The following were given written answers during or shortly after our pre-application Q&A webinar on 23 September 2024.
Please see the full transcript for questions answered live during the webinar.
Esmée's strategy and funding
1. Will the November webinar cover social investment?
Yes, one of our social investment managers will be at the webinar to answer questions.
2. Would we be better to focus on one area, i.e. gender justice within A Fairer Future or would we be stronger if our project aligned with multiple areas, i.e. migrant women?
We are very happy for your proposal to meet more than one of our priorities and many of the grants that we make cross priorities. It is also fine if they just focus on one priority.
3. For social enterprises, is it possible to seek a combination of grant and debt social investment?
Yes, there are organisations we provide both grant and social investment funding to, dependent on their individual needs and match with our funding priorities. Below, is further information from our guidance on applying for both grant funding and social investment:
- If the funding is for the same project, please submit an Expression of Interest for social investment in the first instance.
- If the funding is for different or unrelated projects, please submit separate Expressions of Interest for each type of funding.
4. I understand that you award unrestricted funding. When would it be appropriate to apply for unrestricted funding as opposed to core or project funding? What are you looking for in applications for unrestricted funding?
The majority of our grants are for unrestricted or core funding, meaning the funding can be used for an organisation's running costs to enable them to meet their needs and priorities on their own terms. For this type of support, we look for an organisation’s work overall to be a good match to one or more of our funding priority outcomes. However, we can only offer unrestricted funding to registered charities.
We fund project costs where there is a specific need for this kind of funding, but recognise that generally organisations prefer the flexibility of unrestricted funding when possible.
5. The Way Youth Zone is seeking matching funding for an existing programme focused on developing and providing leadership training and employment placement for young people from the lowest-income communities in Wolverhampton. Do you support matching grant applications?
Yes, we do match fund work. We don't have to be the sole funder.
6. Do you fund development / pilot projects which will enable change? Or is it better to apply for an existing project with tangible outcomes?
We fund both pilot projects and existing work. For work that is more developmental, we would assess whether the potential impact was in line with our funding priorities and outcomes, and if so, assess the feasibility of the work i.e. does the organisation or partners involved have relevant skills and experience, are there plans in place for learning and evaluation, how will the work be taken forward?
7. For larger organisations which have a variety of streams of work and therefore don’t neatly fit your priority areas, but have a stream of work which does fit - can you access restricted funding for that project specifically?
The most important thing to consider is whether you think the work will form a strong match with funding priorities. It might be that the work of the whole organisation matches well or one particular stream of work matches well. If it is the latter, we could consider making restricted funding available, albeit this is less common.
8. Do you avoid funding similar organisations, in the same sector, in funding rounds?
For our main grant-making, we don't have funding rounds or deadlines. Organisations can apply at any time. So we don't make direct comparisons in that way. We do look at our wider portfolio and who is doing what, when we discuss applications as a team.
More recently, we have had a couple of specific programmes (Blue Spaces - Wales and Youth-Led Creativity), which were done as a funding round. We expect to only do this for specific, targeted programmes.
9. Are partnership bids with other charities more favourable?
No they are not more favourable. Each application is assessed on its own merit, whether an individual organisation or a partnership. It's the impact we are focused on.
10. Would you fund a long term project that includes academia as one of the partners ? It is not a research project but there will be an element of research in it.
We would consider a project which had an academic partner and do encourage partnerships which strengthen the work. Often, work which is testing new approaches would form in this way. While we do not fund research in and of itself generally, we do understand that research and evaluation can be key parts of demonstrating impact of any approach.
11. Do you fund projects which are primarily public engagement/community driven, but in which academic research is also conducted to support/defend the delivery of the project?
Yes we would consider work which was using a variety of methods and approaches to reaching the impact you are striving for and this could include public engagement work, work driven by the community, as well as academic research.
12. How do you require evaluation / research to be embedded into a project, and can funding for this be included in budget?
We know that how evaluation or research is included will be different for each application/project. Certainly for work where you are seeking to show the impact of trying a new approach or strategy – this may be fairly important. Yes, we would consider funding this as part of the project.
