This page has the transcript of the webinar held on 3 February 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
- Gina Crane, Director of Communications and Learning
- Genevieve Ford-Saville, Funding Manager – A Fairer Future
- Will Steadman, Funding Manager – Our Natural World
- Luna Dizon, Communications Lead
Welcome and housekeeping
Gina Crane
Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to this pre-application Q&A webinar. We're really pleased that so many of you could join today, and we hope you find it useful.
I'm Gina Crane. I'm Director of Communications and Learning here at Esmée. I'm here with my colleagues, Genevieve and Will, who will share more detail behind what we're looking for and how we make decisions. And my colleague Luna, who will facilitate the question part of this session. Our colleagues, Salma, Alison, Larissa, and Halimah are also on hand in the background to help with the Q&A,
For accessibility, we also have Nana and Altan, who will be providing British Sign Language interpretation and interpreting what is spoken live. We've also asked the speakers to describe themselves and where they are.
So, I'll begin. I'm Gina. I'm a middle-aged white woman. I'm wearing glasses. I'm at home in Peterborough in England - I'm going to pass to Will.
Will Steadman
Hello, I'm Will Steadman. I'm Funding Manager at Esmée in the Our Natural World team, which is the environment side of our grant making. I'm a white male in my late 30s, and I'm at home in my office in West Sussex, and I will pass to Luna.
Luna Dizon
I'm Luna. I'm a brown woman of Southeast Asian descent. I've got long black hair and a blue dress on and bright orange earrings. I'll pass on to Jen.
Genevieve Ford-Saville
Hi everyone. I'm Genevieve Ford Saville. I'm a Funding Manager in the A Fairer Future team. I am a mixed Afro-Caribbean woman. I've got dark brown skin. I have dark brown hair and dark brown eyes. I'm currently wearing a cream roll neck jumper, and I'm at home with a background of some soft fairy lights.
Gina Crane
Thanks, Jen, Will, Luna and everyone. So, just a few housekeeping practicalities before we begin.
There's this information also in the chat, if you forget it, live captioning is available for this session. There's 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'll find at the bottom of your screens. I'd encourage you to look at the questions already submitted and vote for the ones that you'd really like to see answered as well. You can do this by clicking the thumbs up icon next to the question.
As mentioned, we'll also have Luna, Salma, Alison, Larissa and Halimah typing responses to questions in the Q&A. We will try to answer as many questions as we can, and we'll prioritise the questions that are up voted, so the ones that you give the thumbs up to, if there are questions we miss, and I think today it's inevitable there will be, we will answer them afterwards. So, we'll also be using this session to update our Frequently Asked Questions section on our website. And you might find the answer to your question is already there if you have a look. So, we are expecting a lot of questions, and it can be difficult to follow the chat, listen to people, look at the slides. So please don't worry if you miss anything.
We're recording this. We're going to share the transcript with additional questions. And as we said, there are those frequently asked questions you can also look at.
So yeah, let's, let's start the presentation and look at the slides.
About Esmée - slides 3, 4 and 5
Gina Crane
Okay, this is an overview of what this session will contain – a welcome and plan for the session. We're going to have a quick introduction to Esmée, then what we don't fund and what we're looking for, what we consider when making decisions, a bit about our application process, and then time for questions. As a bit of background, we started holding these pre-application Q&A webinars because we know that you want to ask us questions before applying to Esmée, and we just can't speak to you all individually. We had 600 people sign up to this webinar, so hopefully this is a good way to ensure that your questions are answered. We make changes after every webinar to the next one based on your feedback, and we'll ask you for your thoughts following this one as well. We want to make use of most of the time to answer questions, so we'll try to limit our part and leave time for that.
We're aware that we really need to strike a tricky balance. We want to be more transparent as a funder, but we need to be absolutely honest. We're not holding this webinar to encourage more applications because we're still continuing to make a similar number of grants. We know that need is rising in the sectors we support, and as a funder that is open to applications, we have been receiving more applications, so we need to do more to save you from spending your precious time applying to us when it isn't likely we'll fund your work. We hope this webinar might help you decide whether you should invest your 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 most of you is, will Esmée fund my work, and I'm sorry, but the answer for most of you, statistically, 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 really hope this will give you a clearer picture of what we are looking for, how we make decisions and how we use our application process to do that. So yeah.
A bit about Esmée. So, we have a strategy which will run until the end of 2027 which focuses on three main aims, improving Our Natural World, securing A Fairer Future, and strengthening the bonds in communities in the UK. So that's Creative, Confident Communities that last one. So, as well as assessing and managing grants, our funding managers are exploring other ways we can be more proactive in making progress towards our goals, including inviting applications themselves, commissioning research, convening co-design and using our influence.
