over a period of time.
This slide is designed to show information about the numbers at Esmée. Now, our budget is not the deepest in terms of depth of pockets compared to, say, the lottery, but we are amongst the larger of the trusts and foundations. Last year, it was 241 grants that were awarded across our aims when we refer to core or unrestricted, as per the text on this slide, this means supporting an organisation to deliver its work in a broad context. Esmée is quite unusual amongst funders in offering this backbone type of support. We also support organisations with project funding, which tends to have tight outcomes and over a defined period of time, we made 94 grants last year to organisations we have not previously worked with. 61% of grant support was to organisations that we have worked with previously.
So these are the aims that I spoke about earlier. I work in Our Natural World team at Esmée, and to break it down, I work a lot on our peat priority. So the aim at the top of the slide and the priority on the right hand side, each of the funding teams works in the priority areas as set out. There are five for Our Natural World and A Fairer Future, and three in Creative, Confident Communities. There's more detailed information on our strategy on the website, and that includes a full text version for screen readers, there are also case studies of work that we have supported under each aim and its corresponding priority.
This is quite a busy slide, but it's intended to drill down into a bit more detail. So here is an example of a priority in our community aim and breakdown of information relative to it. This is not the team that I work in, but this is the universal way we do work at Esmée for the outcomes in any given priority. And I would really encourage everyone to look at examples of our work and have some time on Grant via grant night, GrantNav, which is available on our website. Now, with that, you can pull up current information. It's not out of date, and it will you can filter it according to your needs. It's good to and it may be that you learn about organisations that are close to you, either geographically or in terms of the aim that will be able to help to give you a steer. I'm now going to hand over to my colleague Rosa.
What we don't fund and what we're looking for - slides 7 and 8
Rosa Sulley
Thanks, Jenny. This slide details the areas that we don't fund. So our exclusions, because our focus is on longer term grants for work with a more strategic focus. We don't fund very small organisations with a turnover of less than £100,000. We also don't fund those without an established governance. And by this we mean we don't fund organisations that are constituted. Most of the organisations that we do fund are charities, but we also fund other organisation types, like community of interest companies and community benefit societies.
It's worth noting that if your organisation is not a registered charity, we will assess governance and the risk of disproportionate personal benefit, and you can find out lots more information about this on our website. It is worth bearing in mind that if you are not a charity, we won't be able to give you unrestricted funding, but we might be able to give you core or project cost pending assessment. I'm not going to go through all the rest of the exclusions on this slide in detail, but if you do have any questions, please do put them in the Q&A.
So what are we looking for? We're looking for work which is a strong fit to our strategy. We're looking for work which is ambitious or is doing something new to create systemic change. We're really interested in work which can have a wider influence or spread. So this is work that goes beyond usual, routine service delivery. We want to fund work which centres lived experience, justice and equity, particularly work which is driven or shaped by those lived experience or in our Creative, Confident Communities aim by communities. We want to fund work that shapes a collaborative approach and work which has good governance and leadership.
A good example of this is the We're Right Here campaign that we funded under our Creative, Confident Community strategy. We're Right Here is an ambitious collective of national organisations and grassroots community leaders who are working together to advocate for more powers to be devolved to communities in England. It is a unique example of communities, think tanks and national membership organisations all jointly leading a policy campaign together. As a result of their successful campaigning and influencing, the government's new devolution bill includes a new Community Right to Buy. This will make it easier for communities to take valued community assets like local buildings and spaces into community ownership, which is a key aim of our strategy. My colleague Jenny will also talk through an example from our Our Natural World strategy.
Jenny Dadd
Yes, we've supported Nature Friendly Farming Network since, since their inception. So since they were created, we've got a priority in Our Natural World linked to farming. Clearly, nature friendly farming does link to farming. They're doing something new. It's an organisation led by farmers, and it is for farmers. It's for farmers to set them on a journey to better incorporate nature on their farms. It also gives farmers direct access to politicians and ministers, and let's face it, you can't go to London every day if you're on a working farm. So this is a pretty unique way of accessing forms of pounds. It operates across the UK, so it has a really good spread, and many farmers do have it tough. And there is a social justice angle to this work as well. It's an organisation that has come from a from an idea. So it's governance and leadership has grown whilst we have watched that happen. The greatest appeal to us is that in each nation, there is a steering group of farmers from all different types and styles of farming, meaning that they have great breadth and authenticity at borderland all day, we had a lot of help from other NGOs, and now have robust structures.
How we make decisions, and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion - slides 9 and 10
Rosa Sulley
So how do we make decisions? We have to make judgments, and when assessing applications, we consider a range of factors based on how strong a fit the work is to our strategy and how well placed the organisation is to do the work. The link on this slide takes you to our page on our website about how we make decisions, including what we look for, and how we do this in each stage of the application process. These are all things that we are thinking about from our point of view, in the context of our strategy are the work that we're funding and our own plans.
