Friends Provident Foundation: Developing a Fair Economy

Archived Active citizenship Adult Education/Learning Advice services Education and learning Monitoring and evaluation organisational development Poverty and deprivation social enterprise Social inclusion Strategic and project planning Trading Voluntary and community infrastructure Antrim & Newtownabbey Ards & North Down Armagh City, Banbridge & Craigavon Belfast City Causeway Coast and Glens Derry City and Strabane England Fermanagh and Omagh Great Britain Lisburn and Castlereagh Mid and East Antrim Mid Ulster Newry, Mourne and Down Northern Ireland Scotland Wales In Kind Large (over £60,000) Medium (up to £60,000) Micro (up to £1,000) Small (up to £10,000)

Track grant Notes

Overview

Friends Provident Foundation is a grant-making charity that focuses on exploring the role of money and financial systems as a force for social good and aim to:

encourage thinking that deals with the cause of the problem;
transform the use of financial systems so that they offer social as well as economic benefits, alleviating social disharmony and inequality; and
pioneer new ways of thinking about how money is used to solve social problems.

Friends Provident Foundation is particularly concerned with the impact of economic systems on the most vulnerable. This is where the flaws in the system show most starkly, not just in terms of poverty, but also inequality.

Programme outcomes

There are two outcomes that flow from the overall aim: ‘systems change’ and ‘local economic resilience’. They ask applicants to decide which one they wish to contribute to.

Systems change

This part of the programme involves a radical assessment of how ‘disruptive innovation’ might change the financial system – exploring and informing changes to the regulatory, policy or other systemic level that would develop financial system innovations with the potential to deliver their aim. Projects in this category will require strong analysis of the issues and possible solutions. They will also need to develop and demonstrate methods that will effectively change policy and corporate behaviours in pursuit of wider social objectives. Their aim would be to stimulate feasible new ideas and scaleable, practical examples. Click here for an example of a project that they are already funding under the Systems Change outcome.

Examples of other projects we might fund under this outcome would include:

An exploration of how far the regulatory system considers ‘fairness’ and ‘sustainability’ to be measurable market outcomes.
A comparison of methodologies for changing corporate behaviours.
Peer-to-peer lending: risks, rewards, regulation.
Pensions: the potential and limitations of long-term capital.

Local economies

Their work at the local level will focus on testing and reviewing local or small-scale initiatives that support local economies through diversity, flexibility and building capability in communities.

As they strive for projects that can make a difference to the structural problems of the current economic system, it is in the local community where the everyday effects of the economy are experienced. Their local economies strand is therefore designed to create an avenue for community-level economic change to be supported.

The aim for this part of the programme is to support a series of projects rooted in a local area that can fill a gap between micro community projects and systems change initiatives. We are looking for what is in between, something that derives its inspiration and learning from the very local but answers bigger questions about how our economy needs to change. Friends Provident think that their funding can be most useful in supporting projects that:

Take a test and learn approach at a local level
Involve genuine engagement of local people and support local leadership
Can show how there will be ownership of the benefits at a local level (increased power, asset ownership, greater sense of control)

The types of local projects that they will fund could be a community led approach to land stewardship, community-driven industrial regeneration, new approaches to community energy that are truly inclusive across different demographics, testing community wealth building methods or innovative ways of working with local authorities to create bottom up change.

Common reasons for projects being rejected from the local economy strand of work include:

They are focused on service delivery
There is no wider applicability from the very specific area they are working in
They don’t show any learning from or awareness of what has happened elsewhere – a lack of collaboration and communication.
There is no element of systems change or upstream thinking; instead they are focusing on dealing with symptoms, demonstrating short term rather than long term thinking.

Project Approaches

They wish to know how projects will go about addressing their chosen outcome. To this end, they would ask all applicants to indicate which one of the following approaches they intend to take:

Innovation: Development work to propose new solutions.
Intelligence: Research that will gather evidence to support and inform practice.
Institutions: The creation or maintenance of key organisations/functions that are important for building economic resilience.
Influencing: Exploring or piloting ways of influencing corporate, regulatory or policy players.

What they will consider funding:

Requests for capital or revenue funding, core funds or project costs. We support the principle of Full Cost Recovery (FCR). Further information on FCR can be obtained from bodies such as NPC and ACEVO.
Requests for loans, part-loans, underwriting, or other forms of financial support, in addition to grant funding.
Requests for up to £200,000 worth of funding in total.
Proposals for funding for up to five years. On average most projects are 1-2 years long.
Activity that is charitable and for the public benefit.

For FAQ's click here

For information on funded projects click here