Apply for Ideas and Pioneers Fund (UK)

The Foundation believes that the best ideas for how society needs to change often come from people who have been let down or harmed by current systems. They want their funding to help realise these ideas, and give individuals the time, space and financial backing to experiment with new and different ways of creating social change.

Ideas

• 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.

Funding Information

• They provide grants of up to £20,000.

Eligible Activities

• 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.
• 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
• 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.

Ineligible Activities

• They will not be funding:
  • work outside the UK
  • a one-off or short-term project with limited potential for long-term impact
  • proposals where the applicant has no direct lived, indirect or learned experience relating to the issue they want to explore
  • the production of a stand alone work of art (including podcasts, films, blogs, documentaries, plays or books)
  • rolling out or scaling up an approach that you know is already working or has been substantially tried elsewhere in the UK
  • multiple proposals from the same applicant

Eligibility Criteria

• 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: They are 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 do consider applications from those aged 30 and over. They cannot accept applications from those under 18.

For more information, visit Paul Hamlyn Foundation.