Three decisions to make before you design a funding programme

Most funding programmes are designed from the application form outwards. The best ones start with harder decisions about what they’re really backing, how people access it, and the funder’s own role.

Only 26% of adults in England feel they can influence decisions affecting their local area, and 31% say they rarely or never get the chance to meet people from different backgrounds.

UK grant funders are responding with new programmes on belonging, cohesion and community power. That’s welcome. But the people these programmes are for are often the least likely to get through a standard grant process.

Imagine a funder setting out to build a national programme that bridges divides between communities, with four months to design it and a launch date already in the diary. The brief calls for eligibility rules, assessment criteria and application questions. The tempting route is to start with the form. But three things make this kind of design harder than it looks. Bridging is about relationships, not activity. The application route is part of the intervention. And the answer isn’t always a grant.

At Always Possible, we help funders design programmes backwards from the decisions that matter, not forwards from the paperwork. That means testing real choices with community-led organisations, helping funders be explicit about their own role, and walking the applicant journey with them before launch. We stay close enough to understand what the funder is trying to achieve, and independent enough to say when the evidence points somewhere else.

What we’re seeing in practice

Decide what you’re really backing: relationships or activity

Bridging relationships are usually a by-product of sustained shared activity, not a project output. Steady, unrestricted support for organisations whose everyday work already mixes people often achieves more than a new fund for bridging projects.

That means looking for where those relationships already exist, not only where need is greatest, and remembering that rural, coastal and minority-language communities are easy to miss in national data.

Decide how people get in: the application is part of the intervention

Processes only built for organisations fluent in funder language exclude the very groups belonging programmes are meant for.

IVAR’s work with more than 1,200 charities shows that open and trusting grant-making makes organisations stronger. Walk the journey as a small, informal or minoritised group would, then test it with real applicants before you open.

Decide your role: the answer isn’t always a grant

Money is only one of the things a funder brings. Development support, volunteering, relationships, evidence, convening and influence all carry different value and different power.

Be explicit about where each one helps, and where your involvement would crowd out the local leadership you want to support.

2022

Case study

South East Business Boost grants, East Sussex

East Sussex County Council needed to get growth grants of up to £10,000 into the hands of small and new businesses during and after the pandemic. Many of the firms that would benefit most had never applied for public funding, and a slow, paper-heavy process would have lost them.

Always Possible worked with the council to deliver the programme and shape the route in. We built a lean, plain-English application process, and offered every business an information, diagnostic and brokerage session before it applied, so it went in with a clear growth plan rather than a guess at what the funder wanted. We added guidance, training materials and a local supplier database, and targeted sectors that mainstream support often missed, from advanced manufacturing to specialist craft and conservation.

The design worked for the businesses it was meant to reach. Grants of £761,649 went to 136 businesses, including 45 new enterprises, and unlocked £1.37m of private match funding. Participants created 76.5 new jobs and introduced 61 new products and services, and the full pot was spent on target.

273

pre-application diagnostics delivered

136

businesses funded, including 45 start-ups

£1.37m

private match funding unlocked

Questions worth asking

What is this programme deliberately not trying to do?

Would the organisations we most want to reach get past our eligibility rules?

Is a grant really the best tool here, or would partnership, convening or influence do more?

Have we watched a small, informal group try our application before we launch it?

Talk to us about strategy.

We help funders, foundations and public bodies design programmes that reach the communities they’re meant for, from theory of change and engagement to eligibility, assessment and applicant guidance, across England and Wales.

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