Our Ideas and Pioneers Fund team share insights on what made some of last year’s applications unsuccessful, and what to consider when applying this year.
Last year, we reopened the Ideas and Pioneers Fund and the response was incredible. We received 319 applications and went on to award 30 grants. It was inspiring to see so many bold ideas focused on transformative change come through.
We have just opened for another round and want to share some of the main reasons applications weren’t successful last year. We hope this insight will help you to decide if the Fund is for you and feel more confident about applying this year.
In the first round, 10% of applications did not meet our eligibility criteria. That means they fell under either a Fund-specific exclusion or one of the Foundation’s general exclusions.
Most of the ineligible applications were due to Fund-specific reasons. The most common were:
†We want to make sure we’re giving priority to smaller organisations who may have had limited access to funding. Instead of looking at staff numbers, we’re now using organisational turnover to determine eligibility. This is because an organisation with 5 FTE staff could potentially represent a large, well-funded organisation. So, for the next round, organisations with a turnover over £150,000 in the last financial year won’t be eligible.
20% of applications were declined for this reason. We are interested in ideas that challenge the status quo and transform the way things are currently done. There are several ways in which applications may not be addressing root causes of systemic oppression. For example, they could focus on:
Symptoms, not systems – such as an intervention focused on improving mental health which only looks to build individual resilience rather than addressing underlying causes.
Meeting immediate need, rather than looking at the underlying inequities (social, political, economic etc.) that have led to the need in the first place.
Raising awareness of social justice issues only without also working on solutions to those issues.
Single systems of oppression, such as racism or sexism, without acknowledging how they often overlap and reinforce each other.
We do not expect that a single idea can tackle all of the complex root causes of systemic oppression. But we do need to be able to see a clear link between the two.
A further 20% of applications were unsuccessful because they were too advanced or developed. We are looking for people who have a promising idea but still have questions they need to answer, and who would benefit from funding to do further exploration and testing. Examples of how an application may be too advanced or developed:
Over 60% of applications that were declined for this reason were from organisations, as opposed to individuals or small groups. Examples of continuation of existing work:
We are now open for new applications and this round will close on Tuesday 2 December. We’ll be awarding up to 40 grants, with final decisions announced by March 2026.
If you have an idea for social change, we’d love to hear from you.
There will be more funding rounds next year – dates to be confirmed – so there will be plenty of opportunities to be involved.
Find out more about the fund and how to make an application.
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