Genevieve Ford-Saville
So one of the other things that we are considering when we're assessing applications is diversity, equity and inclusion, which we call DEI for short. In an application process, applicants will be asked at each stage of assessment about DEI. Firstly, when you submit an EOI, you are asked to complete a DEI monitoring form. The form is based on something called the DEI data standard, the DEI data standard collects organisation level information on whether an organisation is working for and led by a group sharing a single characteristic. It's not a way to capture the breadth of how DEI is present or not in an organisation, it's more of a way for us as a funder to understand high level data on DEI in the organisations who are applying to us.
We do appreciate that there is, there will be nuance to the way in which diversity shows up in organisations, and how you might be living equity and inclusion. If we move forward to having an assessment call with an applicant, that's an opportunity to explore your approach to DEI in more detail. So what do we do with that information that we gather from the DEI form that we ask you to complete at the expression of interest stage. That information is something that helps us understand who our funding is reaching, as well as identifying and allowing us to address structural inequity in our funding so we can see patterns of what we are doing and are not doing. We use it as part of our assessment of applications. I'll come on to say a bit more about that, and we're interested in how people and communities most impacted by issues shape the work. There's more information about this on our website, but I thought it might be helpful to maybe share an example from our A Fairer Future programme.
So we we have a priority of our lived experience. An example of an organisation that we are supporting is Marlborough Theater Productions who are an LGBTQ plus performance company working across the arts and heritage and community development. They're based in Brighton and have created a uniquely intersectional approach. They're supporting artists who are disabled, queer, trans, intersex, global majority, and we're supporting their core costs as they're establishing safe cultural platforms that enable often relatively marginalised artists to realise their creative ambitions and become cultural leaders. So Marlborough Theatre Productions has also become a trusted infrastructure organisation, and as part of that, they're supporting the growth of over 10 similar, smaller queer, intersectional grassroots organisations in various locations across the UK, including Bradford, Bristol, Cardiff, Manchester, Hastings, London, and they're helping to build a national and international community, in fact, queer creatives who are working in solidarity.
So that's an example of how we think about intersectionality and in terms of DEI, it doesn't mean that all organisations we find are going to be led by lived experience of the issues we're working on, but it is still always a significant part of our assessment, and we will always be looking to understand your approach to DEI, how your organisation represents the communities it works with, how you ensure equity in the work that you're doing, and what mechanisms are in place to ensure that voices that are more likely to be heard or less likely to be heard are balanced. So we're interested in how you do all of those things, and we'll be we'll be talking about that with you throughout the assessment process.
On a systemic level, we know that our eligibility criteria are an unfair barrier for some organisations that are led by communities who experience racial inequality or that are disability led, because those organisations tend to be smaller. In our experience, we don't think that open application process is the best way to fund smaller, grassroots organisations. So instead, we're focusing on finding and funding those organisations proactively. So for instance, by expanding and strengthening our networks through targeted referrals and monitoring of the sector, and we're also funding in partnership with other specialist organisations who have relevant reach and expertise with particular communities.
So for example, we partnered with Baobab Foundation, with Civic Power Fund, and with Comic Relief’s Global Majority Fund. And based on the DEI data we gathered about who our funding is reaching, last year, nearly half of the grants we made went to organisations led by people who face structural inequality as a result of their identity or what lived experience. And you can find about more, find out more about the DEI data we gathered in a recent storyline website which Luna has shared in the chat.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. So we are just going to play a short video on how to apply.
How to apply - slide 11 (video)
Genevieve Ford-Saville
Before applying, check if we're the right funder for you. Take our quiz to check you meet our minimum eligibility criteria. We'll ask you quick questions about your work and organisation, and it takes just five minutes if you're eligible to apply.
Read our guidance about the funding priorities relevant to your work. It has more detail about the long term outcomes we're focusing our support on. We use this to guide our assessment on strategic fit.
Here's the guidance for one of our priorities as an example, you can also find information on each stage of the application process so you know what to expect and how we make decisions. This will help you understand whether it's worth investing time in applying to us. If you decide to apply, there are three stages.
One, let us know about your work by submitting an expression of interest. Use this to tell us briefly about what do you want Esmée to support, the impact you're aiming for, and how it contributes to our strategy and your organisation, how you're well placed to do the work. You'll have 300 words. We will also look at your website to learn more about your organisation and impact so far, you'll hear from us within four to six weeks to let you know if we'll take your application further.
Two, if we think your work is a potential match, we'll invite you for an assessment call to learn more. It's also a chance for you to learn more about us as a funder and our strategy. The call will cover fit to our strategy and impact you're aiming for, your approach and your track record. The assessment call will help us understand how likely it is we will fund your work. We'll let you know the outcome within two weeks.
If we think your application is a strong fit for our funding, we will invite you to submit the proposal with additional information we may need. If you already have a strategy document and business plan covering the work you are applying for, you can use these instead of our proposal form. We may have a follow up call to discuss anything we need more detail on. We'll then carry out a detailed assessment. We aim to give you a decision within three months of receiving your proposal.
