You Decide

Expressions of interest for the development phase closed on 5 February 2025

There will be more opportunities for funding and support to come.

But before launching a broader programme, we’re working with partners from spring 2025 to spring 2026 in a development stage.

We’ll work with up to 5 partners with expertise in involving communities in decisions about grant making. We have £2 million funding for this one-year development phase. Partners will support communities to decide how to give out this funding to good causes. And will involve communities in decisions in a way that builds their skills, resources and ability to work together.

As part of our strategy, we want to listen to communities and engage them in new ways. Our partners will test out ways to involve communities in decisions about who and what to fund. By communities we mean people who share an identity, interest or experience. Or people living in the same place.

We know we’re not the experts in involving communities. That’s why we want to work with other partners to share knowledge, enthusiasm and experience. And why we’ll work with partners to learn from the approaches they take, and develop these more into our regular ways of working

The communities our partners support will benefit from being involved in making decisions, they'll be more empowered.

We’ll cover partners’ costs for working with us and other partners. Including involvement in developing these new approaches and in shared learning activities. We expect most partners to use a maximum £80,000 for this.

Partner organisations must:

• show that involving communities is one of their main purposes or activities
• have experience of involving communities in making decisions about grants or what to support in their communities
• have experience of giving out grants to communities
• be committed to equity

By equity we mean recognising that not every community starts with the same resources. And that to make things fairer, we should support those that need it most.

We’ll work with a mix of partners.

Including those who are used to working locally, in-depth, with smaller numbers of people. And also with organisations used to involving large groups of people at a regional or national level. We want to build learning by trying a mix of approaches to involving people.