Ideas and Pioneers Fund

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

We 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. We will prioritise funding people with direct lived experience, meaning you have personally experienced the issue you want to explore. We 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. We want our support to reach people who would benefit from it the most, including those who haven’t accessed funding or support to explore your idea. 

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

We want to fund ideas that are:

• Challenging injustice. We 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. We recognise that what happens at the small scale reflects what happens at the large scale, so we are equally interested in ideas working at a local level to those working at a national level.
• Early stage. Our focus is on supporting the earliest stages of exploration and to help you learn from what does and doesn’t work.
• Original. We 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.