Webinar recording and additional Q&A
- Watch the recording and download the presentation
- See the additional questions we gave typed answers to (which aren't included in the recording).
Speakers
- Gina Crane, Director of Communications and Learning
- Heather Salmon, Funding Manager - A Fairer Future
- Simon Wightman, Funding Manager Lead - Our Natural World
- Luna Dizon, Communications Manager
Welcome and housekeeping
Gina Crane
Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to this pre-application Q&A webinar. We're really pleased so many of you, 278, could join us today, and we really hope that you find it useful.
I'm Gina Crane. I'm Director of Communications and Learning at Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. I'm here with my colleagues Simon and Heather, who will share more detail behind what we're looking for and how we make decisions, and also Luna, whose name is Esmée Fairbairn on the screen, who will facilitate the questions section.
My colleagues, Hannah, Annabel and Will are also on hand in the background to help with answering questions.
For accessibility, we have Nana and Altan, who will be providing BSL interpretation and interpreting what is spoken live. We've also asked speakers to describe themselves and where they are. So I'll start with that. As I said, I'm Gina. I'm a middle-aged white woman at my house in Peterborough, England, and my cat is currently trying to climb on my chair. So apologies for that, Simon, if you could introduce yourself next
Simon Wightman
Hi, I'm Simon. I'm a middle-aged white man, also at home in Hitchin in Hertfordshire, and I have my dog at my feet, and I really hope that he doesn't try and climb on my knees. Shall I pass over to Heather?
Heather Salmon
Thank you, Simon. I'm Heather. I'm a funding manager within the Fairer Future team here at Esmée Fairbairn, I am a brown skinned woman, caramel coloured, I guess, who self identifies as being a Black woman. And I'm of an older age, with dark brown hair, which is going grey at the front. And I'll hand over to Luna.
Luna Dizon
Hi everyone. I'm Luna. I am of Southeast Asian descent. I've got light brown skin, long black hair, a blue top and leopard print earrings on. I am in our office in Kings Cross. Welcome everybody.
Gina Crane
Thank you so much, Luna. Okay, just a few details on practicalities of this session before we start. Live captioning is available. 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 the window to see them within zoom.
You can post questions at any point using the Q&A facility in the bottom bar of your screen. I'd encourage you to vote for questions submitted by another participant if you'd really like to see that one answered. There are a lot of you here, so it is possible we will not be able to answer everyone's question live. So if you see a similar question, please upvote that question and we'll answer those first. We'll prioritise them. As mentioned, we have the team in the background typing responses to questions. We'll try to answer as many as possible, and we will prioritise those that are upvoted. If there are questions we miss, we will answer them afterwards.
We'll share a summary of this along with the recording, and we'll update the frequently asked questions on our website as well.
We're expecting a lot of questions. Please don't worry if you miss everything. If you can't follow the live conversation and the chat, or you can't even see your question anymore. We will follow up afterwards, and you'll be able to find the answers to questions. And if you don't, you can send us an email, and we can help you.
We also have another Q&A webinar on the 14th of November, which will be focusing particularly on our funding for our aim, Creative, Confident Communities. If that is the area that you're interested in, you might be better off leaving this one and joining later, if time is not a deadline for you on that, and a link to how to do that is on our website. Okay, I think we're going to start the slides now, Luna, if you could start sharing, thank you.
So just to say a bit about what we're going to cover, welcome and plan for the session. We're going to do a quick introduction to Esmée Fairbairn. Who are we? What do we support? Then a bit more detail about applications and what we're looking for: what we don't fund, what we are looking for, what we consider when we're making decisions, a bit about the process of applying itself. And then we're on to the answering questions. We want to use most of the time to answering questions, so we will try to limit our part, leaving plenty of time for that.
We started holding these Q&A webinars because we know that you want to ask us questions before submitting an application, an expression of interest. We can't speak to you all individually, we had 450 people sign up for this webinar, so hopefully this is a good way to ensure that your questions are answered. We really value honest feedback on whether this works for you and your question. And we've also made changes based on what we heard from the previous webinars. So we will be gathering feedback after this. If there's something you really want to tell us, please do fill it in and tell us what you think.
