This page has the transcript of the webinar held on 3 June 2026. 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 download the presentation
Speakers
- Genevieve Ford-Saville, Funding Manager - A Fairer Future
- Jenny Dadd, Funding Manager Lead - Our Natural World
- Rosa Sulley, Funding Manager Lead - Creative, Confident Communities
- Luna Dizon, Communications Lead (Q&A support)
Welcome and housekeeping
Genevieve Ford-Saville:
Good afternoon, everyone. And welcome to this pre-application Q&A! Okay. We're really pleased so many of you could join us today, and we hope you're going to find this session useful.
I'm Genevieve, I'm a Funding Manager for A Fair Future, and I'm here with my colleagues Rosa, who's here in the room with me, and Jenny, who's online. And we're going to spend the next half an hour sharing information about our grant funding, and what we're looking for, and how we make decisions.
We'll use the rest of the time to answer questions, which Luna is going to facilitate for us.
And our grants team colleagues Tom and Salma, Larissa and Hikmat are on hand in the background to help with your Q&As. And Gillian's also here, so if you've got questions about our social investment programme, you are welcome to ask them.
For accessibility, we have Nana and Altan. They'll be providing BSL interpretation and interpreting what is spoken live. To make sure they're always on view, we recommend keeping your view on gallery view - including when the slides are being shared.
We've also asked speakers to describe themselves and where they are, and I will start.
I am a middle-aged, femme-presenting woman, got brown skin, I've got brown eyes and dark brown hair. And I'm seated in a meeting room right now. I'm wearing a dark blue jacket, put a pearl necklace on and on my head is an Alice band with some blue and white flowers on it.
Rosa, would you like to describe yourself?
Rosa Sulley:
Rosa, would you like to describe yourself? Yes, afternoon, everyone. I'm Rosa Sulley. I'm a short, woman with blonde hair, got my hair up today in a ponytail. I'm wearing a black polo neck shirt and some big gold earrings. I will hand to Luna.
Luna Dizon:
So, I'm Luna, I'm the comms lead at Esmée. I am a short, Southeast Asian woman with long black hair, and I've got, yellow tasselly earrings on. I'll pass back on to Jen.
Jenny Dadd:
Hiya, shall I do my description as well, Luna?
Luna Dizon:
Yes, sorry.
Jenny Dadd:
That's alright. So I'm a white middle-aged woman, I'm of middling height and middling shoe size as well, and I live in the Midlands, so all in all, I'm quite middling. Today I'm working from home, I'm wearing a fuchsia pink, t-shirt.
And I'm in a little room, and it's got really boring white walls, so I've covered up loads of it with… of that whiteness, with things blue-tacked on the walls. So, yeah, good to… good to see you, and I work in the funding team at Esmée on our environment work.
Genevieve Ford-Saville:
Thank you, Jenny.
So, just a few practicalities before we start. Live captioning is available for this session. You need to click the closed captions button at the bottom of this window to see them.
You can post questions at any point using our Q&A facility, which you can find at the bottom of your screens. And I'd encourage you to vote for questions submitted by another participant if you would really like to see that question asked. You can do that by clicking on the thumbs up icon next to the question.
As mentioned, we will have colleagues typing responses to questions in the Q&A. We're going to try and answer as many questions as possible, and we'll give priority to questions that are upvoted. If there are questions we miss, we'll answer them afterwards.
We'll also be using this to update our FAQs on our website. And you might find the answer to the question you have is already there.
We're expecting lots of questions. Please don't worry if you miss anything. We are recording this webinar, and we're going to share the transcript with any additional questions that we cover on our website as soon as we can after the webinar.
So, as they say at the start very unboxing video, let's get into it!
Plan for the session
Genevieve Ford-Saville:
Welcome everyone again. It is really great to have you with us. And thank you for taking the time out of your day to join us.
We started holding pre-application Q&A webinars because we know that you want to ask us questions before you apply to Esmée. And we can't speak to you all individually. We've got, I think, 400 people who signed up for this webinar. But we hope this is a good way to answer as many of your questions as possible.
We make changes after every webinar based on your feedback, and we will ask you for your thoughts following this one, too.
So, here's our plan for today's session. We're going to have a quick introduction to Esmée. Then we're going to talk through what we don't fund, and what we look for. Then we'll unpack a bit of information about how we make decisions. We will walk through our application process with you. And then I'll move on to the Q&A section of the webinar, and at the end, we'll wrap up with a little bit of further information and resources that you can look to.
We are aware that we need to strike a tricky balance today. We want to be more transparent, but we also need to be absolutely honest. We aren't holding this webinar to encourage more applications, as we're going to continue to make a similar number of grants going forward. But we know that need is rising in our sectors, and as a funder that is open, we have been receiving more applications.
So, what we want to do is to save people from spending precious time applying to us when it isn't likely we're going to fund the work. So, we hope this webinar will help you to decide 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 the main question for many of you is, when do you find my work? And I'm sorry, but the answer to most is going to be no.
We won't be able to give you one-to-one advice or feedback about your own organisation in this session. But we hope to give you a clearer picture of what we are looking for, of how we make decisions, and how we use our application process to do that.
I'm gonna hand over now to Jenny.
Overview of Esmée's strategy and funding priorities
Jenny Dadd:
Okay, well, at Esmée, we're best known, and the reason that most of you will be here is to learn about our philanthropy through making grants. This is where the money goes out of the Esmée Door to support our funding partners, or grantees, and the great work that they do.
Our grant-making pivots around three main aims. Our Natural World centres on our environment work, A Fairer Future has a focus on social justice, and Creative, Confident Communities is about strengthening bonds within communities. This is the basis of our strategy, which is scheduled to run until the end of 2027.
Grants will always be core to what we do, but we want to reach beyond that. We refer to this as our tools in the box that are available to us. The latter half of the slide refers to that work and some of the interventions that we can make.
Okay, social investment. So, this webinar really has a focus on pre-application towards grants, but I also want to mention another of our tools in the box, which is also referenced at the end of the last slide. That's social investment.
