Putting your money where your mouth is

This event has ended.

Competitive grants are one of the most common ways we try to change society. They are used to increase economic growth, spur scientific discovery, improve public services, preserve history and encourage civic activism. Grant making organisations, whether they’re public bodies or in the third sector, want to do as much good as they can with limited funds, but despite their best intentions sometimes they unwittingly restrict the pool of talent and ideas. Complicated processes can put off busy but talented applicants. Application sifting can trigger unconscious bias. The result is frustrated applicants and grant-making organisations not maximising their cash. This workshop will explore how one charitable foundation looked deep into its data to understand how it could do better.

Nesta, the UK-based innovation foundation, opened up data on £10m of grants to researchers. The first part of the workshop will outline what their audit found, with a focus on applicant gender and location. You’ll find out how grant making organisations can conduct this kind of audit as well as about the changes Nesta are considering.

Afterwards, we’ll hold a facilitated discussion to help applicants and grant makers understand each other better without the restrictions of formal grant-making processes. We’ll discover what barriers applicants have faced and how they think they could be removed. We’ll also hear from grant makers about the complex demands of running grant programmes and the difficult trade offs involved in trying to increase access.