Okay, the next slide has a very colourful image of our funding aims, our impact goals, our priorities. We're not going to go into this in detail here, and it's a little bit blurry, so you can find details of our strategy, including a full text version suitable for screen readers, on the website. On the website, you'll also find full funding guidance, more information on each priority, including the long term outcomes we want to contribute to over the course of our strategy and examples of organisations and work that we funded as part of that. I'm now going to hand over to my colleague, Will.
Will Steadman
Hi, so I'm going to run a few facts and figures here. So, on this slide, in practical terms, we show some numbers that show the size and the shape of our grant making towards the aims and priorities in our strategy, we choose to focus our funding mostly on a relatively small number of long-term core cost grants, because we know that that's what organisations want and need. Typically, our grant budget for the year is between £45 and £50 million and last year, so 2024, we made 241 grants across our 13 funding priorities, 94 of those were to organisations we haven't funded before, with the remaining two thirds or so going to organisations we've funded at some point in the past.
Next slide please.
What we don't fund and what we're looking for - slides 6, 7 and 8
Will Steadman
This slide details the areas that we don't fund. So, our exclusions, I won't go through those line by line. They're available on our website, but it is important everyone reads those. I'll just kind of highlight a few areas. So, legally charitable is the definition of the work that we fund. There's some examples that people do fall down on, that sometimes on the eligibility quiz. So, just make sure you're aware of what legally charitable means, because our focus is on long-term grants for work with more of a strategic focus, we don't fund very small organisations. So, we have a turnover clause there, and you'll see that's £100,000. So yeah, do read all of that in detail before putting in an expression of interest.
So, this summarises briefly what we're looking for. So, we want applications that show you are leading the way yourselves, or as part of a partnership or collaborative movement, that you're driving change for the future by doing either something new or using a tried and tested model to push things forward, and you're aiming to make a lasting difference reaching beyond those directly engaged, so not just benefiting beneficiaries that are part of a project, but broader than that. So, perhaps influencing government policy or practice at a national level. I'm going to give two examples now of what this looks like in reality from our Our Natural World grant portfolio.
So, one example looking at under our nature friendly farming priority, and one example under our space for nature priority. And hopefully this will kind of bring to life what we're looking for in a real-life example. And all our grant data is on 360 giving if you want to look want to look at it in more detail.
So, in the space for nature, we made a core cost grant to an organisation called Northern Ireland Environment Link. It's a networking forum and body for environmental charities in Northern Ireland, brings together other charities under an umbrella so they can work collaboratively, and they have a piece of work called Landscapes NI, which is a new initiative launched last year. We're funding a full-time position that oversees that initiative, a Development Officer role. Why are we supporting it? Well, so Northern Ireland has a number of areas of outstanding natural beauty. These cover about 25% of the land area. But the legislation in Northern Ireland, it falls slightly behind that of England, Scotland and Wales. It dates from the 80s, and it doesn't really place any requirements for protection, management or resourcing of those areas. So, they're actually not very well protected as landscapes go. And the aim of this work is to really kind of push for greater protection and legislation, so influencing the government there and bringing more funding in to protect those landscapes. So, that's an example of what we're looking for in that it's a partnership, it's a collaboration, it's strategic. It's working across a large area, and it is pushing for policy change. So that's an example there.
And then, under our farming priority, we are funding a group called the North East Cotswold Farmer Cluster. It's a group of 160 odd farmers working together at a landscape scale to regenerate farmed land and build local food networks in the Cotswolds. So, this covers 47,000 hectares. So, you can get a real sense of the scale there. It's across multiple counties, Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire, and we are funding that core costs over three years. Why are we supporting that? Well, the scale of nature decline in the UK, it's very serious, and it can't be addressed through just funding things like nature reserves, which cover only a small proportion of the land. 70% of the land, by contrast, is farmed land, so we really need to change the way that that land is used to create more space and opportunity for nature recovery alongside food production and farmer clusters are kind of relatively new and emerging way of doing this. So, working at scale, working together, collaboratively, working with county councils, working with corporates that are in the area, utility companies, and bringing investment into a landscape to help regenerate it. So that's an example there under our farming priority. I will now pass on to Jen to talk a little bit more about what we're looking for and give some examples under our other fairer future priority.
Genevieve Ford-Saville
Thanks, Will, everybody. So, to carry on what we're looking for in organisations that we're interested in funding, we are looking for unusual collaborations and ambitious partnerships. So, we're interested in who you're working with, where your networks, what relationships you have, and how you see opportunities to make change happen collaboratively by building connections and movements. We're interested in work that connects across our aims. So, you may be doing work that is relevant within more than one area for A Fairer Future and, for example, Creative, Confident Communities. that is fine and interesting. And we are interested in the kind of multiplication, the impact potential through that. We are interested in communities who are leading the way in terms of change, so where people who are most affected by an issue are themselves driving the change around that issue. So, we're interested in work we call tall led by and we're interested in work that is looking towards prevention and interested in work that is looking toward making sustainable, long term-change.