Now, this is repayable finance, so it is different from grants when the money goes out of the Esmée door to be used for great work. Social investment is repayable finance, such as loans, equity, community shares, and bonds. The money goes out of the Esmée door, but if things go well, it returns sometime later to be used in a revolving fund.
Organisations often use it to increase their sustainability and impact, for example, purchasing an asset or developing a product. It's worth noting that whilst we don't offer grant funding for capital costs, we can offer social investment for capital costs.
The best place to go for more information and tools to help on navigating the world of social investment landscape is called Good Finance. We will pop a link into the chat.
I realise this can all sound a bit daunting, but in the social investment team, they work with applicants to find the type and terms of the investment that will best help them to achieve their mission. This can include considering a blend of grants and social investment funding. A link to more information and how to apply is also in the chat. There are also examples of organisations and projects that we have invested in.
Okay, so this slide is designed to show information about the numbers at Esmée. Our budget is not the deepest of pockets compared to, say, the lottery, but we are amongst the larger of the trusts and foundations.
Last year, we made 24,241 grants across our 13 funding priorities. When we refer to core or unrestricted, this means supporting an organisation to deliver its work in a broad context. Esmée is quite unusual amongst funders in offering this backbone type of support.
We also support organisations with project funding, which tends to have tight outcomes and over a defined period of time. We made 94 grants last year to organisations we have not previously worked with. 61% of grant support was to organisations that we have worked with previously.
This is quite a busy slide, but it's important to cross-reference against some of the information in it to see if your organisation or the work that you are planning will be a match for Esmée.
Now, most of the organisations that we fund are registered charities, but we do support organisations working for charitable purposes that are not registered charities. This includes different types of organisations set up through their constitution or founding document. For instance, community interest companies or cooperatives.
Now, as you would expect, if an organisation is not a charity, we will look carefully into any weighting or potential towards personal gain and benefit. To note that we can only support organisations with unrestricted funding if they are a registered charity.
I'm going to hand over to my colleague, Rosa now.
What we don't fund and what we're looking for
Rosa Sulley:
Thanks, Jenny.
So, what do we fund? We fund work that fits our strategy.
This slide has an overview of our strategy and shows our strategic aims and 13 funding priorities. Our Natural World and A Fair Future each have five priorities, and Creative, Confident Communities has three.
For our priorities in Creative, Confident Communities, we mean communities that are connected by a place. Within each priority, we have identified longer-term outcomes that we are working towards. And the example on the next slide is for community-led art and creativity, which is one of the priorities in Creative, Confident Communities.
At the top, you can see three long-term outcomes. So, when assessing strategic fit, we consider whether the work would contribute towards these outcomes.
There is additional guidance to help describe the types of work that we're looking to support. In the slide, you can see the guidance to the first long-term outcome at the bottom. We strongly recommend reading the guidance relevant to the areas that you're interested in. There's also lots of case studies of work that we've funded.
We don't have a preference in terms of work focusing on one of our priorities, or work that is across more than one priority. We want applicants to tell us about their plans and how they align with our priorities.
In general, though, your application will be stronger if it's a really strong fit to the guidance for one priority, rather than just being lightly connected to multiple.
Details of our strategy, including a full text version for screen readers, are on the website. You may also find it helpful to look at grants that we've made before, and the time of work that we've supported in your sector, or within the relevant priority to you. We list all of our grants on GrantNav, which is linked to from the relevant pages on our website, and it's also in our annual report.
So, as well as a strong fit to our strategy, we're looking for work that is ambitious and creating systemic change. That's really important to us.
Work which has a wider influence or spread. Work that centres lived experience, justice, and equity. Work that takes a collaborative approach. And strong governance and leadership.
A good example of this is the We're Right Here campaign that you would have seen in the video at the beginning, which we funded under our Creative, Confident Community Strategy.
We're Right Here is an ambitious collective of national organisations and grassroots community leaders who are working together to advocate for more powers to be devolved to communities in England. It is an interesting and unique example of communities, think tanks, and national membership organisations all jointly leading a policy campaign.
As a result of their successful campaigning and influencing, the government's new devolution bill includes a new community right to buy. This will make it easier for communities to take on valued community assets like local buildings and local spaces into community ownership, which is a key aim of our strategy.
I'll now hand over to Jen.
What we consider when making decisions and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Genevieve Ford-Saville:
So, how do we make decisions? We have to make judgments.
When assessing applications, we are considering a range of factors based on how strong a fit the work is to our strategy, and how well-placed the organisation is to do the work.
The link on this slide takes you to our page on how we make decisions, with information on what we look for, and how we do this within the application process. And as a reminder, these are all things that we're thinking of from our point of view. So it's things that we've prioritised in the context of our strategy, other work that we're funding, and our own plans.
One of the things we consider when we're assessing applications is diversity, equity, and inclusion, which we call DEI, for short.
In our application process, applicants will be asked at each stage of assessment about DEI. First, you'll be asked, can you submit an EOI to complete a monitoring form? And the form is based on what's called the DEI data standard.
The DEI data standard collects organisation-level information on whether an organisation is working for and led by a group, sharing a single characteristic. It isn't a way to capture the breadth of how DEI is present or not in an organisation. It's more of a way for us as a funder to understand high-level data on DEI and the organisations who are applying to us.
We appreciate that there can be nuance in the way in which diversity shows up in organisations, and how you might be living equity and inclusion. If we progress an EOI to having an assessment call, this is an opportunity for us to explore in more detail your approach to DEI.
So, the information we gather on DEI, what do we do with it? We use it to help us understand who our funding is reaching, as well as identify and address structural inequity in our funding. We use it as part of our assessment applications. I'm interested in how people and communities are most impacted, by the issues that shape our work.
In some areas of our strategy, we will be prioritising applications from organisations that are led by people with lived experience of the issues they're working on. This is highlighted in our guidance, and is relevant for a number of our A Fairer Future priorities in particular.
