Responding to the Foundation Practice Rating 2026

The Foundation Practice Rating aims to encourage funders to improve their practices across accountability, diversity and transparency. These principles are central to our work and our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. 

We’re pleased to receive an overall ​‘A’ in the Foundation Practice Rating (scoring B for Diversity, A for transparency and A for accountability) and to be part of a programme that helps funders, like us, to reflect on how these principles show up in our work, so that together we can improve our practice and help create a more equitable funding sector.

Last year, Paul Hamlyn Foundation made three commitments alongside our ongoing work to embed diversity, equity and inclusion across everything we do. These were: 

On the first commitment, we have been undertaking a strategic review of our grant-making over the past five years. In particular, we have been thinking about our role and the way our commitment to equitable and relational grant making shows-up including our commitment to being an anti-racist funder. Over the last year, we have also continued our work around telling the story of the Foundation – including looking back at how Paul Hamlyn’s life and legacy shaped our work, and how our work has evolved over time. 

On the second commitment, we repeated the survey from the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) to gather feedback from our grant holders and declined applicants on their perceptions of the Foundation. This focuses on areas such as our impact, application processes and our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. The surveys went out to nearly 600 grant holders and more than 1,200 organisations and individuals who had applied to the Foundation over the last 14 months. This valuable feedback will help us to develop our approach to grant relationships and reporting, our broader support offer and more. We plan to share what we have learned on our website later this year. 

On our final commitment, to clarify where our funding goes and what we’re learning, our grants team have published blogs that identify trends across the applications we receive and shared approaches in the grants we’ve made. We hope these regular reflections will help make our processes and decisions more transparent. We also conduct an annual racial justice audit of our grant-making to help us understand how much of our funding supports work led by and for communities experiencing racial inequity. This report outlines the findings of our fifth annual racial justice audit of our UK grant-making for the year 2024/25. We look at the results of the 2024/25 audit in the context of previous results, consider the changes that have been made in our grant-making, and look at opportunities for further improvement. To help make our work more accessible, we have also published an easy-read version of the report for the first time.

The Foundation Practice Rating offers an important opportunity for us to take a step back and consider how we can enhance our practice around accountability, diversity and transparency. The learning from the FPR and the feedback from CEP’s surveys of our grant holders and applicants will help us to understand our strengths, identify areas to work on and to think about how we can refine our processes even more. All of this informs our continuous adaptation and improvement.

We welcome feedback on our plans and progress. You can get in touch with us at [email protected] or complete this anonymous survey.