Additional Q&A

We have five long-term outcomes under Children and Young People’s rights under A Fairer Future; three of which are currently open for applications::

• Fewer young people, particularly those with SEND and/or experiencing racial inequity, in contact with the youth justice system, and excluded from school.
• Children’s rights are better met, with specialist legal support and better protection for marginalised groups.
• Young people (14-25) with experience of injustice create and lead positive change, and shape decision making.

We suggest reading the detailed guidance for this priority to understand whether your work is a good fit. It includes the types of work and approaches we're looking to support as well as case studies.

I'm sorry, but it doesn't sound likely. See our response above for more on what we're supporting in our 'children and young people's rights' funding priority.

We don't have a preference in terms of projects focusing on one of our priorities. In general, your application will be stronger if it's a really strong fit to the guidance we have for one priority rather than being lightly connected to multiple priorities.

The application would have to be a strong fit to our priorities under Creative, Confident Communities, and align with the principles we apply to applications - these can be found in detailed guidance. Also worth noting that we have an exclusion around academic research unless it can demonstrate practical outcomes.

We don't fund a lot of research, but we do fund organisations that are focused on advancing lived-experience and community-led research such as The Lambeth Community Research Network and People's Voice Media.

We recognise that all of you are located in a place as you develop and deliver your work. The work that we want to support under A Fairer Future is that which has an impact beyond any given geographic community or location. Within Creative, Confident Communities, we support work which is placed-based, and the community of that place is developing and leading the work.

Yes. Do take a look at our detailed guidance for the priority(ies) you're interested in.

No, It would not.

We can do both but would look for grassroots organisations to be working closely with other organisations in the community.

Evidence of meaningful, established connections to others in the sector you're working in, especially when it's related to shared policy work, advocacy and communications, is important. Evidence of working across sectors to create solidarity and movements for change on shared issues is also really valuable (to use a real life example - work on eradicating NRFP that encompasses migration justice organisations and child poverty organisations working together). How formal those partnerships are varies and we will look at the structure of collaborations on a case by case basis as we assess applications.

There are no fixed guidelines on a proportion of an organisation’s turnover that we would fund, as grants are assessed on a case-by-case basis based on need, impact, and fit with our priorities.

We are currently co-designing the future of this outcome with our Involving Young People Collective, but hope to be opening to applications in the Summer. We'll share more on our website shortly.

We tend not to support work that is purely in schools and is part of the curriculum. We will consider work that has broader ambitions such as having an impact on the community. An example is Sistema Scotland, which is an in-school programme of music education. But its ambition is to have a much wider impact on the whole community. If it's a group of schools working together with the aim of creating a different model of practice that then has a community effect - has an effect wider than just with the children that you're working with - then we will consider it. We expect organisations working with children, young people and vulnerable adults to have strong and robust safeguarding policies and procedures in place which we would look at as part of the assessment.

We try to attend sector events which are relevant to our strategy, and will prioritise events involving organisations or people we fund. however, we have to say no to lots of different invitations people kindly send us, just due to lack of time.

With regard to speaking at events, we do, but as above, we have limited capacity to do everything we'd like to.

We're sorry but we don't think this would fit under our strategy.

Our early years outcome - a shift in early years provision to ensure that young children (0-5) and their families facing barriers have quality support - is closed to applications at the moment. We are conducting internal work looking at this area and it's difficult to be more precise, but we will share updates as soon as we can.

We don't have a timeline for reopening to applications for this outcome and it is unlikely that we will do in the forseeable future. However, if plans change, we'll announce it on our website and newsletter.

The work being community-led or owned is a really important part of the Creative, Confident Communities strategy. We recognise that organisations will be at different points on a journey on this and are happy to support work which is embedding community voice more strongly. However it is unlikely we would fund an organisation which is starting from scratch or who couldn't show some track record in community voice and leadership.

No, our approach is the same.

We don't fund service delivery alone, but we do support work that delivers services and then uses insight from that in advocacy and lobbying work.

It would depend on how this work fit our priorities and outcomes. We recommend reading the detailed guidance for our children and young people's rights priority, which shares more information about the types of work we're focusing our support on.