For example, within our arts and creativity making change priority, our work on a more representative cultural workforce is focused on disabled people and communities experiencing racial inequality. And we are prioritising applications from organisations led by those groups.
We recognise not all organisations we fund will be led by those with lived experience of the issue they're working on. The DEI is still an important part of our assessment for those organisations. We'd be looking to understand their… an organisation's approach to DEI; how the organisation represents the communities it works with, how it ensures equity in its work, and what mechanisms are in place to ensure that voices that are most likely to be excluded are heard and platformed?
To give you an example of an organisation we're working with in the A Fair Future programme, I'd highlight Migrant Voice, who are a migrant-led membership organisation, who work to platform migrant voices as a collective of experts. Migrant Voice also provides training and upskilling to empower individuals with lived experience to influence the media for it to be more balanced interpretation of them.
Migrant Voice members are supporting to speak out for their rights, to mobilise on collective actions, demand solutions to the issues that are affecting them.
And alongside that upskilling and platforming work, Migrant Voice works with media outlets and publications to create systemic change in the media sector, and in turn, influence public understanding of migration. And to do this, they have hubs in London and Birmingham and Glasgow, which act as a basis for their regional campaigning and mobilisation work.
So, it kind of gives you an example of the sort of things we're talking about.
We do know that our eligibility criteria are often an unfair barrier for organisations that are led by lived experience, for communities experiencing racial inequality, or that are disability-led. As often, organisations may be smaller.
In our experience, we don't think that our open application process is usually the best way to fund smaller or really grassroots organisations. Instead, we focus on finding and funding those organisations proactively.
For instance, by expanding and strengthening our networks through targeted referrals and monitoring the sector. We will also fund, through specialist partnerships with organisations that have relevant reach and expertise. So, for example, we've partnered with Baobab Foundation, with Civic Power Fund, and with Comic Relief’s Global Majority Fund.
And based on the DEI data we've gathered about where funding is reaching. Last year, around half of the grants we made went to organisations led by people who face structural inequality as a result of their identity or lived experience.
There's more information about the information that we gather on DEI and about our DEI approach on our website, and I think Luna was sharing a link in the chat if you want to have a deeper look at that.
And I'm going to hand you over now to Luna.
Application process, application numbers and tips
Luna Dizon:
Hi, thank you. So to… to give our panelists a little bit of a break, we… we are going to, share a video of sharing… talking about the three stages of the application process.
How to apply for funding video:
Before applying, check if we're the right funder for you. Take our quiz to check you meet our minimum eligibility criteria. We'll ask you quick questions about your work and organisation. And it takes just 5 minutes.
If you're eligible to apply, read our guidance about the funding priorities relevant to your work. It has more detail about the long-term outcomes we're focusing our support on. We use this to guide our assessment on strategic fit.
Here's the guidance for one of our priorities, as an example. You can also find information on each stage of the application process. So you know what to expect, and how we make decisions. This will help you understand whether it's worth investing time in applying to us.
If you decide to apply, there are 3 stages.
1. Let us know about your work by submitting an expression of interest. Use this to tell us briefly about what do you want Esmée to support, The impact you're aiming for. And how it contributes to our strategy. And, your organisation. How you're well placed to do the work. You'll have 300 words.
We will also look at your website to learn more about your organisation and impact so far. You'll hear from us within 4-6 weeks to let you know if we'll take your application further.
2. If we think your work is a potential match, we'll invite you for an assessment call to learn more. It's also a chance for you to learn more about us as a funder and our strategy.
The call will cover fit to our strategy and impact you're aiming for. Your approach, and your track record.
The assessment call will help us understand how likely it is we will fund your work. We'll let you know the outcome within 2 weeks.
If we think your application is a strong fit for our funding, we will invite you to submit a proposal. With additional information we may need.
If you already have a strategy document and business plan. Covering the work you're applying for, you can use these instead of our proposal form.
We may have a follow-up call to discuss anything we need more detail on. We'll then carry out a detailed assessment. We aim to give you a decision within 3 months of receiving your proposal.
Before applying…
Jenny Dadd:
Just to talk you through, behind the scenes, and it will repeat some of that information that you've seen in the short film, we use the expression of interest as a basic screening process. So that will check against our eligibility criteria and whether the work plan is a good fit to our long-term outcomes.
We will take a look at the websites that you have, and any other publicly available information, so through the Charity Commission. Or other spaces to learn about your work and impact.
Each of the teams at Esmée has a weekly meeting, so that's in our environment work, social justice, or communities, and that will consider the potential match to our strategy, and the match to other work that we are funding.
For those that look like a really good potential match, we'll have an expression of interest assessment call, which is a chance for us to explore the application further. You can see more detail about each stage of the application process on our website.
So, there's a lot of graphics in here, it's quite a busy slide. You won't be surprised to know that we receive a lot of expressions of interest. That's been the first step in our process. So, 1,354 in 2025.
As well as our open application process, we also proactively invite a smaller number to apply. Now, most of these are follow-on or continuation grants. And our others are to organisations we have learned about through our work and think could be a strong fit for our strategy.
Here you can see how many applications we progress at each stage of the application process. These numbers are for last year, but it's worth noting that this year, we are already seeing a very big increase in expressions of interest compared to the same period last year. So I'm afraid to say that it's likely that success rates will be lower for 2026.
Hopefully, though, this infographic gives you a good idea of our process.
In 2025, 11% of expressions of interest that came through our open application process were invited for an assessment call. Most applications turn down the expression of interest stage are due to them not being a strong enough match to our strategy and its objectives.
So, we really do recommend looking at the long-term outcomes for the priority you're interested in, as that's where we look very closely when we're making our assessments.
Half of the applications who had an assessment call were invited to submit a full proposal. And of these, 91% received a grant. This number is high because we focus on inviting only those applications which are a really strong fit to our strategy.
For the expressions of interest that we invite, success rates are much higher. We're, of course, mindful of bias here.