We're aware that we really need to strike a tricky balance. Today, I want to be really honest and transparent. We're not holding this webinar to encourage more applications. We know that need is rising in the sectors we support. We've already been receiving more funding applications, but we're still making a similar number of grants. So we really think we need to do more to save people time from spending their precious working time applying to us when it's really unlikely that we will fund their work. We hope that this webinar will help you to better understand whether you should invest time in applying to us, or if your efforts might be better focused elsewhere. We want to answer as many questions as possible, but we know that 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, no. We won't be able to give you one to one advice or feedback about your organisation, but we do hope to give a clearer picture of what we are looking for, how we make decisions and how we use our application process to do that.
Luna Dizon
Sorry, Gina, I'm just going to reshare the screen because there was somebody who said that they couldn't see it. I thought I would just stop sharing and start again. So excuse me, and just for anybody who is having trouble with their view settings, I've also added a link to how you can adjust your zoom settings, and hopefully that helps. I know there is someone who is struggling to hear the sound, I suggest just checking your sound options, but I'll have a think what else it might be and but hopefully everybody else is able to see and hear everything. Okay, go on. Gina.
About Esmée - slides 3, 4 and 5
Gina Crane
Thank you so much, Luna. Okay, so obviously we'll send the slides, so if there is anything you missed, you can have a look later. So just something about Esmée as a funder. Our strategy, which is running until the end of 2027, focuses on three main aims, improving our natural world, securing a fairer future, and strengthening the bonds in communities in the UK. As well as assessing and managing grants, our funding team are exploring many other ways, we can be a bit more proactive in making progress towards the goals in our strategy, doing things like commissioning research, convening and co-design, using our influence, making social investments and also inviting applications for work itself.
This slide has an image of our funding strategy. It's got some aims on the left, impact goals in the middle, and priorities on the right. You can see this in more detail on our website, where there's a text version of the full strategy that screen readers can read. On the website, you can also find our full funding guidance and more information on each priority, including the outcomes we want to see which are really key for targeting your application, and some examples of the work we funded and why we think it fits. I'm now going to hand over to my colleague Simon to talk a bit more about what we're looking for.
Simon Wightman
Thanks, Gina. So the next slide should show some numbers. These describe the sort of size and shape of our grant making towards the aims and priorities that Gina described in the strategy. We choose to focus on funding a small number of relatively long term grants, and the majority of those, as you'll see, are funding unrestricted or supporting core costs where we're able to do that.
Last year, we made 227 grants, and of that 82 were made to organisations we hadn't funded before, so the remaining 64% were to organisations that we have funded at some point in the past.
What we don't fund and what we're looking for - slides 6, 7 and 8
Simon Wightman
So what are we looking for in a grant? Applicants for funding must be able to show that they're both leading the way, either themselves or as part of a collaborative movement or partnership. They must be driving change for the future or doing something new by using tried and tested models to push things forward. And the work must be designed to make a lasting difference and reach beyond those directly engaged to influencing policy, practice and behavior in the long term.
Now I work on Our Natural World funding priority, and I'm just going to take an example of one of the recent grants that we've made, which was to an initiative to the Northwoods Rewilding Network in Scotland to take as a little bit of an example to show what we what we're talking about with these criteria. So the Northwoods Rewilding Network works across Scotland. It's coordinated by an organisation called Scotland: The Big Picture, and it supports medium sized land holdings interested in what they can do to support ecological recovery on the land that they control. Now the term rewilding can be contentious, and it can lead to what we see as a polarised debate about what land is for and who has the power to make those decisions. And we saw something different in Northwoods, because it wasn't working with big estates and landowning organisations. It was working with farmers and community landowners, providing practical advice and networking focusing on the real life decisions about how you'd manage land for nature in a way that is sustainable and compatible with your business and delivers aspirations of the people with connections to the land. It won't answer those big questions about who has land and power, but we hope that it will bring voices of a different type of practitioner into the debate and bridge some of the gaps that can exist between the two sides. And with an increasing interest in Scotland about the rights of communities to influence the land use decisions and sometimes to take control of assets through the work of the Scottish Land Commission and others, there was a current policy window and interest in the work. It also had strong overlap with some of our funding priorities under Creative, Confident Communities. Unfortunately, even if your work does meet the criteria on this slide, we often still won't be able to provide funding. And I'm going to pass on to Heather now to talk us through some of the other things we might be looking for and what we consider when making decisions.