Assessing applications and expression of interest tips - slides 12 to 16
Jenny Dadd
So once you've submitted your expression of interest, I know it can feel as though it disappears down a black hole into our website. To be reassured, they do land with us. We do try and make expression of interest short and simple, and now, in saying that I'm on the other side of the fence, I would definitely recommend that you look at our website, as per the blue text on this slide for more information about our assessment process. If an expression of interest is considered to be a good match to strategy, to an aim and to a priority, we are likely to find out a bit more via your website or other sources of public information, such as the Charity Commission. If all goes well, from this initial stage, we progress to a team meeting. So in my case, that will be the Our Natural World team meeting to be discussed. If agreed, from there and move to an expression of interest call with a funding team member. Now this is a really important part of the process.
So we want to be upfront in terms of the applications that we receive, and I hope that this helps to set it out on the left hand side of the slide, we have information about the applications that are submitted via our website and without us having prior contact. 1,403 is a high number that are being looked at currently and sadly, most don't make it despite that they are from very good organisations and doing very good work. We just deny all the funds available to support all the work that comes across our door and thread. So out of those 1,403 besieged expressions of interest, 93 were invited to make a full application and move on with this. Of the organisations that did move on and were invited to make a full application, 84% ended up progressing and being funded. Now that result is high because we are focused on inviting only those organisations and the work which are really strong fit to our strategy, and work that we're trying to deliver on the right hand column for those organisations, and work that we have prior knowledge of the expressions of interest are more likely to progress to a grant being made.
Now because of this, we're very mindful of bias, and I do hope I can give some reassurance by saying that we ask the same questions relative to both columns in the slide as part of an expression of interest, and we have the same assessment process, but our existing learning and knowledge will inevitably have a part in our final decisions. I'm going to hand back over to Rosa.
Rosa Sulley
Thanks, Jenny. So we're often asked how to get on Esmée and radar, and it's important to Esmée to remain open to applications, as well as supporting organisations that are already known to us and making new connections ourselves. There are two main ways that we learn about an organisation's work. One is by us proactively seeking them out. So we attend sector and community events, we carry out research into areas of our work, and we follow up on recommendations from people we fund or work with. The other is through organisations submitting an expression of interest on our website. We have increased the support that we're giving to organisations we haven't funded before. In 2024, 39% of grants we made were given to 94 organisations that we hadn't previously funded, and half of these came in through the website. Of the grants we made in 2024, 33%, that's 1/3, came in via the website and our open process. So if you want to get on our radar, the best way is to put in an expression of interest.
We often get asked, What makes a good expression of interest? So before we go into the Q&A, we just wanted to share what we think. For me, it is about being really clear in your answer on what you're asking Esmée to support. It is helpful to say explicitly what you want the funding to pay for and how this will help you deliver your intended impact. I don't know if my colleagues have any other tips that they want to share.
Genevieve Ford-Saville
Lovely, yeah. So I think I'd like to point out that a good EOI is one that's written in plain language and that expresses the heart and soul of what you do, as well as telling us clearly what you're asking four our help to achieve. Sometimes, applications can be written by someone you might have hired because they have specific fundraising expertise, or by a GPT that you train to write in your style. And I would say that whilst those can be very sophisticated, sometimes what they can lack is authenticity. So I'd say, don't be scared about yourself, and trust that you know your work best and you can express it well and authentically.
Jenny Dadd
I'd say, from my perspective, best expressions of interest are those that come to us really well researched, and often that can be linked into looking at depth, into who we are already funding, why you think we funded them, and how your work might fit in with them. So talk to them, if you can ask about their experience, and to hear the good and maybe the less than good from them, about working with Esmée, I would say, even if they're a social justice organisation and your organisation has a focus on the environment, for instance, but they're a few doors down from you, do go and ask them, there's great merit in that.
Q&A - questions are in bold
Luna Dizon
Thanks everyone. Think we're ready to move into the Q&A portion of the webinar. And thanks to those people who submitted questions in advance. We're going to start with those.
So I got a question here from Shauna, and this is for Jen.
So in our racial justice priority, does the work need to be a new project, or can they apply for a geographical expansion of the same work there?
Genevieve Ford-Saville
A great question. I know that quite a lot of funders like innovation and new things. We're not specifically an innovation funder. What we're looking for is that your work is ambitious and doing something to create systemic change, and that it has the potential for wider impact and influence. It doesn't have to be new, though. So if you know, if you are experienced in what you do, and you want to build on that experience, to do it somewhere else, somewhere and expand that work, then great, but it doesn't have to be a brand new piece of work that you're applying to us for. We're interested in understanding your previous impact as part of our assessment, and more interested, as I said, is about the work being about systemic change and demonstrating to us that your work is capable of doing that.
Luna Dizon
Thanks, Jen. I'm going to ask this question from Rachel, and this is to Rosa, and what sort of scale of project is Esmée seeking to support through Creative, Confident Communities. Would a very local project based in our immediate neighbourhood be of interest? And do we have like, what are we looking for a certain number of people involved?
Rosa Sulley
Great. Thanks, Luna, this is a really good question. So we fund lots of different work within the Creative, Confident Communities strategy, operating at all different scales, from hyper local neighbourhood projects all the way through to national campaigns like the We're Right Here campaign I talked about earlier. We don't have any specific criteria or number of people involved. What we're really interested in within the Creative, Confident Communities strategy is how the work is meeting the six principles that we've set out in our Creative, Confident Communities funding guidance, which is on our website, and particularly, we're interested in how the work is responding to the specific needs of a place and how the work is community-led.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. There's a couple of questions here too about the types of organisations that we might explore. This is for Rosa and Jenny.