And to be clear, we ask the same questions and use the same assessment process for expressions of interest we invite, and those that we don't. But our existing knowledge and learning will obviously factor into our decisions.
I'm going to pass back over to Rosa now.
Rosa Sulley:
Thanks, Jenny.
So how do you get on our radar? And we know that this is a question that a lot of you will be asking. It's really important to Esmée to remain open to applications, as well as supporting organisations that are already known to us, and making new connections ourselves.
There are two ways that we learn about organisations' work. One is by us proactively seeking them out. We attend sector and community events, we carry out research into our areas of work, and we follow up on recommendations from people that we fund or work with.
The other way is through people submitting an expression of interest on our website.
In 2025, 30% of grants we made were given to organisations that we hadn't previously funded, and most of these came in via the open application process. So, if you do want to get on our radar, the best way is to put in an expression of interest.
We often get asked, what makes a good EOI? So, before we go into the Q&A, we just wanted to share what we think.
So, for me, it sounds obvious, but being really clear and specific on what you're asking us to fund is really helpful in those 300 words, and we know that it's short, but that is really helpful, and being really clear on what this will help unlock and enable. This is particularly helpful if our funding is part of a larger funding mix.
I'll hand to Jen to get her advice.
Genevieve Ford-Saville:
Thanks, Rosa. So, I'd highlight that, for me, a good expression of interest is one that's written in plain language and expresses the heart and soul of what you do. As well as telling us clearly, as Rosa was saying, what you're asking us to help achieve.
Sometimes applications can be written by someone that you might have hired, because they have specific fundraising expertise, or they could have been written by a GPT that you have trained to write in your style.
I would say… Whilst those can be very sophisticated. Sometimes what they lack is authenticity. And I'd say, don't escape to bat for self, and trust that you know your work best. And that you can express it well and authentically.
Jenny, what are your thoughts on what makes a good EOI?
Jenny Dadd:
Yeah, I think building on what you said, Jen, really, I… I think we… a good EOI, because remember that we are sat at our desks, either at home or in London. We're not in the midst of what you are doing, what you're seeing, and what you need to take action on.
So, you really need to put us in your shoes, so that we can understand. And that may feel to you like you're stating the obvious. But it won't be, because we won't necessarily know your places, or your situation, or what you're up against.
So, really put us in your shoes, I'd say, is a good starter for then. But definitely keep your words simple, avoid any jargon, particularly in the environment work, we get a lot of that. It may not be, a specialist that picks up your expression of interest in the first instance, so you really need to capture the interest.
Q&A
Luna Dizon:
Thanks, Jenny. So we will move on to the Q&A now, but just as, just to expand a little bit on what makes a good EOI, there's somebody who's asked a question about guidance on 300 words.
It's not… it's not lots and lots of space to be able to put all of those things in, so how… I guess, how… what… what are your thoughts on… on… on how to manage that? And given that we also will look at, an organisation's website, their annual report or impact report, and these are all things that we're also using to help us understand, learn more about an organisation and their track record. So, yeah, any further guidance you would offer to how to focus the EOI?
Rosa Sulley:
Yeah, I mean, we know it is really short, but that is intentional, both to make it accessible, but also so that, you know, we have a huge number that we need to read.
And I think I would say you can be really strategic and use that space widely. As Luna said, and we've covered already, we'll look at your website, we'll look at impact reports, so you don't need to sort of tell us a lot of detail that we would really easily find on your homepage, on your website. And actually, also, you don't need to worry about it being really long and complex sentences and prose. Actually, sometimes really short, snappy bullet points that you can get across a lot of information in a short number of words is really powerful. We're here to gather the key information, not to read, literature.
Genevieve Ford-Saville:
I think that's true, and I think maybe picking up on something Jenny was saying, which is about, when you're in the work, it's obviously what you're sort of bathed in all the time, but to us, it may not be what we're so used to, so maybe it could be helpful to ask someone else who doesn't know so much about your work, someone in your personal life, to read it for you, and read back to you what they're getting from it, to tell you what they can learn from it, and see whether what they reflect back to you is what you were intending to land.
Because sometimes giving it to someone who doesn't know your world can throw up stuff that might be obvious to you, but less obvious to other people.
Luna Dizon:
Good tip. Cool, so we will move on to the questions, and I know some of you, thank you for those of you who submitted questions in advance. We'll try and answer those as well.
But I'm gonna go to Georgina's question first. So, Georgina's asked about, notice that bigger grants that we give, often are made to other grant-making organisations that fund in their local communities. So, the question is, do we also make large grants to individual organisations that operate nationally, but at a grassroots level? Or do you recommend requesting a smaller grant for a single project?
So, just to give a bit of context, we have given grants of… maybe a million, or, like, those are… I would agree that they tend to be for dedicated grant making, so we… and it's not just to place-based grant funders, so the example that you gave earlier of Baobab Foundation, I think that's really, yeah, I guess the organisations that we're not going… that will have better reach and expertise.
That's the… that's kind of how we think about things, but yeah, is there… does anybody want to take that question about large grants, and I'm not sure what you mean by large grants. Generally, like, on average, our grants are about, £250,000. It was in the… it was in the slides, but, yeah, any… any additional thoughts on that question from the panel?
Jenny Dadd:
I think it's, it's important to flag that expertise, and that may be localised expertise, that may be subject expertise.
I work in the environment sector, but I particularly alight on our Museums Association work in partnership with the Museums Association. Obviously, they know museums inside out and back to front, so it's important that we do continue to support museums, but our most effective way of doing that is via the Museums Association.
So, you will find across all of our areas of interest that we… we can and do make grants to people who have the more specialised knowledge, or the more localised knowledge. I think that's the main thrust of that type of grant giving.
Rosa Sulley:
I think the only thing I would just add is we don't have any preset, you know, criteria. We don't sort of say we'll only give a grant of X amount to X type of organisation. We take each organisation in its own right, and to deal with each application on a case-by-case basis.
