Paul Hamlyn Foundation: Ideas and Pioneers Fund

Open or will open again Active citizenship Adult Education/Learning Advice services Black and minority ethnic Communities Dependants and carers Education and learning Family and parenting Human rights and equality Offenders and ex-offenders People with disabilities Policy, advocacy and campaigning Poverty and deprivation Pre-school education Refugees and asylum seekers School, College and University Social inclusion Social partnership Social welfare and poverty Un/Employed Victims and survivors Voluntary and community infrastructure volunteering 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 Medium (up to £60,000) Small (up to £10,000)

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Overview

They provide grants of up to £20,000, and a programme of support, to help you develop your skills and explore an idea for social change that has the potential to transform the way things are currently done. The fund specifically focuses on early-stage ideas when it’s harder to get funding and support to develop these ideas further.

In addition to a grant of £20,000, they support you to develop your idea.

If you receive a grant through their Ideas and Pioneers Fund, you will also have access to a range of support to help you explore your idea. This support is delivered by their partners, Do it Now Now. With them, you can take part in workshops that will cover topics such as:

telling your story
managing your finances
planning for the growth of your business
raising awareness and inspiring action to challenge the issue you’re addressing
protecting your brand/creation
your wellbeing
developing a strategy to generate income from your business idea

You will also be matched with a ‘critical friend’, who you can meet with for 1‑to‑1 support four times. They will help you to think about what you need to develop or test your idea, to reflect on what you’re learning along the way, and help you to find useful resources and information.

There will also be opportunities to meet and learn from other people who are also supported through the fund.

Who they want to support

Their fund focuses on both your idea for social change, as well as you as a person. They know that not all early-stage ideas will succeed. They are just as interested in investing in you and your potential as they are in your idea.

About you

They want to fund people aged 18–30* to explore their ideas for social change. This fund is for you if you have:

A connection to the idea you want to explore. They will prioritise funding people with direct lived experience, meaning you have personally experienced the issue you want to explore. They also welcome applicants with indirect experience (you have seen how this issue affects people around you, perhaps in your family or community) and learned experience (you have taken steps to learn more about this issue, whether formally through qualifications or your job, or informally through exploring it yourself).
The drive and potential to make social change. We’re not looking for a track record of experience or success and will assess your application on the strength of your idea.
Not received grant funding before. They want their support to reach people who would benefit from it the most, including those who haven’t accessed funding or support to explore your idea.

*They prioritise funding to people aged 18–30, but they do consider applications from those aged 30 and over. They cannot accept applications from those under 18.

About your idea

They want to fund ideas that are:

Challenging injustice. They want to support ideas that show a clear vision to help build a better society by shifting power and challenging and transforming the root causes of systemic oppression. This includes but is not limited to racism, ableism, classism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, and/or transphobia. They recognise that what happens at the small scale reflects what happens at the large scale, so they are equally interested in ideas working at a local level to those working at a national level.
Early stage. Their focus is on supporting the earliest stages of exploration and to help you learn from what does and doesn’t work.
Original. They want to support people imagining new ways to make social change, which could mean trying things that haven’t been done before or experimenting with an approach that is new to the context in which you’re hoping to work.
Long-term. You can see the long-term potential of your idea and you’re motivated to share your learning with others to make change beyond the lifetime of the funding.

What we will fund

They will only fund ideas that have a charitable purpose. Of those ideas, they can fund any activity that will help you to test and explore an early-stage idea for social change.

What does 'charitable purpose' mean?

This could include:

research to develop your idea
talking to people with relevant experience to better understand your issue
gathering evidence for a campaign
developing a product or new approach
paying yourself or others to deliver these activities

This list isn’t exhaustive, but it might help you think about what you could use the funding for.

They will fund individuals, and also groups of up to three people working together (you don’t need to be a registered organisation) and small organisations, of any legal structure, that have no more than the equivalent of five full-time staff.

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