Heather Salmon
Thank you, Simon. We're also interested in unusual collaborations and ambitious partnerships, operating regionally or nationally, or sometimes both, and involving or engaging a range of charity, public sector and corporate stakeholders. We're interested in work that makes connections across our aims and where communities or people most affected are involved in leading the change. We're interested in work that uses a preventative approach and that has practical plans to achieve and sustain over the long term.
I'm going to share an example from the grant that I assessed and we funded about 18 months ago, maybe a bit longer, the Anthony Walker Foundation. This is a Liverpool based organisation that was founded in 2006 as a result of the racially motivated murder of Anthony Walker the year before, in 2005. Now it mostly was set up to serve the needs of Black and racialised communities, but they also include work to in support of faith based communities. That's the Jewish community, Christian communities, Muslim communities and other faiths and people who would self identify as being of Irish and Gypsy Traveler heritage. They support around or then supported around 1000 victims of racism and faith based hate crime across Merseyside with their Hate Crime Victim Support Service. They work in schools where they reach 10,000 young people per year and across communities. They deliver learning and participation programmes promoting anti-racism, anti-hate and respect for all. So collaborations and partnerships, we've said we're looking for. So all of the delivery of Anthony Walker, of the work they do is delivered by collaboration and partnerships. As an example, they work with the Merseyside police, a variety of local authorities, Community Safety Partnerships, the Home Office, private business and employers, as well as charities, for example, Stop Hate UK.
In terms of connections across our aims, this grant came to us by an expression of interest that was within the racial justice priority of our funding. But as you can see, because they work in schools with young people, it also has an echo across to our work with children and young people. Given that it's location orientated across being delivered across Merseyside and given that the work they want to do is very much providing a wraparound offer across Merseyside so that people in different walks of life, at different stages in their life, can access and be part of anti-racist, anti-hate training and learning. They also could actually apply to us, potentially for a future grant where they are focused more on empowering the community to take this conversation forward. This grant was appropriate for A Fairer Future, because we're working with an organisation that's seeking justice, and the organisation is very much driving the change. It hasn't yet taken hold and has been driven by the community. They take a preventative approach, so they not only have the service, the Hate Crime Victim Support Service, to deal and work with people who have been the victims of crime, of hate crime, but they also now have taken the next step of enabling people to understand why they shouldn't behave in that way, and to empower people to have those conversations in whatever location they're in. Sustainable change over the long term. It's taken us hundreds of years to get here. So it's going to take us a while to get ourselves to an anti-racist society. And Anthony Walker Foundation is very aware of that.
So we understand, too, as a funder, that we're empowering an organisation that wants to be a catalyst for change, and that that is going to take a long period of time. With the partnerships they have in place, we believe that they can have quite an impact in ensuring that the people of Liverpool across Merseyside can work with each other to reduce hate crime in whatever guise it arises. Now, even if you meet the criteria I've shared in this slide, we won't actually be able to fund everything that we could under this criteria. Next slide, please, Luna.
How we make decisions, and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion - slides 9 and 10
So we have to make judgments. We have to make decisions. And by submitting an expression of interest to Esmée Fairbairn, you're putting your work on our radar and letting us know that you think you fit our strategy. When we look at an expressions of interest, we're thinking about the things I've discussed from our point of view in the context of our strategic aims.
So the things we're looking for here are track record. And if your organisation is a relatively new organisation, then we will be looking at the track record of the people leading the organisation as it hasn't been going for long enough to have a track record as an organisation. We're looking at your connections, as I explained in the example of Anthony Walker Foundation. We're looking at the broader context, what are the opportunities and barriers that the organisation may face, and that our funding might unlock, in the case of the of the opportunities and the barriers that that may be removed as as a result of the funding, who are the allies and collaborators. And then the difference our support could make, what value could our funding and extra support that we can offer? What value could this add to the work?
Next slide, please. Luna.
We also consider Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, which I will call DEI for short. In our application process, applicants will be asked at two stages to share their DEI practice. So the first stage is when you submit your expression of interest, which will ask you to complete a DEI monitoring form about your organisation that's linked to the DEI Data Standard, which you can find on our website and populate a page that I can read to see what your answers are, and compare and contrast with other organisations. As every organisation submitting an expression of interest will be required to submit this.