So, an example of this in our A Fairer Future programme might be an organisation we fund called Stopwatch. And you can see more about Stopwatch in the case studies on our website. Stopwatch is an organisation that is led by people most affected by stop and search, and it is an organisation that exists to try and end stop and search, and it's a coalition. So, it has this approach of bringing together different actors from different sectors. It's got legal experts, academics, citizens, civil liberties, experts, coming together to use both grassroots voices and policy and advocacy work to affect change. And this is something that we want to see in terms of the work we're interested in. It's looking at long-term change around policy and advocacy and bringing those collaborations together, driven by the voices of those people most affected by the issues that they are they are working on.
How we make decisions, and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion - slides 9 and 10
Genevieve Ford-Saville
So, moving forward to what we do when we're making decisions and the things that we consider, we are going to be considering your track record and looking at your impact and your success previously. I think, leave thinking about your learning and your ability to build on when things didn't go according to plan. We know things won't always go according to plan. That's absolutely fine. And then sometimes there can be sort of, you know, sort of fear. When speaking to funders about saying this didn't work, that's absolutely fine. It's about what learning is taken from those experiences and what happens next. We're really interested in the connections that you have to other people and other work that might be in our existing portfolio. So, because we have a limited budget, we're interested in how we can make the most impact of what we have available. And if your work connects with other organisations’ work to maximise impact, that's interesting. So, connections are really interesting to us. We're interested in the broader context of your work. So, what are the opportunities and the barriers?
For example, we have a new government at the moment, thinking about what the opportunities and the barriers might be in relation to particular policy areas with the new government for it, for example, who are the allies and the collaborators in the sectors that you're working in, and what do you understand to be the levers for change? Where are the opportunities? What are the things that would need to be worked on to create sustained change. And the other thing we're looking for with making decisions is, what difference would our money make? Why us as a funder? What value do we specifically potentially bring to your work, as opposed to a different funder? So, those are the issues that we are considering when we are making decisions about applications. And by submitting an expression of interest to us, you are telling us that you are interested in doing work with us. We, as Gina said at the start, we turn down a lot of applications. Unfortunately, lots of people who apply to us are not going to be successful, and we do have to make judgements.
We hope that by having these webinars, it makes it easy for you to understand what's going on, kind of behind the curtain, as it were, we have to make judgments on all the applications. This hopefully helps you understand how we make those judgements. And we are considering all of these things from our perspective. We have a strategy that we are aiming to deliver. So, we're considering your work in the context of how it relates to our strategy. If we turn you down, it's not because your work isn't great, it's because it's not the best fit for our current strategy.
Actually, okay, having said that, let's talk about diversity, equity and inclusion. So, we also consider this when we're considering your expression of interest, and when we're considering proposals as well. We consider diversity, equity, inclusion, and we call it DEI, for short, for all applications that come into us. And in our application process, you will be asked to complete a DEI monitoring form. This conforms to the DEI Data Standard, which you can find out more about on our website, and we will ask you to fill that form in when you put an expression of interest in if the application then makes it to the next stage. It's a proposal stage. We will ask you some more questions about your approach to DEI in a more nuanced way throughout your work, and that will happen through a conversation in some areas of our strategy. We will be prioritising organisations that are led by people with lived experience of issues. So, you remember I spoke about the case study earlier, that organisation is led by and that is a priority across our A Fairer Future programme. We know that our eligibility criteria are a barrier for some organisations that are led by and experiencing especially racial inequality or disability led, and we are exploring how to tackle this with our New Connections Funding programme, which has been supporting organisations that, for example, don't meet our current income threshold or governance thresholds. Because we're aware that, historically, funders have created systems which disproportionately disadvantage particular communities, especially racial, minoritised communities, disability led communities, for example.
So based on the DEI data that we gather about who we're funding, and our funding is reaching, last year, nearly half of the grants we made went to organisations that were led by people who faced structural inequality as a result of their identity or their lived experience. And there's more information about how we use our DEI data and what we've gathered recently on our website. So we'd encourage you to go and have a look at our website to check that out. And I think Luna has shared a link to this in the chat for you.
How to apply - slide 11 (video)
Genevieve Ford-Saville
Next, we're going to show you a little video on our application process.
There are six steps to apply.
