Working together for a bigger impact: our new partnering approach

After launching our vision for funding in England back in November, we’re looking ahead to building the community connections that will help make this a reality.

Over our 30 years of funding good causes, large and small, we’ve seen the power that lies in working with others - and we know that we cannot deliver our community-led missions alone.

That’s why we’re exploring new avenues to how we work, offering more than a traditional funding arrangement. How will we do this? By making meaningful connections, and building deep partnerships across our funding.

Making transformational change

We’ll invite expert community organisations to work with us on making meaningful and lasting changes to the systems that influence lives and communities. From addressing health inequalities to youth support, and access to green space where we live and breathe, we want to work together to transform these systems for a stronger, fairer society.

We will establish partnerships where we see potential to deliver significant change in a system or area of work that aligns with our community-led missions and England funding priorities, supporting communities to:

• Come together through inclusive places, spaces and activities (either physical or virtual) - especially for communities where people are least able to come together today
• Help children and young people thrive, focusing on supporting babies, children, young people and their families to navigate key transitions in their lives
• Be healthier, by addressing health inequalities and helping to prevent poor health from the outset
• Be environmentally sustainable, by engaging with climate issues, having a positive environmental impact, and improving access to quality natural spaces

We’ll dedicate between £1m and £20m to each partnership for 1-5 years. This includes £75m available for our 2025/26 partnerships. We will build partnerships at a regional and national level, and we expect to agree 6-12 new partnerships each year.

If you think a partnership with us will increase the impact of your work, and you share the ambition of our community-led missions and England funding priorities, then partnering with us might be right for you. 

A rich history of partnership funding

Our Partnerships funding programme has been a popular route for organisations to run joint projects, where they can benefit from the unique strengths that each party brings.

The good news is, we remain as committed as ever to supporting partnerships like these. The Partnerships funding programme has now merged with Reaching Communities, and we welcome joint funding applications via this route provided they meet our revised funding priorities launched in April.

What’s next?

Over the next few months, we will be launching a number of new partnership opportunities, in line with what we set out in November in our vision for funding in England.

In June, we’ll launch the Solidarity Fund, committing at least 10% of our funding in England each year to organisations tackling the root causes of poverty, disadvantage and discrimination.

Then later this year, we will start to seek partners to work with us to tackle health inequities driven by structural racism and discrimination.

We’ll share more information about each of these over the coming months, including how to apply. To find out more, visit our Partner with us web page.

Our partnership opportunities for Community Power, You Decide and Grant Holder Support closed earlier in the year and were very popular. We’ll announce our successful partners for these later in the year.

Hannah Rignell & Sarah Baker, Deputy Director (job share) - Policy and Partnerships