The second point at which we ask you to tell us about your Diversity Equity and Inclusion is at proposal stage. If you're invited to submit a full proposal, we would ask you as an applicant, to tell us about your approach to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion within your organisation and what's your approach to diversity in the work as well as across your organisation.
So, how do we use this information? It helps us to understand who our funding is reaching, as well as to identify and address structural inequality in our funding. It's also part of our assessment of all applications. And we're interested in how people and communities most impacted by the issues that they are working on shape the outcomes of the work. Now for some areas of our strategy, we'll be prioritising applications from organisations led by people with lived experience of the issues. We know that our eligibility criteria are an unfair barrier for organisations that are led by communities experiencing racial inequity, or that are disability-led. We're exploring how best to tackle this with our new our New Connections funding, and there's a link to tell you a bit more about that, that programme that we launched this year.
Based on our 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 inequity as a result of their identity or lived experience. You can find more information about the DEI data we gather in a recent story on our website, Luna has also shared the link in the chat and over to you.
How to apply - slide 11 (video)
There are six steps to apply. One, take a quiz to check you meet the minimum eligibility criteria. You'll be asked quick questions on the funding you're seeking and your organisation. The quiz takes a few minutes.
Two, read our funding guidance. It has three sections. A, more detail on how to apply. B, what we do and don't support. And C, our strategy and funding priorities. Sections A and B take 30 minutes to read. For C, our strategy, read the parts relevant to your work. You'll find information on the outcomes we are focusing our support on.
Three. If you think Esmée is a good fit for your work, submit an expression of interest. Use this to tell us briefly what work you would like us to support, about the change your focused on achieving, and how your organisation is well placed to deliver it. You'll have 300 words. We'll also look at your website to learn more about your organisation and work. You'll hear from us within four weeks to let you know whether we'll take your application further.
Four, if your work is a potential match, we'll invite you for a conversation to learn more. The conversation will cover fit to our strategy, your approach and your track record.
Five, if your plans are a strong fit, we invite you to submit a proposal. You'll have three months to submit a proposal. If you already have a document that describes your work, and shows how your work aligns with our strategy, you can use this.
Six, after receiving your proposal, we'll invite you for a follow up conversation. We'll then do a detailed assessment of your application. 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
Luna Dizon
I'm going to hand over to Simon now - he's going to take us through what's happening behind the scenes.
Simon Wightman
Thanks, Luna. So the expression of interest that you've heard talk about helps us to undertake a basic screening process. We're checking a few things. Firstly, that the proposal meets the minimum eligibility criteria that, again, have been covered. Secondly, that it's a good fit with our funding priorities. Thirdly, that the work is leading the way, driving change for the future and aiming to make a lasting difference. And as the film outlined at this stage, we'll also look at the organisation's website and other publicly available information that might include information held by the Charity Commission. For those that look like a good potential match, we'll invite for a phone call, and that's a chance for us to explore the application further. It's also an opportunity for the person for the organisation presenting the proposal to ask us any questions they might have at that stage.
Here, we have some figures on our applications in 2023 and we want to be totally open about the number of applications that we receive. Only 7% of the expressions of interest that came in through the website without previous contact were invited to submit a full proposal. Of those that were invited, 93% received a grant, and that success rate at the full proposal stage is higher than usual because we focused on inviting only those applications with a really strong fit to strategy.
For the expressions of interest we invite, success rates are much higher, although it's worth bearing in mind that that figure doesn't include applications where the applicant decided to withdraw it. We're mindful of bias here, we ask the same questions and use the same assessment processes for expressions of interest we invite and those that we don't invite, But our existing knowledge and learning will inevitably factor into decisions I'm going to pass on to Gina.
Gina Crane
Thank you. So this slide is just in response to some questions that we've had in previous webinars. It feels important to get on Esmée's radar, how do we get on your radar? There are two ways that we learn about organisations' work. One is by us proactively seeking it out. We attend sector and community events, we carry out research into our areas of work, and we take recommendations from people we work with and those we fund. And the other is through our open process. Unlike quite a few other funders, we have an open process. You can tell us about your work and the expression of interest is there for you to do that. In 2023, 36% of the grants we made were given to 82 organisations that we had no previous relationship with, and half of those came in via the website. So the best way to get your work on our radar is still to put in an expression of interest.