One, Take our 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 Esmée to support, about the change you're 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'll 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
Will Steadman
Very good, I'm just gonna, I feel like that video has pretty much done my job for me, but I'll run you through in a little more detail the kind of behind the scenes work that we do on expressions of interests. So, we use that as a basic screening process. So firstly, checking that your organisation, your work, meets our minimum eligibility criteria, and that it's a good fit for our funding priorities. Is it leading the way, driving change through the future? Is it aiming to make a lasting difference? So, we look at in detail all of that. We'll check your website and any other publicly available information, for example, on the Charity Commission website, and make judgments on that. So, for those that look like there is a potential match, we'll invite either a phone call or a Teams or Zoom call to kind of get to know you a little bit better, and to go into some more detail on the expression of interest, given that it's only 300 words. Next slide, please.
So here, we're going to just share a couple of facts and figures on the numbers of applications and success rates. So, this is based on very up to date data from last year. 7% of the expressions of interest that come in through the website with no previous contact, what we might call a cold application. Only 7% are invited through to submit a full proposal, so that is quite a low percentage of those that are invited forward for a proposal. 84% will receive a grant. So, the success rate goes up dramatically once you're invited to submit a full and detailed proposal. That's because we're only focused on inviting those that appear to match our strategy and have the strongest chances of success.
For the expressions of interest that we invite ourselves at a proactive grant making, success rate is much higher. So, you'll see 91% of those expressions of interests were invited to a full proposal, and 94% received a grant. We're mindful of bias. You know, we ask the same questions, whether it's a cold expression of interest or an invited one, but for those obviously, organisations that we've funded before, we do use our existing knowledge and learning on those grants to factor into our decision making, and by now pass over to Gina.
Gina Crane
Thanks. So, a question that's already come up in the Q&A unsurprisingly, is, how do we get on your radar? Or how do you get on our radar? It's obvious that. So, it's important for Esmée to remain open to applications, as well as it being important for us to support organisations that are already known to us and to make new connections ourselves. So, 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 areas of work, and we follow up on recommendations from people we fund or people we work with.
The other is through submitting expressions of interest on our website. So interestingly, we have been increasing the support we're giving to organisations we haven't funded before. So, in 2024 we've already mentioned, 39% of grants that we made were given to 94 organisations that we hadn't previously funded, and half of those came in via the website. Of the grants we made last year, a third of them, so 33% came via the website, via expressions of interest and our open process. So, I would say, if you want to get on our radar, the best way to do that is still to put in an expression of interest. Back to Genevieve.
Genevieve Ford-Saville
Thanks, Gina. So what makes a good expression of interest? This is a question we understandably get asked a lot. We've offered you an example in this slide.
This is an example from Participate Projects Bradford. They have kindly consented to us sharing this with you. Their application came into our Creative, Confident Communities programme, and it aligned well with our funding priorities for community driven enterprise and communities working together for change. So, this was an uninvited expression of interest that came through the website. So, it's someone we haven't funded before. I'm not going to read it out to you, but it's there for you to have a look at your leisure.
But I will highlight what we think makes it a good expression of interest, and what we think generally makes a good expression of interest. Firstly, I'd say being clear about what it is you're asking for funding for. So practically speaking, what is it you need the money to do, to achieve, and being clear with us what that looks like. So, you could provide an example in a line or two in the expression of interest and then using the rest of the space to talk about what your work looks like in relation to our strategy.
So, one of the challenges sometimes is people want to talk about their organisation and its background, for example, in the expression of interest. However, we will have a look at your website as part of this initial assessment process so we can find out some more about your organisation and its track record there. So its probably better to prioritise using the expression of interest space to focus on your work in relation to our strategy, and what we're looking for is for you to going to give us a strong sense of what you're aiming for, and a strong sense that you understand what the levers for change look like, and how you're going to get to it to that strategic change that you want to see happening. If that relates to specific places or specific communities, explaining the relevance around that, we're looking for, potentially some information about any partnerships that you might be involved in that are key to delivering this piece of work. And it also being clear that, referencing what we were talking about earlier, that the work might well be led by if that's the case being clear about that, that it's being led by people at the heart that local communities at the heart of the change. And we'd also like you to sort of give us a brief description of, as I was saying, what the activities would look like, and talk about how they connect to the broader, the broader systems change that you are looking to achieve. So, if you have a look at the example at your leisure, you'll see that all those things are included in that example, and that is what makes it a really good expression of interest for us, and we recognise it. It's a challenge, it's a limited, it's a limited word limit to get everything in, we appreciate that. It's hard. We know. We do know that we appreciate it. But hopefully these tips give you a bit of a steer on what to prioritise within that that word limit.
