Learning

Where our grants are going and what we are learning. 
A group of young girls are standing in an informal circle and laughing. They are in a dance studio, with most wearing purple t-shirts
One Dance UK. Photo credit: Dani Bower

Who we’re funding

We share all of the grant making we do. We hope by being transparent, people interested in applying for funding have a better picture of the work we support and what our funding priorities are.

We have a historical archive of everything we’ve funded since April 2006 publicly available, which shows you who we’ve funded, what work they do, and how much funding they received.

You can see a snapshot of the grants we made in the last calendar year below, which can be sorted by fund and grant size.

Grants we made in 2023

What we’re learning

We describe ourselves as a learning organisation’. One aspect of this learning approach means we look to prioritise learning over outcomes, both in our own work and the work of the people we fund.

In our own work, this learning helps us to continually improve our practice and increase the impact of our resources. Fundamentally, we work to understand what we are doing well and what we could do better.

To help us with this, there are two regular reports we produce to examine our own grant-making:

  • Grant holder perception surveys – every four years, we commission a survey from the Centre for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) to gather feedback from grant holders and declined applicants about their perceptions of the Foundation, including in areas such as our impact, the application process, their engagement with the Foundation during the course of their grant, and diversity, equity and inclusion.
  • Racial justice audit of our grants – using the toolkit provided by the Funders for Race Equality Alliance (FREA), we analyse the proportion of our funding and grants awarded to organisations led by and for communities experiencing racial inequity each year.

Both reports allow us to monitor trends over time, understand our strengths and identify issues, all of which inform continuous adaptation and improvement.

These are two of many reviews we have of our grant-making. See our full publications for more.

Learning from grant holders

Information from the people we fund is crucial to help us better understand our impact. But we try to balance what information we want to know as a funder with what information is useful, interesting and actionable for the people we fund to share with us.

With this in mind, our approach to evidence and learning is underpinned by several key practices:

Evidence and learning support

As part of our Grant Plus offer, we provide evidence and learning support to organisations we fund. Find out more about what we offer grant holders.

A group is outdoors, surrounded by trees and grass. They are standing in a circle, smiling and playing a game where they are touching each other's hands
POMOC and Act Build Change residential. Photo credit: Francis Augusto 

Case studies 

Find out more about the organisations we support and how they work.