Heather Salmon
We often get asked what makes a good expression of interest. Here's an example from participate projects based in Bradford, who kindly allowed us to share it. Their application was for work towards our Creative, Confident Communities, strategic aim, and it aligned well with our funding priorities for community driven enterprise and communities working together for change. This was an uninvited expression of interest that came through our website from someone we had not funded before. I won't read the expression of interest in full, but I did want to highlight why we thought it was a good expression of interest.
Before I do that, Luna, can you show the next slide? So great. So I'm going to go through this slide telling you why, giving you some top tips as to why we think this was a strong expression of interest. You can make notes if you want to, but you don't have to, because the tips are there. But I'm going to do it whilst you're looking at the expression of interest itself, because I think it will resonate more strongly.
So why did we think this was a good expression of interest? I. You have to be clear about what you're asking for funding for, and this can be one line or two lines, as you'll see, the first question, what would you like Esmée to support? There are two relatively short sentences, but they packed an awful lot into those sentences. They were really clear that they wanted to create a model of shared ownership for a community hub where they'd be coaching local people to unlock their potential to transform their community. We can see also that they're seeking the funding for a coach, a manager and for running costs, all captured in two sentences.
Remember that when we're looking at your expression of interest, we will review your website. This will help us to understand more about your organisation and your track record. So use your expression of interest to focus on your work in relation to our strategy. Now your expression of interest will be two questions. These are the two questions there, and you'll see that Participate Projects gave a much fuller answer for their second answer, which is to the question, what's the change you're focused on achieving, and how is your organisation well placed to deliver it? In this example, they gave a strong sense of what they were aiming for, and showed an understanding of what the change will feel like and how they will get there, including why the work is needed and in that specific place and how this builds on previous work. There was a good balance of who they are as an organisation, what they're trying to do, and the people in partnerships that will be involved. It's clear that the local community will be at the heart of the change, and there are clear links to our priorities in Creative, Confident Communities. They give brief descriptions of the activities and also talk about the broader systems and long term change they are seeking.
Q&A
Luna Dizon
Thanks Heather. I am going to stop sharing the slides for now and move on to the Q&A. Again, I'm really sorry for all the technical issues. I'm not sure what all the problems are. But just to reassure everybody, the webinar is being recorded, the slides are up on our website. There is going to be a transcript of the webinar, and we're also going to be writing up all the questions being answered in the background, through the Q&A facility, so you won't miss anything, and I'm just sorry that you're not able to follow it all.
Now I am just going to go to a few questions that came into us in advance. So Gina, there's a few questions that we had from Maya that I'm going to go to you for first, if that's okay, I'll say all three questions. I know there was a question also in the in the Q&A that was a little bit related.
1. The first question is: what is the rationale for the £100k turnover threshold for support and what data do you have to support this decision.
2. The second question is: how do you choose the themes to fund and what data do you have to support this decision.
3. And the third question is: how is the success of the Foundation measured?
Gina Crane
Thank you. There's a lot in those questions, and I don't want to take up all the remaining 22 minutes, so I'll try to be quick. How did we choose the £100k limit? We get a lot of questions about this. We know that 80% of charities have a turnover of under £100,000 but when we look at the organisations that we have historically funded - so, we used to have a much lower turnover limit of £50,000 and not be so strict about applying it, all of the grants that we made were to organisations over with a turnover of over £100,000 and this was a few years ago, before our current strategy. We know that lots of organisations will be disappointed by this, that they wouldn't get funding from us. We can't fund everyone. We are choosing to make fewer grants that are larger and longer, and we're targeting our funding on a specific set of organisations. However, we know that this turnover level disproportionately affects organisations that have been historically underfunded by funders, including Esmée. We have, as Heather mentioned, I think, set up a New Connections fund where we are testing out and pushing on our turnover and governance limits, to see what that tells us about our funding. I do think it is very unlikely that the result of that will be to change our £100k limit. I think to change it would mean we'd get a vast number of applications. We'd put a lot of people to a lot of work, and I'm not sure we would change who we'd fund.