So there's a question from Clint about whether we would support public libraries and archives that meet might meet the eligibility criteria, but they are part of, I guess, a public service. And then Jenny, Sarah has asked whether an organisation like the Environment Agency can act as a lead applicant to help marginalised partner organisations who don't have their infrastructure.
Rosa Sulley
Yeah, so just responding to the first question, we wouldn't fund traditional library services. But we know how important spaces like libraries and other community infrastructure are for enabling communities to come together and to meet the aims of our strategy. So it wouldn't be an exclusion, but what we'd really want to know is how the proposed work is really clearly meeting the criteria set out in our funding guidance. And I think this picks up on what Jen was just describing a moment ago, about that work around systemic change, that's really what we're interested in.
Jenny Dadd
The question about the Environment Agency and their support of a smaller organisation, Esmée states that it will not replace state funding. This is a bit different, because what we're talking about is support of an organisation, rather than support of the Environment Agency directly or another state agency. My advice would be, because the Environment Agency is so broad and covers so many different locations. But if there's a small organisation currently not not constituted, or doesn't have a track record, I don't really know the detail, but I think if there's another organisation that can act as a fiscal host to them, they don't have to be involved in the work, necessarily, but if they can act as a fiscal host, that's probably a better option for that organisation.
Luna Dizon
Thank you both. And we've also got a couple of questions about faith based organisations. There's one in the Q&A from Dave, and also one from Jeremy that who sent that in in advance.
So Jeremy's question was that they are a National Christian Faith Based charity with a focus on protecting the natural world and restoring the environment, and they wanted to know if, if we would explore an application from them on a project which works with landowners across the UK. And they said that their project does not involve the promotion of religion and Dave's question in the Q&A. They are also a faith based organisation doing youth work, and they keep they're just asking if we could clarify what we look for in an application to be confident that project led by a faith based organisation clearly falls outside this exclusion. Jen, do you want to start with that?
Genevieve Ford-Saville
Happy to answer that. So we wouldn't provide an unrestricted funding to an organisation whose charging mission is to promote religion, because promoting religion is an exclusion for us, but we recognize that lots of religious organisations play incredibly important roles in their communities, much like libraries do, and they support people of faith and people of no faith as well. They can be places for people to come together. So we would consider an application for potentially project costs or restricted costs from those organisations. As part of the assessment, we would need to look at changing the work isn't doing any proselytising. That's the key thing for us, that the work can be proselytising religion, and we would need to explore the accessibility in real terms of the space and the work and the role of the organisation in its community overall. I would say.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. I don't know if, Jenny, you wanted to add anything specific to the question about an actual the when said Jeremy was Jeremy, yeah, Jeremy's question about work for supporting work with landowners.
Jenny Dadd
I mean, we do see applications from landowner clusters. I don't have the detail on this one, obviously, but if their commonality is through their faith, then that may be a good way to bring landowners together, which is notoriously difficult. Jen set out about proselytising, and that is something we would look at in depth. But if that's the motivation for landowners to come together, and if that motivation aligns to well, the work they plan aligns to our strategy and our priorities, there's no reason why we couldn't or shouldn't, look at that in a bit more detail, but I hope we've made the parameters quite clear on how we work with faith based organisations. Thanks.
Luna Dizon
So going to go to Rosa for this next question, this is was sent in advance from Caroline, who's asking about Creative, Confident Communities, how many funding priorities are they required to meet under that aim? And would health inequalities count under this and how soon do they have to start the project after being awarded a grant? But also, if you could also answer Anita's question in the Q&A which is about the key differences between A Fairer Future and creating the team, maybe start with that first question, going back to this one.
Rosa Sulley
Yeah, I'll answer Caroline's three questions first, I'll take each of them in turn. So the first one was, how many funding priorities under an aim are we required to meet? Is it best to go for one or two and try and cover them all? You don't have to meet them all. We know that they are interrelated and that someone will often meet more than one priority. We know that that's the case. But if your work is a really strong fit to just one priority, that's absolutely fine, and we want to hear about the deep work you're doing to address, perhaps in particular, a specific issue within our priorities. So you don't feel the need to try and sort of make your application speak to priorities that it doesn't speak to.
The question around health inequalities - clinical health care is an exclusion for us, but we know that health inequalities are intrinsic, intrinsically related to deprivation, and so within our Creative, Confident Communities work, we would want to know about specific context in your place of health is a inequality, the really big issue in your place, we'd want to hear about that, and we'd want to understand how the work that you are doing is responding to that.