Q&A - questions are in bold
Luna Dizon
Thanks Jen, thanks Gina and Will. So we are now going to move on to the Q&A, and we know the team behind the scenes are already answering some questions, and we still have quite a lot to get through. We're probably not going to get through them all, and I know that it's going it will be hard to keep track of all the things that are going on, but we will, just to reiterate what Gina said at the start. We will have the recording and all the questions, whether they're answered live or given written answers, and ones that we were we're not able to answer during this hour. We'll answer those, and we'll share those along with the recording after the webinar, so you will be able to catch up on anything that you've missed. We are going to start with a few questions that were sent in advance.
Alison asked a question about annual turnover, turnover in terms of how we assess this.
This is because their latest set of accounts shows the turnover of just under £100k and but they have had previous in previous years. Recently, they have had a turnover over £100k and for this within this accounting period, they do also have a further amount and memorandum of understanding with a further amount coming within this counting period. But, yeah, it’s not quite as straightforward, but Gina, I think are you able to answer this?
Gina Crane
Yeah, so there's a couple of other questions I'll pick up as well that were in the Q&A that were about the £100k limit. I mean, I first of all have to say, I'm sorry, it is a hard limit for people applying via the website. And there is a reason for this, and the reason is, quite a few years ago, we had 5,000 applications per year, and we really looked at thinking about the time cost of that for the sector, we weren't made, I think we were making 300 grants, and we really needed to reduce the number of people applying. So, we looked at who we were funding and what sort of things that we could use, objective reasons we could give to people not to apply. Because I think we can talk about our strategy, but our strategy at the time was particularly broad, and everyone thinks they fit the strategy. So, we did really look at who are we actually funding, and annual turnover was a really key thing. We just weren't funding anyone with a turnover of under £100,000 a year. So, where that's why we set the limit. So, we're really aware that the majority of charities and charitable organisations, non-profits in the UK do have a turnover of under of that. We know that, but we were targeting our support at larger organisations, and that's why we have that limit we are we are always looking at that. It is a live conversation. We take on board the questions you ask here feedback via our feedback surveys, and we are thinking about it, particularly in terms of equity. Jen mentioned that underfunded, historically underfunded organisations don't aren't given the chance to build up this turnover of £100,000 a year. So, we have been proactive at reaching out and funding smaller organisations. We have a programme called new connections, where we fund organisations working for racial justice, most, nearly all of whom have a turnover of under that limit. And we are thinking about that where we do a targeted funding programme, we might drop the requirement we did a funding ask for youth led creativity, where that was not one of our criteria. So, this is a live conversation, but I'm sorry, but at the moment, you have to have a turnover of £100,000 or over,
Luna Dizon
Yeah, that's really helpful.
The next question that came over with is from Geoff about eligibility for an approach. They are not a constituted organisation, but they are doing work that has been funded before. I mean, I will say what the approach is. It's called the Make It Happen fund. But because, through our eligibility form, we don't fund unconstituted organisations. So, they're asking what's the best way to, I guess, get on the radar again. Or how could they apply? Will, is this question that you can take?
Will Steadman
It is, yeah. I mean, to make an application, there needs to be a lead applicant organisation which meets our eligibility criteria. So in the case where you've got a project or an initiative or a partnership which isn't its own organisation, but is just a group or an idea or approach, that's fine, but you would need to locate a kind of host organisation, a fiscal host who can apply on your behalf, and ideally that would be an organisation you know that meets our criteria and that is able to, if the grant is awarded, receive the money and then essentially distributed to you, and you'd have an agreement that would cover that. So that's what to do in this example.
Luna Dizon
Thanks. Will, and sorry. I'm gonna stay with you for another question.
This one came in from Chris, and this is about funding for work on climate change.
Will Steadman
Yep. So, we don't have a specific climate priority. Climate change is across what we call a cross-cutting commitment, so it applies to all of our funding priorities and everything we do as a foundation. So, what that looks like is, for example, you know, we are aiming towards our investments being net zero by 2040 we are decarbonising our operations as a charity. We are educating ourselves about climate change, so it runs through everything we do terms of. Are environmental funding priorities. There isn't a climate one, but if you look in kind of in detail at the priorities we do have, climate is actually featured in all of them. So, for example, we've got a funding priority on peat. Peat is a climate superpower. A lot of carbon is stored within peatlands, for example, and we're looking to protect and restore those, and that has an influence on climate change. And we've got a food and farming priority. Climate is a huge rather, the food system is a huge driver of climate change. So if we address and make progress in the food system that has an impact on climate change, if you can't see a clear fit for your work under our existing priorities, you might want to look at a climate specific funder, and there are lots of them, and I think I've got your email so I can share a list of appropriate funders afterwards.
Luna Dizon
Thanks. Will, give you a break now. Jen, I'm going to go to you next.