The other questions on the themes, how did we choose those themes in our strategy? They're based on a few things, and they're based on our history. They're based on our long history of funding in the arts, social change, the environment and community organisations and young people particularly. They're based on what other funders are not funding. So we tried to prioritise areas where there wasn't so much support from other funders, or that we felt we could make a particular difference. And they're based on the assessment of need that the trustees and the staff made at the time when we came up with the strategy, which was just before Covid. And we will review that strategy when it comes to 2027.
The final one. How do we judge our own success? This is the one I could bore on about, and I absolutely won't. I think it is very hard, maybe impossible, to measure the success of a foundation funding in so many areas, but we know that understanding the impact of the work we fund and the impact of how we work as a funder, and how that impacts you, the applicants and people that we support, is really important. We do a biennial, so two yearly survey of applicants and funded organisations to find out what they think of us. We take action from that, and we share that on our website. We gather lots of learning from the work that we fund through conversations and reports, and we share those insights on our website. We publish insights reports regularly and blogs and hold events, and our trustees are focused on understanding what progress is being made towards our strategy, but to do that, they have to hold two things. They have to hold the changing context, or maybe the context that isn't changing for the key people that we're trying to make a difference for - people within the migration system, for instance, and the success or not of the work that we're supporting. Sometimes those two things are in harmony, and sometimes they're not, and thinking about what the best use of our money is, is their job.
Luna Dizon
Thanks. Gina, right.
I'm going to ask three questions from the Q&A inbox. So the first one is from Lucy.
4. Why are most grants that we do for unrestricted funds? Is this a strategic decision by the Foundation, or are applications for specific projects, generally of a weaker quality?
5. The second question is from Zoe. Are we better off focusing on one area in our application or projects that span across multiple aims?
6. And the third question is from Jenny: what evidence do you require for collaborations rather than partnerships?
Simon, I'm going I'm going to go to you first, if that's all right.
Simon Wightman
Yeah, sure. So for the first question, why do we support unrestricted costs? It's because we're told repeatedly that that's what organisations want and that's what gives them the greatest flexibility to deliver the work, and they understand that much better than we can. There are caveats. So we can only give unrestricted costs to a charity, because our grants have to be for charitable purposes. If you're not a charity, we have to restrict it to make sure that the purposes are charitable. But where we can, we will have that conversation about unrestricted or core costs. Some organisations don't want it. Some organisations want to be able to describe that the money was allocated to a specific project. So we'll always work with applicants to work out what kind of support is best for them, the one or multiple aims.
Luna, can you just repeat the question?
Luna Dizon
The question is, Are we better off focusing on one area in our application or projects that span across multiple aims?
Simon Wightman
So I guess there's a little bit of a link there. If you're looking for support for the organisation as a whole, as either an unrestricted or core costs, then do describe the whole work of that organisation in your request, I think would be really helpful. If you're looking for a project. I think it's helpful to focus on one piece of work you don't have a great deal of space to set out what you're doing so to describe the piece of work that you think is the best fit with us, the most impactful fit with us is probably the way to go. There will be a conversation with your funding manager about exactly what we fund and stuff like that. Should you be invited on to the next stage.
Luna Dizon
And then the third question was: what evidence do you require for collaborations, rather than partnerships?
Simon Wightman
Oh, that's a really good question, because I think sometimes where we add the most benefit as a funder is working at a really early stage, before you've got a really detailed amount of knowledge about exactly what the deliverables from a project are, but we do usually need evidence, at least of a commitment from the partners to work together and to engage. So it can be a really tricky balancing line, but we do usually need to see that commitment from the partners to engage in delivering the work. This might be slightly different with different aims, but certainly with Our Natural World, we're really helpful, hopefully we're really helpful at that very early stage of project development. But it can't just be an aspiration to work with partners in future. There has to be evidence of commitment now.
Luna Dizon
Thanks, Simon. I'm just going to go straight on to the next question, if that's okay team.
7. And so there's a question sent in anonymously: if you know that your Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is lacking, especially at board level, and are addressing this, but need Esmée support to do that, would this work against us in an application?
Heather, do you want to take that?