The last question, How soon do you have to start the project? And this is relevant to any aim. We're flexible as a funder. We don't have strict criteria. We usually expect people to draw down within the first year, and actually most people draw down their grant within the first few months. But we're a relational funder, and there's always an opportunity to speak to your grant manager. So if you are successful with an application, don't ever feel like you can't ask a question or that you can't speak to your funding manager if there's a reason why you might need to delay the start of the work, always come and speak to us first, and we can work out something together.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. And I'm gonna move on to a couple of questions that are related to young people leaving care. So definitely Jen and so question we have these both came in, were sent to us in advance and about our the first one is about our outcome, of our support for representative cultural workforce.
And so they are seeking, this is a question from Grace. They are seeking philanthropic support for a change making project to support those with care experience, and they've said that their community has historically been made up of a diverse group, including those who are economically disadvantaged, from global majority backgrounds and refugees, who are all shown to be underrepresented in the UK cultural sector, and they would like to know if that would be eligible. So this is a representative cultural workforce. Is it's one of our long term outcomes under our priority for Arts and creativity making change. The second question related to young people living, being in care, is from Martha, who's asked if we would consider funding projects that involve co-developing trauma, informed oral health training and resources for care experienced children and young people.
Genevieve Ford-Saville
Okay, great, great questions. It might be helpful to say both that our young people leaving care priority is an actual young people strand. And then we have, as you just described Luna, our Arts creativity making change strands. So they're different strands, but the first question asked crosses over both of those strands. I'm going to disaggregate them and also for each of the two strands. So for a representative cultural workforce, if we're interested in applying for that programme, we are, we recommend that you focus on the priority on our website, and you're a very strong fit, because it's a very competitive area. We would add that, you know that because demand is really high, we're prioritising organisations that are led by and for underrepresented groups, and those with really strong networks and evidence of contributing to long term change and who are sharing power.
So you will remember the example I gave you earlier, which was with Marlborough Theatre Productions. That's a very good example of the sort of organisation we're looking for within this programme, and we're also aiming to allocate more of our funding outside of London and to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, so we would prioritise organisations that were out with London as a result, within representative cultural workforce. So I hope that helps in understanding whether or not that work might fit. Then coming to young people leaving care - so support for young people leaving care is still a part of our strategy, and we are currently supporting a fantastic cohort organisations focused on and in some cases led by care experienced young people, and we're working with them quite intensively.
And and that we're therefore we have, it's a closed programme at the moment, so you can't make an application into that programme at the moment. We might, in future, invite applications if we feel additional work is needed in one of our focus areas, and we will identify those by working with partners in the sector. But currently we don't plan to make any new grants to organisations that we're not already supporting any relationship with, because that priority is closed to new applications. So I hope that helps answer.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. And just because you were talking about Arts and creativity making change, there's a question in the Q&A, and what the difference is between this priority and the prior priority, um, on Community-led art and creativity. And so I don't know if you want to do -
Genevieve Ford-Saville
You want to say something about that?
Rosa Sulley
Yeah, well, I can pick up on the the Creative, Confident Community strategy, and then, and then sort of hand over. So I think really, what's important to say or not the Community-led art creativity within Creative Confident Communities, that absolutely sits within our priorities for the whole of Creative Confident Communities, which is about place-based and community-led work. And so our focus on arts and culture here is around how arts and culture and creativity are a vehicle for community-led change, and so this, you know, we found all sorts of different types of work within that priority, but that could look like community and artists co-creation. It could look like cultural local cultural institutions doing really deep work in their communities to support them to drive creativity in their own areas, or it could be about widening access to creativity in a place to help drive change at a neighbourhood level. So I think really within Creative Confident Communities, it's about arts and culture as a vehicle for change.
Genevieve Ford-Saville
In Fairer Future, it's not so much about a place-based approach as it is in Creative Confident Communities, but about approach that is looking at how we can diversify the cultural workforce. And as I was saying earlier, we are prioritising underrepresented groups, so these may be communities of culture rather than communities of place that Rosa was Rosa was talking about, and and our focus with Arts and creativity making change often intersects with our other foci around Migrant Justice, Racial Justice and Gender Justice. There's an intersectional lens to that as well.
Luna Dizon
Thank you both.
I'm going to go to Jenny for a question from Tom in the Q&A chat. Looking at your environmental priorities, it looks like work on climate mitigation and adaptation at the community level is not something we consider So, yeah, no, just asking a bit more about that.
Jenny Dadd
It's not that we don't think this is important. I mean, we fully recognise the the action needs to be taken. Needs to be taken relative to climate. When we were putting together our strategy in 2020 in Our Natural World, we determined the five priorities that we would support. And one of the reasons that climate isn't explicitly in that is because we took a scout around and there were many more funders supporting climate work than, for instance, Freshwater, which is one of our priorities. It doesn't mean that there's enough money around for climate based projects, but what it does mean is that we made a decision to actively look at areas of funding, such as farming freshwater, where the environmental importance or impact is huge, but where other funders tend not to tread. So that is why we chose those five priorities. And like I say, it's not to underplay the importance of of everything around climate, and indeed, our priorities do cross to climate. So I work on peatlands, which are very important as a climate store, and if they're damaged, they emit carbon. So actually that is very climate focus, but obviously not on a community level. If climate adaptation is something that is very important within your community, it may be that you should look at the Creative Confident Communities aim that we have, and think about in that context and their priorities more than in Our Natural World.