So, we have examples across the portfolio in Esmée where we've funded larger grants to an individual local organisation, smaller grants to big national organisations. It looks really varied, and we don't have any kind of preset criteria on that.
Luna Dizon:
Thank you. I'm going to… we had a few questions sent in advance from Phil, that all kind of relate to the sort of impact that we're seeing and how… how organisations can demonstrate that.
So I'm just going to read out a few of those questions, if that's okay. So, could you share examples of smaller, community-led organisations going beyond service delivery and demonstrating wider influence at the EOI stage?
Second question is, how do you assess applications when direct delivery is the main route into systemic change?
Third question, what sort of scale or reach are you looking for, particularly in terms of organisations led by and for racialised or migrant communities?
Let's start with those three.
Rosa Sulley:
Yeah, so I can take the first one, which was about community-led, smaller community-led organisations being able to demonstrate their wider influence, and kind of what would that look like in practice at an EOI stage.
So obviously, this… this could show up in a number of different ways, but an example of that, of what a sort of good example might look like, is a small community-led organisation working in close partnership with others. So, for example, the local authority in its place, or working with other cross-sector partners, like other anchor organisations, or other sector partners.
And what we would want to see is evidence of what working that way, so working in partnership, what has that changed, and what has that led to? So that might be local policy shift, it might be a clear evidence of influence in local decision making. Essentially, we're looking to support work that can expand its influence beyond its initial impact and beyond our funding.
Genevieve Ford-Saville:
The second question, which is about assessing applications where direct delivery is the main route into systemic change, how do we assess those?
I'm going to flip it and say we assess the systemic change element first, because that is our focus. So, we'll be looking at the organisation's track record and capacity for leading on shaping systemic change, influencing change. As Rosa highlights, we're going to be looking at evidence influencing creating change in policies and in decision making.
We would also be considering how the organisation is gathering intelligence from its service delivery, because we know there are organisations that do do both. And we'd be looking at how that intelligence is used to inform strategic change work.
We'd especially be looking at how the organisations in ensuring the voices of lived experience are embedded in a meaningful and non-exploitative way in shaping those priorities for policy advocacy.
And then, third question from Phil, which was about scale and reach. So, particularly in terms of organisations that are working on racial justice or migrant justice, what sort of scale or reach are we looking for in those applications?
Again, we're looking for evidence of systems-level change. That could be at a regional level. It could be within a discrete service system, like a public service system level.
So, an example of that would be, we support, Caribbean African Health Network, and their focus is on challenging systemic racism in the NHS, so in processes and decision-making, research that happens inside the NHS.
Or we might be considering where an organisation works at national policy level. So, we support organisations that challenge immigration detention policy. We support organisations that challenge no recourse to public funds, organisations that challenge racial biases, school exclusions. So those are some examples of the level at which we're funding work.
Luna Dizon:
Thanks, Jen. So just one more question from Phil. How do you view applications that include organisational capacity building, such as governance, evidence systems, staff capacity, or partnership infrastructure?
Rosa Sulley:
Yeah, that's a really good question. This is really important, and we view organisational capacity building as absolutely essential for enabling long-term systems change, and particularly in the Creative, Confident Communities strand, also community-level capacity building as well as part of that.
So, we welcome applications that include this, where this capacity can demonstrate and is necessary for achieving that wider influence and wider and lasting impact that both Jen and I have talked about.
Luna Dizon:
Thank you. I'm gonna ask Tobias's question. How far beyond 2027, can a new funding application go? The slides also mention no minimum or maximum duration. What does this mean in practice for applicants?
Genevieve Ford-Saville:
Based on that. So, whilst our strategy currently ends in 2027, we're not expecting you to just apply for, you know, 8 months or 12 months. It can go well beyond 2027, that's absolutely fine. We would assume that if you're looking at creating systemic change, you have longer-term horizons for your work.
In terms of the minimum-maximum, we don't specify, because we want you to tell us what you need. In practice, as Luna has mentioned, we have an average grant size of about £250K.
Luna Dizon:
Most grants of over 3 years?
Genevieve Ford-Saville:
And most grants are over 3 years.
So, if you… if you come to us, for example, for a request of 12 months, 1 year, we are likely to say meaningfully, what can you kind of get going in that 12 months, and actually, do you need more of a runway to get into that work, and more time at the end of it to kind of share learning, or support work with partners, for example?
So, we know that meaningful change takes time, so we're enlightened to kind of fund for longer rather than shorter. On average, though, grants are around about 3 years. Sometimes they are 4. We prioritise longer grants for organisations that are led by lived experience. And liberal organisations that are experiencing systemic injustice.
Luna Dizon:
Thanks, Jen.
Jenny Dadd:
I could just chip in with that one, and say, yes, the strategy is due to run to the end of 2027.
But we're quite different from other funders, so Esmée doesn't have a heritage of having cut-off dates and themes changing quite quickly. So, our current strategy has been running in the environment work from 2020, so it's been a long spread over what will be 7 years.
And within that, we haven't had blocks. It's not been blocky, it's been continuous grant-making, and we keep the door open to applications constantly. We don't have these drastic cut-offs and that sort of thing.
And although we've set that 2027 deadline, absolutely, as Jen said, you know, if you feel that your work needs to run beyond the end of the strategy, that is what you must ask for.
And obviously there will be some bleed into new strategy in that process. I think what we would say is that we don't make that many grants that are under that one-year duration, because particularly if it's linked to staff, it's very short contracts, and uncertainty may mean that the work can't be delivered because… because staff have moved on.
Luna Dizon:
Thanks, Jenny. I'm gonna ask a couple of questions, so one's from Bree about, the eligibility criteria around, not supporting… we… and one of our exclusions is… is healthcare with a clinical basis, and there was also a question from Nicola, who… who sent the question in advance, who's doing work around creative… creativity in-house.
And again, both of them ultimately want to understand, you know, what that What the exclusion means, and whether there is… there is work that they… they can… that we support that might be health-related, but in different ways.
