Additional Q&A

We are currently co-designing the future of this outcome with our Involving Young People Collective, and will update our website later in the year. It's difficult to be more precise, but we will share the news through our newsletter and in our social media as soon as we can.

For work towards this aim, assessments focus on how much the work is led by the people it would benefit and how it is place-based, i.e. benefits the geographic community. So, we would need to understand what specific issues or opportunities occur in that geographic area and how would a local approach have an impact on that place-based community. We would also recommend that you consider our funding priority on migrant justice.

We are currently able to consider applications for work that takes both approaches. However, if you are considering the county-wide, multi-organisation model, you will need to be clear on how local people (including people local to the locations where replication is happening) are leading the work and determining the outcomes that affect them. It is worth you looking at the more detailed funding guidance on our website, which explains that putting the place first and being community-led and collaborative are the first two points for any assessment for work towards Creative, Confident Communities.

We would look at the impact that the work had to date and your relationships with partners, anchor organisations, decision makers etc. We would also seek evidence that there was a gap which your work could fill elsewhere. We would ask questions about resourcing an expansion and how your mission remains in place when working in different locations. Most importantly, we would need to understand how the work in the expanded areas was led by the people in those communities and how it related to specific local issues and opportunities.

It is unlikely that we would support a case worker unless there are clear plans in how the casework would be used or lead to wider impact i.e. influencing system change of policy/practice, and then we would be looking at the organisations routes to influence including track record and connections to have that level of impact.

We don’t fund pure service delivery work. We recognise that service delivery and frontline work are critical to system change and therefore do fund that type of work when it is clearly linked to a wider impact of influencing policy/practice and when the organisation can demonstrate it is able to influence at that level.

We are a small team with limited capacity and we try to attend sector events which are relevant to our strategy and these can be across the UK. We also actively research our areas of work to keep up-to-date with developments. This could be through reports, news and social media, as well as engaging with sector and issue-specific forums, and we are often made aware of organisations working outside London via these online spaces as well.

It can be useful to reference learnings from or to international practice and learning, for example if you are applying or modifying a model that has been used elsewhere to proven success. However, as the key to Creative, Confident Communities funding is that the work is place-based and community-led in the UK, we would need to understand how an international model was being applied through that lens and how you are adapting learning from elsewhere to the specific UK context.

We often fund organisations who are undertaking service delivery and systems work. We recognise the importance of service delivery in systems change. However, we will look at the proportionality of the streams within the request and consider if and how the organisation has had a wider influence and if they are well-placed to achieve systems change.

We wouldn't have a preference. We want to fund work that has the strongest fit to our current strategy and will most impactful.

We are flexible about what this support can cover. More information about our accessibility support is on our website.

In general, we will accept more than one application for funding (usually, not more than two) from an organisation when:

• There is not any duplication in terms of the programme of work being covered and we aren't being asked to fund the same costs twice
• The organisation is acting as the lead in an application on behalf of a partnership, and the other application is for funding for that organisation in its own right and for its own needs

If you've had previous funding from us before, you can apply for another grant or for follow-on funding.

Funding is not awarded based on deprivation, but rather on a project’s alignment with Esmée's specific strategic outcomes and its potential for systemic change.

It's hard to give specific advice, but some general points: Esmée funds core costs usually, rather than individual projects, and we generally don't like to make one year grants, so, yes you can apply for multi-year funding. You can find more stats about our funding last year here.

This is an average over multiple years of the grant's duration.

It's hard to answer without specifics of what it would be addressing in our strategy, but I think this is very unlikely.

We have five long-term outcomes under Children and Young People’s rights under A Fairer Future, three of which are 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.

For more information on our priorities and case studies, please see the detailed guidance.

We don't have a timeline for reopening these priorities and it is unlikely that we will do in the forseeable future. Closing them lets us focus on our current work. For example, we're supporting our 'young people leaving care' grantees as a cohort. However, if plans change, we'll announce it on our website and newsletter.

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.

Our migrant justice priority under A Fairer Future is focused on issues around migration. We have three long term outcomes under this priority:

• 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.

If your work is a good fit to one or more of those outcomes, you could apply under this priority.

Just regular core running costs - they don't need to be about capacity building.

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.

A Fairer Future seeks to create a society where those most affected by injustice, including women, children, and migrants, have the agency to shape the systems that impact them. The pillar aims for systemic change by supporting ambitious initiatives that influence wider policy and practice.

It can just be one, or a combination. We don't have a preference.

We work with organisations across the four nations of the UK. If you work across the whole nation of Scotland, we would consider that 'national'.

Thanks for engaging with the report! We'd be really happy to see this, but appreciate there's not a lot of space for this in the EOI. A mention of wellbeing is always good to see and more detail could be shared in a call and/or proposal later on.

Great question, and I'm aware we aren't always consistent, but I would say more likely to fund work that complements other things we fund. We will always be thinking about how different approaches could work together to make a difference.