Rosa Sulley
And I can just speak to that quickly to say that we do within the Creative Confident Communities strategy have work that is focused on community responses to climate. If any work would still have to really strongly meet our priorities that we've set out within Creative Confident Communities. But we do, for example, have work that's around, for example, community-led climate assemblies within our Community driven enterprise and regeneration priority, we do actually have a specific outcome around nature and climate, and we want to sort of support work within that outcome, there's looking at how community-led approaches to the local economy are contributing to nature and climate so that's things like circular economy models or community-led action around climate in regeneration.
Luna Dizon
Thank you, both sticking with community-led work. Rosa, could you answer Scott's question, which is about what we, what we want to see in terms of work that is community-led and collaborative?
Rosa Sulley
Yeah, so this is a really good question, and I think this is really at the heart of our Creative Confident Communities strategy. The sort of text says, sort of, what do you mean when you say community-led change and about community power? For us, work really needs to be about handing over power to communities and so that can look different in different places. And we want to hear from you about your place and how you're responding and why you've taken a decision to set up or approach the work in this way. Scott's questions talked about sort of different options, like community surveys or governance models.
I think what's key for us, as I said at the beginning, is about communities getting more power, handing over power to communities, so that could look like different governance models, for example, community benefit societies, or local people being trustees. This was in Scott's question. It could look like co-creation models or around communities having a direct influence on decision making, and we want to see the mechanisms that you're using to enable and embed that direct influence for the long term. I think what's key is it has to go beyond engagement. You know, we're not sort of funding work that is looking at just community engagement or community consultation, and stops there. We want to see communities having a real voice and a real say and a real leadership in the work hopefully.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. Looking at the questions in the Q&A and here's, I'm going to go to Mark's question, because Jenny asked if she could answer that one. Is there a priority in funding projects outside London?
Jenny Dadd
I think it's easy to see Esmée as a London based organisation. We don't have offices around the UK, even though we fund across the UK. So we are London based geographically. That doesn't mean we have a London bias, and I think that's really important. So we look at applications or expressions of interest from all over the UK. We don't have the pressure to have an equal spend like the lottery has, because it reflects the people that are purchasing lottery tickets, which are across the UK, and therefore, you know, they do look to fund as widely as possible. We don't have the pressure that we have to meet certain targets for certain localities.
I think what we are very conscious of is that communities around the UK are really up against it, whether that's environmentally or, you know, they're squeezed generally because of a lack of service, that sort of thing. So we we definitely receive EOIs from across the UK. We definitely fund across the UK. And sadly, what we find is that those regions and countries that are flagged with other funders as being difficult to fund. It's not that they're difficult to fund. It's that often we don't hear from those places. So we do try and spread, spread the word. So definitely we're not we are not London centric. We do have offices that live away from London, such as myself, and it's about those organisations that can meet our strategy very much, considering outside of the capital.
Luna Dizon
Thanks, Jenny. So I'm going to ask two questions. One's from Kat, which is about how, how do we assess grants which hit two or three priorities? And another one that is about how, how, how we're assessing EOIs, given that they're based effectively on 300 words in the in the written expression of interest. So I don't know who wants to go first, maybe.
Genevieve Ford-Saville
Happy to look at Kat's question, which is about whether or not, yeah, we how we assess applications that hit more than one priority area. So let me be clear first - this is like an us problem, not a you problem. If your work is intersectional, well, then brilliant. And we decided to kind of organise the strategy in a particular in a particular way, we would have a look at the application, I think, maybe decide whether it was weighted more towards one or rather about priority.
So for example, is it about racial justice, or is it about more about kind of climate change? Systemically, what's it trying to achieve? But sometimes things are a mixture of, you know, a very, very sort of mixture of the two. We would not I mean, it's an interesting, exciting proposal. When that happens, and we would come and have a conversation with you, probably about to dig deeper about what the focus of the work is, so we could decide which box to put it in. But again, this is definitely like an us problem, not a you problem. So if you think your work does cover more than one, and it's not a reason not to apply, you're going to have to pick one to like, put the application in. But it's fine. If you are covering one one, that's absolutely okay.
And as I say, if we do decide to follow up and have a call with you, we would explore in more detail which of the areas we think it's a stronger fit for and which routine would be going down in terms of the assessment process, and we've done that recently about Our Natural World and Fairer Future had an application that crossed over climate change and racial justice. It came in under Fairer Future and is now sitting with the Natural World team. So we did move things around internally.
Jenny Dadd
Yeah, I was fair to say, there can be a bit horse trading, but between the teams. But you know that that is our problem, if you like. I think some of the best projects in Our Natural World have a foot in nature and a foot in communities or in social justice. So I gave the example of Nature Friendly Farming Network. You know, it's, it's very much nature restoration of farms, which is 70% of the land that we have in the UK, is actively farmed. So in Our Natural World, we're very much looking at that.