Rosa Sulley:
Yeah, I can… I can start, and generally sort of talk to her about some of the examples that she gave earlier of work that has been funded through A Fairer Future.
We do have a healthcare exclusion, and just for clarity, and if it's helpful, I can just talk through exactly what that is. So, it's for any work that is clinical, counselling, hospices, therapy, addiction services, or medical research.
So, if your work isn't within that exclusion, that's fine, but what is the most important thing to us is to understand whether your work is a fit to our strategy, our long-term outcomes. So, as we talked about at the beginning of this webinar, all of that detail is on our website. We would really recommend you reading through that and seeing whether your work fits into our strategy.
We do have some work, for example, in Creative, Confident Communities that is in the, kind of, community and broader, kind of, health and wellbeing space, but what is really important here for us is not about the topic or the, you know, the issue of the work. It's actually about the way the work is delivered.
So, is it led by communities? Is there a strong community voice? Is it rooted in place, so taking that place-based approach? And by this, we mean something that isn't generic to any place. It should be responding to the specific needs, challenges, context, issues in a particular place.
So, in Creative, Confident Communities, we're actually much more interested in the approach that's being taken, and the local context, and the community voice, rather than necessarily the particular issue, that it's focused on. So that means we have quite a broad range of issues in our portfolio.
But Jen, might want to add from A Fairer Future.
Genevieve Ford-Saville:
That's really helpful. So, from the Fairer Future lens, we're considering, healthcare in terms of the way in which it's a lens to look at systemic inequality.
So, we're not funding any direct service delivery, what we're looking at, as the example I gave earlier, which was Caribbean African Health Network, that's an organisation that looks at addressing systemic health inequalities affecting Black and Caribbean… African communities in the UK.
So, it's looking at health as a lens through which we see racism. We see systemic injustice happening in health, and that's their focus.
We could do it the same way for, for example, our gender justice priority, looking at how there is systemic inequality in accessing healthcare for trans folks. So, it's about relating again to systemic injustice that sits within our priorities. Health is a lens, we can see that through.
Luna Dizon:
Thank you very much.
Jenny Dadd:
I think on the environment side as well, just picking up that systemic injustice, you know, people who have environmental deficit, obviously that has an impact on their health and wellbeing, so we see fundamentally that access to nature and the outdoors is critical to people's wellbeing.
So we… we support a lot of work that really is about looking at that injustice.
Luna Dizon:
Thanks, Jenny. I might stick with you for now for the next question, which comes from Susan, which is about our space for nature priority, and our long-term outcome around more rich… more nature-rich spaces for people to access and enjoy, particularly those facing barriers to doing so.
So, Susan's question is, would increasing access to nature in urban spaces fit with our priorities?
Jenny Dadd:
Yes, Susan, if you take a look at the grants that we've made, you will see that there's a fair bit that links back to urban communities, and that's not just under our space for nature priority, but I would say under our marine priority, under our fishing in tandem with nature priority, you know, they have focus on urban communities, and we recognise that urban nature has great value.
I think there can be a perception that it's not as important, as what you may see in the countryside. We don't think that this is the case. We think that people's first entry point into nature is probably the most valuable one, and because we have concentrations of very high communities in cities and in towns.
We absolutely value that, and so access to the outdoors as a first instance, access to places which maybe don't feel as welcoming in the countryside from people in urban spaces using that countryside is really important to us, so I'd say there's validity both in the actual space and for the communities that are there, but also thinking about how communities manage to access more wider countryside and the different types of biodiversity that may exist there as well.
Luna Dizon:
Thanks, Jenny. So I'm going to ask a couple of questions from the Q&A.
So, the first question is from Georgina, again, about the 300 words for the EOI. As a neurodivergent person, it's often difficult to understand what to include or omit, particularly as the impacts of their work can't easily be measured quantitatively.
So, what would you recommend to include?
One of the things I just want to briefly say, before I ask the next question, too, is that we… we do also offer access payments, so if there is any part of our process that is a barrier to you applying due to a disability, including, like, if you're… if you're neurodivergent, you can apply for, I can't remember what the amount is, I think up to, £650 for additional support that could be used for extra staff or… yeah, I mean, we're fairly flexible in terms of what it could cover, so it might be something that you want to look at.
The second question related to the EOI is, what is Yasmin’s question around what are the most common causes an organisation with a strong mission to be screened? I guess, what are the most common reasons for decline at EOI stage?
Rosa Sulley:
Yeah, I mean, we do see this all the time, organisations doing brilliant work with a really strong mission, who don't make it past EOI stage, and the primary reason for that, particularly in Creative, Confident Communities, is that they're not able to demonstrate that they're doing systemic change work, so…
Really what all of us have talked about quite a lot on this panel, as what's really important to us is around that kind of wider influence, the bigger impact beyond the organisation itself, whether that be through policy influencing, influencing local decisions, working in partnership with others. That systemic change and the route change is the really important thing for us.
And so, lots of organisations, unfortunately, get tired of EOI stage, even if they're doing great work. It isn't us making a judgment on the value of their work. We know that there are lots of fantastic organisations out there, but our focus and our strategy is prioritised on systemic change work.
Luna Dizon:
Great, thank you.
So moving back onto the Q&A, I'm gonna ask Daisy's question. What are the key characteristics you look for that distinguish applications focused on genuine systems change from high-quality but largely business-as-usual work?
Genevieve Ford-Saville:
That's a really interesting question, thank you, Daisy.
So, we are looking for organisations that have a track record of influencing change. So this is probably about you telling us what is happening in the system that you're working that is unjust, and what are you doing to change it?
We obviously… we have some expertise in our teams about those things, but we're not as expert as you are doing the work on the ground, so it is about you telling us, this is the problem. And this is how we are looking… looking. We have shifted, and we are looking to shift this problem.
The term genuine is also tricky, because we know in the current fiscal climate, things are really difficult to change as well, in lots and lots of ways. So, it can be about, sort of, pushing back on worse things happening, rather than making lots of what we consider strides forward.