Yes, that seems sensible.

£30k, but we rarely make grants at this level unless it is for a one year project. Our average grants are multi-year so higher than this. The £90k figure was related to grant decisions being quicker if they are under this amount.

Funded organisations engage in a reporting process. Every year they provide insight into their work, and update us on their work towards agreed outcomes. The organisation will also have a conversation in the middle of grant duration, as well as at the end. It is designed to be easy for the organisation to do, and be a valuable process for both of us.

Museums are eligible to apply to Esmée directly as well as through the Communities and Collections Fund. However, the applications should not seek support for the same project or both be for core funds. We have funded very few museums through the two funding streams at the same time. The exceptions were when the work was an exceptionally strong fit with both sets of priorities. In general, we would encourage museums to check the Communities and Collections Fund first as that is funding specifically for the sector.

You would still be eligible to apply to Esmée for other aspects of your work. However, we would not be able to directly fund any aspect of the work that is being supported by LocalMotion.

As noted, Esmée does not support healthcare (including clinical, counselling, therapy and medical research). In addition, within Creative, Confident communities we do not support service delivery work (even though we appreciate that it is vital work). We look to support work at a long-term, strategic level. The work should have a wider benefit on the full geographic community and be led by the community, as well as respond to specific issues or opportunities identified by that community of place.

Regarding hospital arts, I'm sorry but this is very unlikely to be funded unless it is a small aspect of a wider community-led arts project.

Yes, we encourage collaborative approaches across our aims. We can fund both existing or new collaborations. One organisation will need to apply as the 'lead' - they will be treated as the grant-holding organisation in our system and hold responsibility for the progress of the work.

We'll need the collaboration partners to confirm their involvement. Not all partners have to be registered charities. You'll also nominate two contacts; one from the 'lead' organisation and one of the partners. You can include anticipated costs of setting up and co-ordinating networks or partnerships in your application.

Please note: The 'lead' organisation will need to meet our minimum eligibility criteria.

I'm sorry, but to apply for funding, organisations need to have a turnover of over £100k for the most recent financial year.

We put the turnover limit in place before 2020, to be honest about our funding - we were not giving grants to smaller organisations and did not want to waste their time. We know this has a disproportionate effect on "led by" organisations and have been working proactively to address this, e.g. through New Connections and funding to Baobab Foundation.

Yes, we will consider social investment to organisations with a turnover less than £100k but most of our social investment portfolio has a turnover higher than that. We rarely fund start-ups or organisations with minimal track record.

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 would consider work delivered in schools which have broader ambitions such as having an impact on the community. See Sistema Scotland example above.

For arts and creativity work with children and young people, we support work focused on traditional art forms as well as new technologies and media. We also focus on how children and young people access arts education and participation outside school. In assessing applications, we want to understand who is delivering the programme, how skilled and appropriate they are to do this work, and what progression routes they offer for those who

It is helpful to know if you are involved in a major programme that could overlap with the work that you are applying to Esmée to fund. If the work you have done leading up to the Creative People and Places funding is relevant to the work in your application to Esmée then you could mention it. The expression of interest is, however two fairly short answers, so it would be best to concentrate on the work you want Esmée to fund and mention any other work when answering the question about your organisation to explain why you are best placed to undertake the work.

If you feel that this model would provide us with the best explanation of your impact then we are happy for you to mention it in the Expression of Interest, but the answers are quite short, so there would only be space for high level findings. We do not have a specific model that we require applicants to use when applying to us.

I would recommend making just one application. Esmée usually funds core costs, so it might be better to put in an application for the work of your organisation, rather than different projects.

We think it’s great if your work fits more than one so don’t worry too much if it does. Our application process will ask you to choose an aim and priority that is the best match for your work. You will also have the chance to select which other priorities are also a match for what you do.

We also don't have a preference in terms of projects focusing on one of our priorities and projects that work across more than one priority. We want applicants to tell us about their plans and how they align with 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.

We don’t have a cool-off period but whilst an organisation who has been turned down for funding can apply again, the new application should not be for the same work and costs.

We encourage collaborative approaches, feel free to mention partnerships in the expression of interest stage.

You can submit an social investment expression of interest via our website. Our social investment guidance is here.

Yes. You can learn more about the DEI Data Standard that we use to gather information and how we use the information here. Do also take a look at how we make decisions, which gives more information about how we assess DEI.

Our approach to assessing organisations' approach to DEI is proportionate and relevant to the area or issue. On collecting DEI data, this is something we do to understand our own biases and the equity of our funding as a whole, so we need to have a fixed approach to that. However, we will be more nuanced on an individual basis.

We do recognise that disabled people face multiple and compounding barriers to different areas in their lives. We have adopted the DEI data standard as it exists as a standard across different funders. When we assess applications we value how organisations are community-led in a more nuanced way that sits outside of the DEI data standard.

We share more about our approach to DEI data here.