But obviously we have, you know, the number of farmers that are disappearing is at a huge rate. You know, they're very squeezed by supermarkets. They're often the backbone of their communities as well. Lose the farmers, the community loses its essential essence. So you can see it's got a foot in all three Esmée camps. It's funded under Our Natural World, but it brings it brings a greater richness to the story that we understand and can retell. If there's these component parts that can come together, it's not that you'll be not funded if you can't do that. But if there's a bigger story to tell, we would certainly want to be delving into that, most probably at the point of an expression of interest call.
Luna Dizon
Thank you, and then yes, a question about the about how you know, how we use the - how we assess EOIs, so there's the the 300 words that people have to tell us about the work and the organisation that we do, also in government, in so -
Rosa Sulley
I can start with that, and hopefully can jump in. I mean, I think just want to kind of acknowledge up front, this is, this is a really challenging and tricky balance for us. You know, we know that by making the expression of interest stage quite short and succinct at 300 words, that's exactly speaks to the question that that reduces the amount of information that you can put in and give to us. But we've made a really conscious decision to do that because we want we are really conscious of your time, and we want to make sure that we are not wasting anyone's time to put in a lot of work into expression of interest when it is unlikely that you will get funding. And so that's that's the balance that we're having to hold.
I think it Luna is right to say that it's not just the 300 words. We always look at your website. We look at things like Charity Commission or Companies House, if you're not charity, you know, a broader Google around the work and some of the partners that you're working with. So we're not just going off that 300 words alone, but we do have to make difficult decisions. And we do always have to make difficult decisions based on the information that's available to us at that time, and I think based on all of our kind of experience and learning and how we we adapt our processes at the moment, we feel that this is the best way for us to try and be as open and as fair as possible to anyone who wants to apply to us, but also to be really conscious of the time and resource that you have when you're applying to lots of people.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. And so the good question here about what we mean by systemic change, and you know, Esmée is quite broad funder in terms of the areas that we cover. So I don't know if each of you might want to say something slightly different, but Jen, I'll start with you.
Genevieve Ford-Saville
To start. So maybe I was looking to start by saying what we're not is a service delivery funder. So our interest is in what organisations are doing to change the future for people and you will in Fairer Future. We have priorities around Racial Justice, Migrant Justice, Gender Justice, Children and young people, for example. So within those we're looking at work that will shape policy, work that will shape public narratives, and while it will create long term change for communities that will benefit in the future. And we appreciate some organisations do a picture of both things. Organisations do do some frontline service delivery, and that informs their ability to do policy work. And ultimately, what we're interested in is that policy and systemic change work, and that would need to be the priority for us within the Fairer Future programme. Colleagues speak about their backgrounds.
Jenny Dadd
Yeah, I think sometimes language can be difficult, and a definition of systemic across areas, and that Esmée does, is really, actually quite hard, but what we're talking about is systems change, really. And as Jen said, you know that that can be at a legislative level, so right? And the beauty of Esmée is it can fund through so many different strata levels. So you know, we can go at the way top end and think about political change. So for example, I'm working on trying to get a peat ban in horticulture. So when you go to a garden centre and there's a bag of compost, we don't want peat to be in there. We don't want it mined anymore. It's a really bad thing for the environment. So you know, we can go really top level. But also, we will talk to the gardeners through through our grantees, we'll talk to the gardeners so that they have an awareness of, if I go to the garden centre, why shouldn't I be buying this stuff? And we will also speak to the supermarkets about, well, why are you stocking this stuff? All of it goes through our partners and taken together as a combination, you hope for that fundamental change so it can be layered. It can be very layered in terms of getting that systems change.
Rosa Sulley
I mean, I think what my colleagues have said is also incredibly relevant to the Creative, Confident Communities strategy. And I think, you know, after sort of really simple level and systemic changes and simple, but to sort of try and make it as simple as possible, you know, what we're interested in is about disrupting what's not working, and about how we can, how we can push things forward in a new way, and that might be new or it might be improving what's already there. I don't just mean new work, but it's about recognising that something isn't working, that something needs to change, that we might that might be about bringing new voices. It might be about handing over power and different people having a seat at the table. It might be about policy shifts, narrative shifts, everything that my colleagues have said, but I think it's really about disrupting what isn't working at the moment.
Luna Dizon
Thank you, everyone. So we've only got about just over five minutes left, so I'm going to try and get answers and ask another quicker questions, and just a reminder that any questions that we don't answer, we will do our best to answer them afterwards. The recording of this webinar, all the like the transcript and the written answers that are happening right now, and also the questions that we answer afterwards, we will make available and send them to everybody who's registered. So if we don't get to your questions, sorry, but we will do our best to answer answer afterwards. Okay, it's fine.
So there's a question for Rosa about Creative, Confident Communities and funding infrastructure and intermediaries. So this person's asked if there are specific opportunities or gaps that we're prioritising in terms of how infrastructure organisations can -
Rosa Sulley
Yeah, really good question. I think, sort of a short answer is, no, there aren't, kind of specific opportunities or gaps, areas of focus that we are targeting in relating to infrastructure and intermediary organisations, I think we would be considering that within the priorities that we have in creative, confident communities. So I lead our work on Community driven enterprise regeneration, and so we would fund infrastructure organisations within that sector, for example, that support community owned businesses or community owned assets or social enterprises. And we know that there are particular issues or gaps within those sectors that infrastructure organisations are responding to.
