Our 'three approaches' to funding in Scotland

Our mission as a funder is to help communities and people most in need.

We believe that the following three approaches are vital to help us achieve our mission and address inequality in Scotland, and we will fund activity that embraces these.

• People-led – meaningfully involving the people you’re working with in the development, design and delivery of your activity.
  You can read case studies demonstrating what we mean by people-led work on our Scotland Blog.
• Strengths-based – making the most of, and building on, the skills and experiences of people and assets within communities.
  You can read case studies demonstrating what we mean by strengths-based work on our Scotland Blog.
• Connected – having a good understanding of what others are doing locally, developing good working relationships and complementing and adding value to other relevant activity in your area.
  You can read case studies demonstrating what we mean by connected work on our Scotland Blog.

If you are applying for funding, we will ask you to tell us how you will take these three approaches in your activity. This will be important when we consider your application.

We aim to take these three approaches as a funder. This means having more conversations with the people applying for funding, and getting people involved in decision-making in their area. We will build our own knowledge so that we can spend less time asking for evidence of need and more time finding out if what’s proposed will be effective. We will keep up-to-date information and relationships across all 32 local authorities to make sure we understand what's happening in your area, so that we make the best funding decisions we can.