We recognise that it is really tough at the moment. It's about being a ball war against a regression than it is about making progress, sometimes.
But again, it would be… it would be about, on an individual basis, you telling us about the system you're working in, what you see as those injustices and challenges, and then what you have been doing and plan to do to influence change in them.
Rosa Sulley:
Yeah, I completely agree. I think just… just want to sort of make it clear that by this, we don't mean, sort of, that we only want new or, sort of, new stuff all the time.
And that isn't your question in fairness, Daisy, but there could be, sort of, implication from the way, sort of, saying business as usual work, because actually some of the organisations that we fund, doing systemic change work is their, kind of, business as usual, so it's not that we're asking you to come to us with… coming up with new ideas all the time.
And we know that that can be really frustrating when you sort of know that your day-to-day work is in that systemic change, so this is… this is actually much more about you being able to demonstrate that track record, and that change, and how you're working within it, and that might then be us supporting you with your everyday work to continue doing that.
Luna Dizon:
Thank you both.
I'm gonna ask a question that came in advance from Adele. So, they had a query about funding groups, or funding individual organisations that might be affiliated, to a umbrella organisation.
Genevieve Ford-Saville:
Yes, thank you for this question, Adele. So we… we can fund organisations that are part of an umbrella organisation. There's nothing in our guidelines that says we can't do that.
However, where there are a number of organisations constituted to do largely the same sort of work in different parts of the country, we're not likely to fund all of them.
So, I think what we'd be considering is what sets an organisation apart in terms of its work. And it's a network's relation to our strategic goals. Is that organisation doing something that is a really clear fit to our strategic goals, and maybe a best practice exemplar or groundbreaking in relation to the network that it sits within?
And maybe has potential to be… for learning to be shared within that wider network, or for that work to be scaled within that wider network?
What do you think, Rosa?
Rosa Sulley:
Yeah, I completely agree.
Luna Dizon:
Thank you.
Jenny Dadd:
I think I'd just… I'd just add on the environment side as well, you know, we do see, for example, the wildlife trusts movement. We just wouldn't be able to fund each individual wildlife trust. Some of them are county-focused, some of them are nation-focused, but we just wouldn’t be able to support them all.
So, we will look at something like an individual wildlife trust that may be doing work that is expanding in terms of its geography. So, an example would be Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, and it is work across the North Sea region.
So, it's… it's definitely has much larger… they're taking the lead on a piece of work that covers a much, much larger geographical area.
And it may be that within the movement, there is another wildlife trust or, you know, another example within an affiliate setup, where they're looking to try something new, and it's got potential for national rollout, so that's important as well.
So, it may be more expansive geographically, but it also may be something that can push at the boundaries and test something, and then establish a way of working for the wider movement.
Luna Dizon:
Thanks, Jenny.
I'm going to quickly answer Chris's question, which was, for a newly constituted, CIO with a turnover building towards 100K, how do we assess whether they meet the threshold?
We will ask for your most recent accounts, so we would suggest that you apply once you can show that you've got… that your most recent accounts is above, £100,000. We do also have… I'd have a look at our FAQs on the website there. There are a couple of questions related, but generally, yeah, your latest accounts.
Next question is from Brianny, and so this one's for you, Rosa. How do you define wealth building? What would be the key outcomes you would look to evaluate wealth building against?
Rosa Sulley:
Yeah, thanks, Brianny, it's a really good question.
We've included the term wealth building in our strategy, because the sort of term community wealth building is one that's used quite a lot in our sector, and really what that's kind of focused on at its fundamentals, is about how an economic system is working in a place, and trying to address the fact that in lots of places, there's a real challenge of investment or spending in a place leaking out, so it's not staying locally.
And that might look like, in practice, absentee, offshore landlords owning buildings, which mean rental income from those buildings is leaving a place. It might look like, newer and higher-value jobs being created in place, not going to people locally. So, it might look like procurement spend from a big anchor organisation, like a local authority or an NHS. Actually, lots of that procurement spend is going to organisations that aren't based locally.
And why do we care about all of that? What does that mean? That… that ultimately leads to challenging… a challenging economic climate for communities living in those places, because they are not benefiting or able to access from some of the money that's flowing in their community.
And so, what we're trying to do is intervene into that and to support organisations that are trying to address some of that. So that might look like communities taking on ownership of assets and buildings. It might look like procurement policies that are working with local social enterprises and keeping money more local. It might look like job creation in a local area that's supported going towards local people.
So those are just kind of some of the key definitions of wealth building that are used by others, not just us, and I would really recommend looking at the CLES website, for more information about community wealth building as a concept.
Luna Dizon:
Thanks, Rosa.
Jenny Dadd, there's a question here for you from Chris. For the freshwater priority, are you more interested in applicants doing on-the-ground monitoring and community work, or those working on policy and regulatory change, or both in one bid?
Genevieve Ford-Saville:
Oh, you're muted, Jenny.
Jenny Dadd:
Sorry. Yeah, we can do both in one bid, is the short answer to that, but you may want to think about what you would major in and potential other funding sources. I think Esmée can quite often be a source of funding, that other funders would not tend to go to, so have a careful think about that.
Citizen science, really, really important in terms of, looking at our freshwater systems. We know that, that the agencies just don't have the resource to be able to check, in a way that's more community-focused.
On-the-ground daily visitors to their freshwater courses can do. But obviously, that is the evidence that we need to back policy asks, so if we don't have the citizen science that is robust and can stand up to scrutiny, it's very hard to ask for policy change.
So we see both as being really important, and like I say, if you look at who we have funded in this space, you can quickly see that there's quite a suite of work, both on the policy and the citizen science side, so you would need to share how you fit with that, or how you are doing something different.
Luna Dizon:
Thanks, Jenny.
I'm gonna ask Claire's question. If the systems change piece of a charity's work interacts with statutory services, is this okay? How certain of the change they're working towards do… do they need to be… can the grant, can the grant support refining system partnerships and scoping, or does this need to already be in place?