A question from Wendy about our guidance mainly around children and young people's rights. They have a project which crosses a number of our priorities, including Our Natural World and also children and young people's rights. And they're a community working together to improve nature for young people, and they wish to see young people given the support they need to speak out for their green futures in line with the UN's Convention on the Rights of the Child. I won't read the full question.
Genevieve Ford-Saville
Oh, yeah. So, this is a question about meeting more than one priority, or meeting going to be being across our areas, which is absolutely fine. It's great to meet more than one. I would say it's important that you meet at least one, very strongly. So, it will be about looking through our website, our guidance, and seeing which of our priority as you think you meet most strongly, and which of the outcome’s goals within one of those priority areas you meet most strongly and thinking about shaping your expression of interest around that. So, for example, in children young people's rights, we have an outcomes goal, which is young people with experience of injustice create and lead positive change. So, this piece of work might fit within that so if it's about young people talking about to what I was saying earlier, the people most affected by the issue are the ones whose voices are speaking most narrowly about the change and are leading the change. If young people are leading the campaign and leading the work within this organisation on the issues that are most important to them, and they happen to be climate change, that's great. It's about young people's voice and about what they are most important, what's most important to them being centred and then being supported, to do their advocacy and policy work around that. So I'd say, yeah, it's fine to be applicable across more than one of our priorities, but it might be helpful to work out which one you think you're most closely aligned to, and check that you are very closely aligned to at least one and an outcomes goal within that priority, and think about shaping your expression of interest around that. But if you, if you meet more than one, that's absolutely fine. And we, you know, we have internal kind of coding that sort of sorts applications, but that's an us problem, not a you problem.
Luna Dizon
Thanks, Jen. And so last question sent in advance.
This is from Andrew, asking about the difference between grants awarded for new organisations to Esmée and grants awarded to organisations we already have an existing relationship with. They wanted to know whether there was a difference in terms of the amount awarded and the length of term.
Gina, you're going to take this one.
Gina Crane
Yeah. So effectively, do we treat organisations that are new to us differently? Do we give them more money, less money? What do we do? And the answer is, we deal with everything on a case-by-case basis, looking at our strategy. So, there are examples of very new organisations to whom we have given lots of money or very big grants, because they have a track record bring with them a people who have a track record in different sectors and are meeting a specific need that we think is really innovative or important for our strategy. So, it really does depend on the work they're doing, their track record, the issues that we talked about in terms of how they work and what contribution they could make to our strategy.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. So, moving on to the questions in the Q&A facility. I know there are lots, and we've only, we've got just over 15 minutes.
I'm going to go to Kara's question: to what extent does Esmée prioritise partnership applications?
Gina Crane
I can do this.
Luna Dizon
Gina, did you want to say that just from an overview point of view?
Gina Crane
So, I'm Director of Communications and Learning, so we look at all the learning from all of our funding, and we recently shared a report about working in partnership and how. So, we're learning from the organisations we support about making partnerships work, looking at our grant data, who we're funding, absolutely everyone we're funding is working in partnership with someone. There is, there are kind of No, there are no instances of people who are not doing that. And how you do that, and how that manifest in your work, is something that we would definitely think about in in assessing applications, partnership applications, the complexity of putting that together and how to do that, I think that's really particularly important in some sectors rather than others. And I would say looking at our funding, Creative, Confident Communities, particularly community led change that that is really important. Thinking about who's in that partnership? Are you bringing together people from public, voluntary and corporate sectors? That's something that's specifically in our guidance. I don't know if there's anything anyone wants to add Will or Jen.
Genevieve Ford-Saville
I could add that picking up what Will was saying earlier. We do need a lead person to be doing the application, so that a lead organisation has to be making the application, rather than sort of a partnership of a partnership of two or three or four putting in together. It needs to be one organisation applying to Esmée. But then the work to be in partnership is great, as you were saying, that's something that's important to us, and we pretty much always fund that. I would add also that partnerships need to be genuine and meaningful. So, you know, we will be, kind of, we will be checking what, you know, what the partnership arrangement looks like, how the relationships work, if we get to the point of, kind of getting a proposal and doing further assessment on it. So, it needs to be that the organisations involved are all active and happy, happily in that partnership. And we need to understand how those relationships are going to be working in order to set the application forward.
Luna Dizon
Great. Thank you.
The next question comes from Jonathan: does Esmée have any expectations in terms of funded charities influencing systemic and policy change, alongside delivering their direct services to the communities they serve? And Michelle has added, is there a weighting applied?