13. Our work could fall into both A Fairer Future and Creative, Confident Communities. We work with schools and the local community to support young people. Our focus group is financially and socially less advantaged young people. We have previously been unsuccessful with A Fairer Future application, would we be better placed applying under Creative, Confident Communities instead?
The aim you apply under is unlikely to make a difference to the outcome. If we felt the work was better suited in a different aim, we would likely suggest this to you in our feedback or change this internally as part of the assessment.
14. Where seeking to create systemic change, are you comfortable funding some of the necessary public affairs and/or lobbying work that is needed alongside other work?
Yes, we know that many grantees work through public affairs approaches in order to seek the change they are hoping to see. It would be good to understand what experience/track record your organisation has in undertaking this and the levers of change you hope to use to create the aimed for change.
15. In the racial justice priority, you say the organisation should be led-by those who have/are experiencing racial inequity. Could this include an organisation where the specific project has been led-by people with lived experience but not necessarily the wider organisation/leadership?
This would be a good start. But the bar is high in this priority, so it would strengthen the application if the organisation was led-by as well, as lots of other applicants would be. You can find more information in the FAQs on our page about how we use the DEI data we gather during the application.
16. Our organisation is a church but also a charity. Does this rule us out of funding? The project is not to promote religion.
If it is a registered charity then it technically is eligible to apply. If we took the application forward would depend on the work and impact. We don't currently fund any churches and so the chances of funding are quite low. In case helpful, you may also want to see question no. 16, which we answered about supporting faith-based charities at our January 2024 webinar.
17. For underrepresented 16 to 18 year olds transitioning from secondary education, who don’t have social capital or access to opportunities (like paid internships and mentoring from job sector professionals), would collaborative support for them to gain this and lead to a positive destination (employment or further education) be eligible under the A Fairer Future fund?
You can see the details of our funding outcomes for Children and Young People’s Rights here.
As you can see, we do not have a specific outcome related to education, employment and training outcomes. Work would need to show that it was tackling some of the structural reasons why young people might be excluded from opportunities, or led by young people and supporting their ability to be changemakers within their own right.
18. Would you be able to give an example of what 'tackling structural reasons why young people might be excluded from opportunities' might look like please?
Take a look at the 'Stories' section (you'll see them after the the 'Latest grants') of the Children and Young People’s Rights priority – it highlights some case studies of organisations we are currently funding which show in different ways what addressing inequity in systems can look like.
19. How do you ensure that the sector events you attend are chosen fairly e.g. not only in London and surrounding area?
Hopefully, the panel will give some recent examples if there is time. But I do know that events are all around the UK. I recently attended a farming sector event in Northern Ireland for example. And my colleague is down in the South West today at a marine event.
20. When are you likely to be next visiting the West Midlands to attend an event or see examples of work taking place that may potentially be eligible for funding? How can we be part of your visit programme, especially in Birmingham?
We usually only visit currently funded projects and sector events/conferences. We don't usually visit potential applicants. Colleagues attend events all over the UK based on their specialist areas of work and depending on what events are being held.
21. Is there an expectation about the geographical size that funding would potentially cover. So would a small community in a rural area be considered?
We fund work at all types of scale, from country-wide to very local work happening in one place. If it is very local work, then Creative, Confident Communities would be the right aim to apply under, as that is the place-based programme.
22. Do unrestricted applications begin as applications for project funding? And does a project need to fulfil project criteria?
Most applications for unrestricted funding begin that way. We don't have specific project criteria. The main things we assess on is fit to our long-term outcomes, which you can find for each priority in our guidance. As mentioned during the webinar, across all our work, we look for applications that are leading the way, driving change for the future, and aiming to make a lasting difference. You can learn more in our guidance and also in our page with the main reasons we turn things down.
Eligibility
23. Are you interested in funding a capital project that, once complete, would provide a community resource.
We do not provide grant funding towards capital projects. However, we do support capital costs through our social investments.
24. Do you allow onwards grant-giving models? We have a civic-crowd-funding platform and we are thinking of having a climate action fund available, where local community groups/charities 'pitch' their project idea, and if they are successful in raising a certain percentage from the crowd they receive a grant towards the project. Would this be acceptable in principle, or is it not allowed?