Heather Salmon
Sure, yes, will do so. I'm going to give a slightly strange answer, perhaps to this, which is, I wouldn't consider your diversity, equity and inclusion is lacking. It is what it is. And some organisations will be very far ahead in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion, because the communities they work with, or they work with young people who are very much embedded in this conversation. But I think and other organisations will be somewhat further behind. This doesn't work against you in applying to Esmée. But we do ask the questions that we need the answers to to know where you are and what we're really wanting to do as an organisation is benchmark ourselves so that we know at what level, at what level of depth and breadth the organisations that we work with, what have they attained in terms of their diversity, equity and inclusion, and what plans do they have to get better? I think that's the best way I would describe our approach.
Gina Crane
Can I just add something. The only areas, and Heather, you mentioned this when you talked about it, where the answer might be different is in the specific areas of our strategy, where we are looking for organisations to be led by those with lived experience of the issue that the organisation is trying to tackle. So I think in those areas, we would be looking for a level of involvement, and if that wasn't there, that might be an issue. But if you're an environment organisation, if you're an arts organisation, if you're a community organisation, and you have not, you know, got great diversity at your trustee or management level, that's something we're finding out through the process and you're being honest with us, and we're understanding it. Esmée itself also has a journey to go on here, so we are not, you know, standing in judgment on that.
Luna Dizon
Thanks, both. There's a couple of questions here related to infrastructure organisations. So Gina, I'm going to go to you.
8. There's a question from Liz: are you interested in funding infrastructure organisations working in partnership with those working on the ground and young people, as an opportunity to utilize levers for system change and sharing power, or are you mainly interested in organisations that work directly with communities and young people?
Heather, that first question might be one that you might want to add to as well. So the other question infrastructure organisations that I've already lost or maybe has been responded to in the background. So maybe, if it's OK, Gina, do you want to start and then Heather, maybe add to it?
Gina Crane
Absolutely, we do fund both. And this is not talking particularly about the youth sector, but across all of our funding, we have a mix of organisations that provide the connections, the support that other organisations working at the grassroots or on the ground need to do their work. This particularly applies with organisations that can convene different people together to solve a problem, to pull together actions for policy change. So we do fund infrastructure organisations, and we think they're really important to achieving our goals. Yeah, Heather, did you have anything to add to that one?
Heather Salmon
No, I don't think so.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. Great. Thanks.
9. There are a few questions here about the types of sector events that we attend in relation to the slide about how we're being more proactive in terms of finding organisations and work to support and Simon, do you want to have a go at that first?
Simon Wightman
Yeah, sure. We try and make an effort to go to as many sector events as possible. It's incredibly useful, not only in terms of meeting new contacts and touching base with those we might not have seen in some time, but it also helps us to understand the priorities of the sector and the work that's undergoing and the needs of the sector going forward. Without a doubt, we miss loads, and we often, although we'll always have a name badge there, we're not always on the stage. But we'll often put out on social media if we are able to attend a particular event. But it's tricky. There'll be loads that we miss as well. Colleagues might have additional reflections,
Heather Salmon
I would say, in A Fairer Future, we also, certainly I try to get to some more grassroots events as well, not just sector events, so that I can hear the voices of the people who are the ultimate recipients of our funding as well as what the sector is making of the needs across those community groups. Across our team, we tend to, in some ways, follow our interests. That we don't all go to sector events across every sector, but I think we have quite a good coverage across the key sectors that are of importance to the work that we fund.
Luna Dizon
Thank you.
10. I'm going to ask a question that was sent in advance from Atul. Simon, this one's for you. It was about whether we funded zoological societies, but also just a bit more information about what we support under our space for nature funding priority, and if the species needs to be native to the UK.
Simon Wightman
So to take the first part first, we will fund zoological societies where the work that they're delivering fits the other aims that you've heard about. I mean, an example is we fund Zoological Society of London for some of their work supporting citizen science on the Thames and a better understanding of fresh waters. So where there's a specific focus, then certainly we can support zoological societies. I think possibly the reason that there aren't very many in our portfolio is we don't fund the costs of maintaining collections, whether that's of non native or native species. Sort of ex-situ conservation isn't something that will support under the space for nature priority. Space for nature is all about scale. It's about support for working with multiple landowners, multiple communities across spaces. For that reason, there's not very much species focused work in there. It's mostly larger scale habitat creation and that kind of thing. But provided a Zoological Society can demonstrate scale, demonstrate partnership working, demonstrate cognizance of the place that they work, then there's no reason that they can't apply for us for funding.