Genevieve Ford-Saville
I can begin to answer this one. So, we have quite a few organisations that do both these things, and there's often a often organisations who may have started out doing frontline service delivery work, then want to do systemic change work, because they want to change the issue that's constantly affecting the people that they're supporting. That's quite common. And we don't fund frontline service delivery, we don't fund the direct one to one provision, but we do fund the policy work, and often the information, the learning that is being gathered from the one-to-one work is informing what needs to happen at the policy level? So, we absolutely find organisations that do both, but just not for the one-to-one work, the frontline service level, we only fund for the strategic policy, the policy work. So, I'd say, I hope that sort of answers the balance question as well, because we're only going to be funding one element of that, and we don't mind at all that you also did the other bit, but we wouldn't be funding that bit.
Luna Dizon
I thanks. Jen.
I know there's been a few questions about lived experience and how we use the DEI data standard. So, Rob asked a question around, well, basically, there are a few questions around this, but just how we assess that in the in the applications.
And what I would say is when, if you are applying, and you complete the DEI monitoring form, there will be space, the free text box, where you can talk a bit more about what this means to you, what that lived experience means to you, what how communities most affected by the issues that you're working in help to shape what it is that you do, and that's the thing that's really important to us, and actually, in terms of the numbers that we use, that is 75% I think, of the board that that's how we identify organisations as being led by, and that what we use to report on, on who, where we, who our funding is reaching. That, yeah. Jen, well, you might want to say a bit more about how that how this information is assessed. We will assess all of the information that's that's given to us in in the application for in the in your EOI and also in your DEI monitoring form. Jen, well, is there anything else you'd like to say?
Will Steadman
Only that, I suppose it depends also on the sector you're working in the context there, though, speaking from an environment sector perspective, we know that that sector is not as, like racially diverse as other sectors, although it is making progress. So we would view, you know, we would take that context into consideration, and we would look at the actions that you are taking to perhaps diversify your board or your staff team, or signing up to initiatives like the race report and other good work that's happening in the sector, but that, you know, we might take a slightly different approach when looking at it through A Fairer Future lens, for example.
Gina Crane
Can I just add something? Because there's so many questions, if that's okay, I guess this is thinking about diversity, equity and inclusion on three levels. So, it's thinking about it in terms of our strategy. So, there are areas of our strategy where we do want to prioritise organisations that are led by people with lived experience of the issue they're trying to address, and those are in our fairer future priorities, mostly. But we're also thinking about how we do that within other areas of the strategy, particularly in the environment sector, but we're sort of, that's not, doesn't apply across the whole portfolio. So those will be clear from the strategy. The other thing is, you, you as an organisation, how you define who, whether you're led by and we do have a bar by which we're measuring our progress as how equitable we are as a funder, and we use that, but you should also define it yourself. So if, for you being led by is half of your staff or half of your trustees, you will have a space to say that when you apply and when you submit your DEI data. But the main purpose of us collecting DEI data is to tackle bias amongst the funding sector and ourselves. For us to track our progress, so we have to have a bar. So, our bar that we've defined is 75% of the board and 50% of senior staff sharing a specific identity or characteristic. So that's something that we're using to measure our own progress, and that's why we're asking for that data. Thanks.
Luna Dizon
Thank you.
There is a question here about work that is primarily the responsibility of statutory authorities, which is one of our eligibility criteria. [Please also see 2.6 in the additional Q&A]
Will or Jen, you happy to just expand on it a little bit, please?
Genevieve Ford-Saville
I can't see the question, but I can, yeah, so we, as we said before, we want to maximise the impact that we make as a funder. So, we wouldn't be duplicating work that would be potentially funded by statutory sources. We're obviously interested in work that is potentially influencing statutory policy, but we're an independent funder, and the value in that is our is our independence. So, we're trying to work out where we can make the most impact with our funding. Does that address the question? I couldn't read the question on the I couldn't spot it in the Q&A, so not sure whether I've sorry.
Luna Dizon
That's great. Thank you.
I'm gonna go on to a question here from Stewart about whether we've seen competition in trust fundraising in the last five years, pre-pandemic, and if we've seen a difference in terms of how that's changed more recently, and how do you see trust fundraising in the future, both at Esmée and the wider charitable sector?
Gina Crane
I can, I mean, I can take that. I think it's no secret that there is increased competition for funding from funders who are open as Esmée is open to funding applications. And as I said, we're committed to being open. We're being really honest about the percentage of grants that we make that come from that open process versus relationships with organisations that we already have and those that we're seeking out that are new. It is really challenging for everyone. I think funding sources across all of our sectors, even the environment sector, where things have been much better in recent years, are now proving a real challenge, and that is a threat to the success of the work that we're funding, never mind the work that we're not funding. So we're really aware of this. We're talking to other funders, and I don't have solutions for this, but I think it is now like an existential threat to the impact of our strategy and our work. Sorry, to be depressing.
Luna Dizon
Thanks. Gina.
There's a question here from Liam about whether we welcome applications from charities earning over £1 million.