Hi, yes we have funded such models previously, so technically it is eligible. It would depend on the specifics of the work and impact as to whether it is fundable.
25. For the financial year 31/03/2023, our turnover dipped a bit and was below £100K. But for the last financial year (31/03/2024) we will be above. Can we submit an application before our accounts are finished / submitted to the Charity Commission and Companies house. i.e. will you accept draft accounts?
It is okay if the income is projected. You can submit your budget or draft accounts etc. to evidence this.
26. Are schools eligible to apply?
We tend not to support work that is purely in schools and is part of the curriculum. We will consider work that has broader ambitions such as having an impact on the community. An example is Sistema Scotland, which is an in-school programme of music education. But its ambition is to have a much wider impact on the whole community. If it's a group of schools working together with the aim of creating a different model of practice that then has a community effect - has an effect wider than just with the children that you're working with - then we will consider it.
For arts and creativity work with children and young people, we support work focused on traditional art forms as well as new technologies and media. We also focus on how children and young people access arts education and participation outside school. In assessing applications, we want to understand who is delivering the programme, how skilled and appropriate they are to do this work, and what progression routes they offer. Please note, however, that we are currently closed to applications towards our outcome on youth-led creativity, which is part of our Arts and creativity making change priority.
27. If an organisation has already secured funding, are there restrictions on when they can apply again (for something different or for continued funding)?
Organisations who have a current grant with us should speak to their Funding Manager about a further request for continued funding. If it is for a new piece of work, you would be welcome to submit a new expression of interest as we don’t have a cool-off period. Organisations who have been declined for funding can also apply again, but the new application should not be for the same work and costs.
28. Does Esmée support addiction charities?
Yes, provided there is a good fit with one or more of our funding priority outcomes.
Applying for funding
29. How collaborative is the process of developing a full proposal if an organisation is successful at the EOI (expression of interest) stage? Do you expect organisations to present their proposal in its final form, or do you work with them to flesh projects out based on your own knowledge and expertise?
We aren’t able to look at draft proposals per-se but submitting the full proposal is the start of the conversation and we follow up with a proposal call so any more detail can be added at that point and we can further explore things at that stage if we need to.
30. Can you advise on your position regarding reserves levels / designated funds within reserves?
We do not have an eligibility criteria for level of reserves, and will assess this on a case by case basis. We will look to balance the need for the organisation to be financially robust and able to manage challenging times, with the need to make sure that our funding is reaching organisations most in need of funding. Most organisations we fund have a level of free reserves between three to six months running costs, but many fall outside of that.
31. How important are figures and statistics to an EOI? Are you interested in that stage about how many people will be positively impacted by a project?
The EOI has very limited space (300 words overall) so it is hard to pack lots of figures and statistics in – however, it can be helpful to get a sense of the scale of the change you are aiming for in some cases to illustrate the size of the community being worked with. Hopefully the examples Heather is just talking through give a greater sense of the information that is useful in an EOI and you can refer back to the presentation slides.
32. How important is it to include evidence of need, such as statistics in the EOI?
The word limit is quite tight, but if there is space it is fine to include, or put links to this info online.
33. Would branded graphics including statistics count towards the 300 words for EOI?
The EOI form is an online form, so, everything typed into the form counts. You can put links if there's other stuff you think is important. We will usually review your website as well.
Diversity, equity and inclusion
34. We, as an organisation, recognise that structures are made out of people; and that structures in the UK are inherently unequitable. How does the DEI structure that EFF use provide support for organisations which specifically serve very low income communities?
Our Creative, Confident Communities aim is our place-based funding strand which funds local work and where the work originates from and is led by the community. This can and does include low income communities, which are also often diverse communities as well.
35. We are from a part of Scotland which has statistically a lower number of BAME consequently far more challenging for us to involve those from BAME groups in decision making and leadership of organisation. Does the Foundation consider the uniqueness of areas in terms of the make up of the areas when considering the diversity within the application.
We do look at both the sector you are working in and the area/region when we consider this. It would also be worth highlighting this in the EOI.