We have three long-term outcomes which we would like to see a strong alignment to:

• Migrants have improved access to legal help to exercise their rights.
• Legislation and support ensure that migrants' rights are protected, and reflects their needs.
• Public understanding and discussion of migration issues is better informed, particularly by those with lived experience of the migration system.

We recommend reading the detailed guidance for our migrant justice priority and seeing the case studies.

Yes, however we would expect to see a robust plan for how these qualifications would support young people and would be aligned with our Children and Young Peoples Rights long term outcomes which you can read more about on the detailed guidance section of our website. We would also want to see how this work would link to and support shifts in policy, practice and behaviour.

Yes, we would fund feasibility/pilot projects. We want to pilot, test, disrupt, support new ideas or organisations that we think will be important in terms of meeting our strategic aims, especially projects with the potential for wider influence or spread.

We are not a funder of service delivery. Some of the organisations funded in a Fairer Future do provide frontline services, however where we support those organisations it is for their strategic change work and we will be assessing them based on the organisation’s track record and capacity for leading on and shaping systemic change – e.g. we’ll look for evidence influencing and creating change in policies or decision making. We will also be considering how the organisation are gathering intelligence from their service delivery to inform their strategic change work. E.g. how are they ensuring the voices of lived experience are embedded in the work in a meaningful, trauma aware, non-exploitative way and are leading and shaping priorities for policy advocacy.

Migrant Voice is funded under our strategy for A Fairer Future, which does not need to be place-based. However, work in our Creative, Confident Communities strategy is place-based.

We recognise how important delivery is however under that particular outcome we prioritise work which is led by young people and is able to demonstrate a strong youth led approach to the work.

We wouldn’t say you need an established organisational track record of systemic change in order to be credible at EOI stage. For organisations earlier in their journey, we would look at the ambition and potential of the work, alongside the track record, skills, expertise and connections of the people leading it. What matters is whether the proposal is convincingly aligned with the outcome and shows real potential for wider influence or systemic change - not just service delivery alone.

We know that localised work delivered by smaller organisations can be powerful. If it can set a bar / is exemplary for peatland, farming, fishing communities it may be worth submitting an expression of interest. Most of the smaller scale projects applications come in under our space for nature priority. The first outcome under space for nature is really about scale, but look at the second outcome - if the work is genuinely for community that will improve access to nature and natural spaces it may be worthwhile submitting an expression of interest.

No, we look at the impact of your work to date and how you will deliver your plans for the future.

We would want to see some existing track record of work at a systemic change level. If that track record - and the relevant partnerships and membership of sector collaborations to support it - has yet to be developed within an organisation then we are less likely to be interested in funding the work.

We wouldn’t expect you to necessarily apply under an arts-focused priority if another priority is a stronger fit for the work you’re asking us to support. It’s absolutely fine if your work fits across more than one priority - we’d just encourage you to apply under the one that is the best match, and to show clearly how the work aligns with that priority. In general, applications are stronger when they are a strong fit to one priority rather than lightly connected to several.

There is no procedure linked to this. We have wide conversations, and it may be, for instance, that another funder flags a new organisation to the sector that is interesting. If you work in partnership with a current Esmée grantee, it may be an idea to mention it in your expression of interest - if they are happy with that.

We do fund contributions to existing staff costs where they will be undertaking work on the proposed project.

Unfortunately, due to capacity reasons we are unable to have pre-EOI calls.

It is very much on a case by case basis, and we fund organisations working across different geographic scales in all parts of the UK.

Absolutely.

It depends on the activities planned. If they link back to agroecology then we are looking for work at scale. We would need to see that the network is solid and that the lead organisation has either a track record across the network, or if new work is planned by a network that the lead organisation is the right one to take the lead and that network members support that.

Yes. Whilst most organisations we give grants to are charities, we also fund other types of organisations – including Community Interest Companies, and companies limited by guarantee – as long as the work they are doing with our grant funding is legally charitable.

We don't organisations with a turnover of less than £100,000 (as reflected in the latest set of accounts). This should include all your income, including grants. For more information, see our FAQ on how we assess turnover.

Based on what you've shared, it's unlikely to be a strong fit to our funding priorities. In our A Fairer Future strategy, we have 5 funding priorities with multiple outcomes that we are focusing our support on. We also have additional guidance for each of these outcomes to show the types of work we're interested in supporting. You can find our detailed guidance here.