Genevieve Ford-Saville:
This is a great question, Claire.
I think, the answer… the answer to the first part of the question is interaction with statutory services okay? Yes, because many of the… so in A Fairer Future, quite a lot of the systemic injustices we're looking to challenge exist within statutory services. That means that organisations, if they want to make change happen, are going to need to interact with those services.
Certainty about the change you're working towards is really variable, depending on the system you're working within, so I think that might come down to the individual application. We would, I think, at the least, expect you to be in a position where you have relationships or have had conversations and are aware of the ecosystem you need to affect in order to make the change happen and have connections into that system already.
Whether those are formalised, or not, is necessarily a deal-breaker, and I think that's something, you know, we can talk about through an assessment process, because it may be that you're looking to have more capacity in your organisation to enable you to go out and speak to more stakeholders, or to create that change and spend time having those conversations.
But you would need to already be operating in those spaces, and have an awareness of that wider ecosystem, and have those relationships, at least at some I think embryonic level before we consider it.
Rosa Sulley:
Yeah, the thing I learned from a Creative, Confident Communities perspective, in particular, is that a lot of the work that we fund is community-led, and community voice and governance is a really important part in it, so we will often see applications to us, or where actually, kind of, co-design and participatory work with communities is a really important part of the process.
Now, if you're doing that properly, that means that you don't necessarily know at the beginning, before you've started that process, where you're going to end up. So, we are really alive to that and really flexible in that, and understand that that process needs to be gone through.
But that doesn't mean that an organisation can come to us with kind of none of that initial background work. Like, I think we'd still want to see quite a lot of work and evidence and background thinking and track record that's going into the planning, the relationship building, the clear roots to change that you want to… to impact, so that you've kind of got that there in place, and then you can, you know, with funding, then unlock that and start to build on it, and that might be in partnership with others, and that might lead you in different directions, and that's okay.
Luna Dizon:
Thank you, and I'm conscious we've got about 4 minutes left, so we're not going to be able to answer all your questions, but we will answer them after the webinar's finished, and share our answers afterwards, along with the recording and the transcript of the webinar.
So, please don't worry if we haven't answered your question. I'm going to ask two more questions.
There's one for Jenny here, Jenny Dadd, here about, an example of systemic change within a space for nature project. And the next question will be from Chris, which is about how do you assess systemic change ambition from smaller organisations whose contribution is through coalitions, partnerships, or movement building, rather than leading the change alone?
They're keen for that this doesn't inadvertently favour larger established organisations. So, Jenny, that… do you want to start?
Jenny Dadd:
Yeah, I think…
Systemic change, the environment sector needs to look at itself, basically, and the systems that need to change within it, and we just don't have fair representation. So, we do have a number of grants that are active that look to change the makeup of the environment sector, and to encourage progress on DEI. We know that we're underperforming very badly.
So, out of that, I'd probably highlight the Race Report, which was set up a number of years ago, and what that means is that environmental organisations can submit data, get advice towards their own progress in terms of recruiting, retaining staff, and being able to demonstrate change for the sector as a whole.
So, like I say, there's a suite of different grants there, but we have to be, self-reflecting in this space, and look for systemic change for the sector, the environment sector itself.
Luna Dizon:
Thanks, Jenny. And then, Jen or Rosa, are you… are you all right to answer…
Genevieve Ford-Saville:
Chris's question, which was about how we assess systemic change from smaller grassroots organisations who might be working in partnership with larger organisations.
I think you raised a really interesting and important point, Chris, about equity. In those relationships, and that's something that we would be assessing, in that… in that process to make sure that the… the smaller partner is not in the position where they are being exploited by the larger partner, for example.
We are… we are really encouraging applications that do… where organisations are working in partnership, are part of movements and wider coalitions to support change. So, the organisation doesn't have to be leading on that strategic change, they can be providing their specific lived experience voice to a wider movement and campaign, which is about systemic change.
It's really important that organisation is clear about what its particular role is in that ecosystem, so we would be looking at who all the partners are in that movement, and what each is bringing to the party.
But it's absolutely the case that we would be interested in organisations that are working in collaboration with others to see change happen.
Further resources
Luna Dizon:
Thanks, Jen. Just quickly, before we wrap up, in the chat, I posted links to the Race Report, which, Jenny Dad was talking about, and also to CLES, which Rosa mentioned around work on wealth building, so have a look at that.
Thank you, everyone, for joining. I'm just going to quickly share a couple of… couple more slides, which is… which just gives you some more information about, or further resources around applying.
So, there's a link to our guidance on our website, and there's specific links to each of our aims and priorities. There's the link to accessibility-related support, so I mentioned earlier about access payments that we provide. You can also download the full guidance, as well as the sample application form, so you can have a look at that.
There is also our grant funding overview with various links, including to recent grant listings and case studies, and also our online FAQs.
And then on the last slide, there is some other useful resources, including funding sources, so guides and alsoGrantNav, which is a tool where you can search, search over 300 funders, including Esmée, as well as our Useful Sector Resources page, which has all sorts of resources from, you know, fundraising, communications, strategy, diversity, equity, and inclusion, well-being, so do have a look at that in case that that's helpful.
And Jen, I might leave it to you again, just to say farewell…
Genevieve Ford-Saville:
Thanks, Luna. Yes, we're going to close now. Thank you, everyone, for attending. Thank you to my fellow panellists.
Thank you for Luna, for setting everything up today and doing all the clicking and making sure the Q&A works. We couldn't do it without you.
Thank you to our team behind the scenes, who've been helping to answer all of your questions. Thank you, Nana and Altan, for your BSL interpretation.
And mostly thank you, all of you, for attending today's webinar. Thank you for the questions that you've asked us, and for the day-in and day out work that you're doing in the sector, it's really vitally important, and we do see that.
We hope you found this webinar useful, and we hope you have a really great rest of the afternoon. Thank you, and goodbye. Thanks, everyone. Bye.
Jenny Dadd:
Bye.