So that's just one example, but we would be looking to see how an infrastructure organisation is perhaps responding to the outcomes and priorities that we've got within our strategy. I think I just want to say that we know how important infrastructure organisations are within Creative, Confident Communities, and we're really committed to continuing to support infrastructure organisations, particularly where we can with unrestricted funding. And we, as I've said already, we are always taking a place lens and a place focus. So we're interested in Creative, Confident Communities, in place-based infrastructure organisations, or if you're a national infrastructure organisation, we would really want to understand how your work is delivering in place or also delivering against the aims that we've set out in our strategy.
Luna Dizon
Thanks, Rosa. And there's a question here, I hope is fairly quick and easy to answer which is about the difference between project and core funding, and for a core funding application, would organisations just need to do what they do, but as long as it aligns with one of our one of our funding priorities.
Genevieve Ford-Saville
Yes, you can ask it yourself, brilliant, well done - props for that. Yes, essentially, core cost would be if what you do very clearly aligns with the priority you've applied for. If anything you do with that, we would have to make it project costs so specifically applicated to things that were within our priorities. You know the example we had before where an organisation that might be faith based has work that's outside of the priority, we couldn't give our organisation necessarily on restriction or core costs, but we might give them project costs they were doing work that fit in the priorities. So yeah, absolutely, as you, as you, as you said in your question, yes.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. I'm just going to check in with with Hannah, in case there are any particular questions or things that they wanted to share based on today so far. Otherwise, I will go into -
Jenny Dadd
I do on core costs. So I think I said earlier on, when we were looking at the slides, that were quite unusual Esmée in terms of doing core costs. So not a capital funder. You don't fund bricks and mortar and that type of thing. But core costs that can be, it tends to be for posts so that can be existing posts within your organisation, or it can be new posts within your organisation.
So fundamentally, it's kind of backbone support to strengthen the organisation, and maybe posts that are very hard to secure funding for. So we're quite prepared to listen about you know, if this is a really important role, but it's ever so hard to get the money for for it from other funders quite prepared to listen to that. But core funding is like, I say, it's quite unusual for a funder to do that, but we see it as fundamental to the success of an organisation, and therefore fundamental to the success of their work that they're delivering that aligns to our strategy. So core costs really important to us.
Rosa Sulley
You know, there was a question we had in advance that we asked a lot, so I just thought it might be worth responding to that one, which was, if you've been included as a delivery partner with another organisation that has been successful with an Esmée grant. And can that organisation, who's who's a partner, still apply for their own independent Esmée funding if that application has nothing to do with the other organisation's work, and we get asked this a lot, and I think we just so I thought helpful to say that yes you can and, but we would want to be really clear to make sure that there isn't any duplication across the two possible grants in terms of the programme of work being funded, because we couldn't fund the same work twice. So in that case, it might be more likely that we'd have to look at project costs, for example, and, but we just want to understand how you're making it really clear that the two pieces of work are separate.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. I'm going to ask the last question before sharing just a few more resources.
So this is for Jen from Mark, who sent it in advance. Could you provide an example of the type of project you'd be looking for, for our support of young people with experience of injustice, creating and leading positive change and shaping decision making.
Genevieve Ford-Saville
Great question, I think a good example would be, actually, would be, We Belong, who we we showed you a video of at the start of this webinar. We Belong exists to organise and mobilise young libraries to speak about the issues that they have experienced. So it's a led by organisation, and it's looking at systemic change. So that's a really good example of an organisation that fits really, really clearly within our children young people's rights programme, and it's about those young people with lived experience tackling the the injustice systems that they have experienced.
Further resources
Luna Dizon
Thank you. So just quickly, before we close, I just wanted to share like in the slide pack, there are some useful links to further information, so to our guidance, but also to accessibility related support. If you have a disability and there is any part of our application process that is a barrier to you applying, we provide access payments to help you for additional support that you might need. And you can also download the full guidance and sample application forms in case you want to see what what you can expect, or prepare your your application in advance.
And there's a link to an overview of our grant funding in the previous year, so you can get a better sense of the shape of our funding. And as part of that, there's also links to different priority areas and where you can see funding lists, so you can see grants that we recently awarded, and there is a link to our online FAQs, and also on the last page, also in the last page, there's information, a link to other funding sources, and that includes GrantNav, which Jenny was talking about earlier, where you can search grants from over 300 funders. There's a link to in terms of tips on how to use Grant Nav. And we also have a page with useful sector resources on a range of different topics.
Thank you everyone for attending. Jen, I'll pass over to you.
Genevieve Ford-Saville
Thanks everybody. Thank you to my fellow panelists. Thank you Luna for your work setting everything up today. Thank you to the team behind the scenes who've been helping to answer all your questions. Thank you, Nana and Altan for the BSL interpretation, but mostly, thank you all of you attending this webinar. Thank you for the questions that you asked us, and thank you for the work that you're doing in the sector is really important, and we hope you found this useful, and we hope you have a really good rest of the day. Thank you and take care. Thank you. Bye.