There is no fixed time frame. Whilst most organisations we give grants to are charities, we do fund other types of organisations – including Community Interest Companies (CICs), and companies limited by guarantee – as long as the work they are doing with our grant funding is  legally charitable. We will look at organisations track record and how best placed they are to deliver the work. For those who may not have a track record as an organisation is the people who are involved in it: the leadership – what sort of track record have they had, what skills, expertise and connections are they bringing to that organisation.

We use the Charity Commission's definition of this under the list of charitable purposes. In terms of our support, we would not provide unrestricted costs funding to an organisation whose charitable mission is to promote religion, as the advancement of religion is one of our exclusions (work we do not fund). However, we recognise that many religious organisations play important roles in their communities, supporting people of all faiths and none. We would therefore consider applications for projects or restricted costs from these organisations, provided they were open to all and did not proselytise as part of the requested programme. We would explore accessibility, targeting and the role of the organisation within the community during the assessment.

No. We fund organisations that we believe will make the greatest long-term impact and change systems for the future - work that has the potential for wider influence or spread; takes a collaborative approach; and centres lived experience, justice and equity.

Yes. Do check our guidance to understand whether we are a good fit.

Yes, we do. Examples or organisations we've funded include Civic Power Fund and Baobab Foundation.

Yes, our guidance around this is below:

• If the funding is for the same project, please submit an Expression of Interest for social investment in the first instance.
• If the funding is for different or unrelated projects, please submit separate Expressions of Interest for each type of funding.

Yes, we can consider applications made as part of a collaboration, including where partner organisations are currently receiving funding from us. What matters is that the collaboration is a strong fit for the priority, that one organisation applies as the lead and meets our minimum eligibility criteria, and that the partners’ roles are clear. For higher education institutions, proposals may be considered, although they are relatively rare, and we would not fund work that is primarily a statutory responsibility.

Do also take a look at questions in our FAQ about holding more than one grant and applications from collaborations.

Regarding turnover and eligibility, we require the lead organisation to meet our eligibility criteria so we would not consider a combined turnover.

No, you would not have to wait.

If you have an active grant with us, we'd suggest getting in touch with your Funding Manager before the end of your grant (bearing in mind it can take 6 to 8 months for the full application process). But all funding requests will have to submit an EOI.

No, unless specified, we accept applications on a rolling basis with no deadline.

Yes, you can but it counts towards the 300 word limit. we look at your website as part of the assessment process regardless.

Thanks for these questions - we will look into sharing more about this in due course. Hopefully, some of the advice that the panelists gave on what makes a good EOI were helpful.

Unfortunately, we cannot provide detailed feedback on unsuccessful EOIs. Most applications turned down at this stage are because we don't think it's a strong enough fit to our strategy (for this, we will be looking at the relevant long-term outcomes to the priorities they've applied under), or because it's not the sort of impact we're looking for. On impact, we share more about the types of work we're interested in on this page about how we make decisions.

Yes, they can be combined.

Yes, we understand DEI to include economic inequality and poverty. You can find more information about how we classify our data using the DEI Data Standard here.

At the EOI stage, we'll ask you to complete a DEI monitoring form, which you can learn more about here. It's also worth taking a look at our page on how we make decisions as it explains what we're looking for in terms of governance/leadership as well as DEI, and what this looks like in the application process. For some of our priorities, we are prioritising work by organisations that are led by the communities most impacted by the issues (this is particularly the case for priorities in A Fairer Future). In general though, we assess applications on a case by case basis, taking into consideration why they might be best placed to do the work and how well they are connected to their communities and/or those who face barriers due to systemic inequity.

For our priorities in Our Natural World, we're interested in applications from organisations that are led by communities facing inequity and we're particularly keen to see leaders or organisations with a profile for wider influence. For organisations that are not 'led by and for', we will want to know about DEI in executive and board and evidenced pathways of change. However, this is likely to be part of the conversation at the Assessment Call stage.

For our priorities in Creative, Confident Communities, we are interested in work where the principles of fairness and equity are embedded in the approach, and the work engages and represents the diverse communities in a place.