Luna Dizon
Thank you.
11. And there are a few questions about the DEI data that we ask for and also what we're looking for in applications. So if I read out the one from Fabio: some funders are saying that in order to claim to be led by a specific community, they have to have at least 75% representation. What is Esmée's approach?
Heather, do you want to start?
Heather Salmon
Esmée has the same standard in relation to the board. So when we're looking for organisations led by the communities impacted by the work or the change we look for, by preference, 75% of the board having that lived experience, and 50% of the senior management having that experience. The exceptions would be where an organisation is working in an arena, so for example, a grant I've recently taken through in Northern Ireland that's using its track record of empowering Black leadership actually overseas primarily, but they want to turn that track record of experience to empower people of colour, people from racialised communities living in Northern Ireland, to bring their own voice to the conversation for how to tackle, how to move beyond some of the racist attacks that are happening there. That organisation is not led by or for, but there isn't, as far as we know, another organisation that's led by and for that can do that work. So sometimes the standard is high, but we assess each grant individually, and we look at the whole context in which the work is taking place. And if you're claiming agency, then you need to meet the standard as much as you can. But if you're claiming allyship, it's a slightly different conversation. And we would look at the context in which your your change is taking place. I'll stop there.
Gina Crane
Just to add, when we collect our DEI data at Expression of Interest phase, there is space for you to say if you consider yourself to be led by and for but you don't meet the standard, because we know that if you have a very small number of trustees and/or senior management, you could dip below that very easily and still absolutely be considering yourselves and be acting as a led by and for organisation. So there is space for you to say that. So there is a text section. Please do add that in there, and we will absolutely look at that in the application process.
Luna Dizon
Thanks, Gina, and I would say that for us, that 75% is more about how we how we track data about our funding. So as Gina mentioned, there will be lots of organisations who are led by their communities. We want to understand what that means to them, and there's space to do that in the application form.
There's only a few minutes left, and I'm hoping we've managed to answer all those questions. Jenny, I hope we've covered your question, which was also about the turnover under £100k. What I might do now is just quickly share the slides, just in terms of other resource available to people looking.
Another question that's just quickly come in.
12. I will read that question. Can you say anything about smaller projects that are incubated by a bigger organisation, where the project is by and for but the bigger organisation is part of civic society?
Gina Crane
Quickly, just to answer that, we do fund a lot of those organisations, and particularly through our New Connections funding and through our main portfolio, we fund smaller organisations or new movements or projects that are being incubated by larger organisations. We have to consider those on a case by case basis. It is difficult to give an answer for all of them, because they will be different, but yes, we do that.
Further resources
Luna Dizon
Thank you. And whilst I just get the last couple of slides up, do you want to say any last words?
Gina Crane
Just to say thank you. Thank you to Luna. Thank you to everyone for attending - to the panel, to our BSL interpreters, to the team behind the scenes.
A reminder that we have our pre-application Q&A webinar on the 14th of November, if you are specifically looking at applying under Creative, Confident Communities and have some more targeted questions around what we're looking for there.
But thank you to everyone for asking questions and doing the Vital work you do to make a difference in the sectors we share. Our choices are our choices and are not a reflection on the value or the need for your work. Yeah, over to you, Luna.
Luna Dizon
So, just at the end of the slides, there's some more information in terms of support applying. That includes information about access payments, which you can apply for if you feel like there is a part of our process that is a barrier to you applying. And there's also a link to our online FAQs on our website, and also information about our funding data. We've added a new page that gives an overview of our grants over the last year, as well as it's easier to find links to recent grants that we've made under each funding priority, which hopefully is more helpful to you. And also, on the second to last page, there is a link to other funding sources and directories for further information, and also a page of useful sector resources covering a range of topics from fundraising to campaigning to digital and safeguarding.
As Gina said, thank you to everybody who made it. We will have the recording and a transcript as well as all the written Q&A up on our website by the end of the week. And also, if there's anything that you feel like we didn't get to answer or needs further clarification, do send us an email to the communications@esmeefairbairn.org.uk email address, and we will do our best to answer them. And that's it from me. Thank you, everybody.