We don't have a specific criteria around like maximum turnover. But what I would say is that we are, when assessing applications for work, we're also considering what you know, like. Like Jen had said about what additional value that we might bring as a funder, and part of that is also about, you know, how well resourced that organisation is, and how likely they feel like they would be able to get funding for that, for their work. So, it's, it's not quite a simple, straightforward answer, but hopefully that helps a little bit. But we don't have a specific criteria around that.
I'm going to ask Tom's question about funding for academic research, and he's asked in relation to work for Our Natural World.
Will, it would be great if you could talk a little bit more about some of the ways that we this, where funding this kind of work, but very much, where we're being proactive. And it's not something that is open to applications.
Will Steadman
Yeah, so when it comes to research, I mean, we're not a research funder, so if it was kind of highly academic research looking at a particular area over a number of years, that is not something we would usually fund, saying that we, you know, there might be a bigger piece of work that we're funding where an element of that includes some research, and if that's the case, it would tend to be quite applied research, something that can kind of demonstrate something that then feeds into the wider success of the work, rather than being a standalone piece of academic research. So, hope that's clear.
Luna Dizon
Thanks, Will.
Busola asked whether we could spend a little bit more time talking about the types of work that we don't fund - so in our exclusions. They've given an example around our exclusion, around healthcare with a clinical basis, and they given an example of providing counselling for women affected by gender-based violence. Would this be considered not fundable?
Jen, are you able to take that one?
Genevieve Ford-Saville
Yeah. So, our website has a list of the things that we don't fund that includes health care with a clinical basis, and that's one of the reasons for that is because that work is funded by other specialist funders. It's not our expertise at all. But also because, as we said before, we're focused on policy change. And so, the work that's been described in this question, which is about counselling support, we would consider that to be very important, one to one, service delivery, support, which isn't something that we're focused on. So, our work is about systemic change, and on that basis, we ask what organisations that are involved in policy, policy, campaign and advocacy work. And as I said, we do fund organisations that do one-to-one support and kind of frontline service delivery. But what they're doing is they're doing that as well as the campaigning, policy and advocacy work, strategic change work, and we are funding them to do that strategic change bit, not the frontline service delivery bit.
Luna Dizon
Thanks, Jen. Again, we've only got a few minutes left, so I'm just going to check with the panel if, in case they've spotted a question they they'd like to answer with that remaining time again, I want to say we will answer the rest of these questions. We'll do our best to answer the rest of these questions after the webinar and send everybody a link to a page with the with the answers. And if there's anything that needs clarification, then please feel free to email us at the communications@Esmeefairbairn.org.uk email address whilst they give the panel a little bit more time to, okay, there you go. Gina, do you want to go with.
Gina Crane
I just wanted to ask so a question about social media accounts. Someone asked, would you check our social media accounts if you're checking our website when you're looking at our expression of interest?
The reason we check someone's website is usually just to confirm that their area of work is in line with our strategy. That's what we're looking to fund is organisations whose goals match our own. And we're just looking to check that they're they have some sort of track record in this area. They're knowledgeable in that area. We're very unlikely to try to trawl through your social media posts to work out what you're saying. That's not the purpose. We're just trying to work out, are you doing this kind of work? Is this what you usually do? That's it.
Luna Dizon
That's really helpful. Thanks, Gina. Are there any other questions that you've seen that you'd like to have answered before we wrap up?
Further resources
Luna Dizon
I'll share in the last couple of slides, just to highlight some of the additional resources that we have. We provide accessibility related support that includes access payments of up to £500, where there might be something in our application process that is a barrier to you applying. So that might be extra staff support. It might be like BSL interpretation that you need, or, you know, there it's, there's the link is in the in the slide, so you can learn a little bit more about that. We do also have a series of online FAQs, which we try to keep up to date based on webinars and things like questions that we're getting.
Like many of the funders, we publish our funding on 360Giving and you can use their GrantNav tool, which is a really great way to find funders of different types of work. And you can also search through our funding to see examples of organisations that we've funded as well. But I would say that, yeah, even just beyond, like us, it's a really useful tool for people to use, and we do also have links to previous webinars that we held that give more specific information about each of our three strategic aims, I'm just going to stop sharing, and I think we will just wrap up there. Now. Gina, do you want to say final words?
Gina Crane
Yeah, just want to say thank you Luna. Thank you, Nana and Altan, for doing our interpretation, but thanks most of all to everyone for attending. I realise it can be frustrating if you have one question that isn't answered by the end, but you have asked it, and we will pass around a big list of questions. We will come up with answers to those, and we will share them on our website and share this with you as an attendee, along with a recording of this, thank you so much to everyone for coming.
Bye everyone, bye.