Our approach
We want to innovate in our grant-making and to work with our peers to create a contemporary philanthropy that is responsive and flexible.
This means doing things differently and using all our resources to improve our practice. We focus on:
Purposeful and equitable relational grant-making
We want to be more than a transactional funder. To achieve this, we want to work alongside the people and groups we fund, acknowledging their expertise and welcoming their insights, and drawing on them to inform and develop the way we do things. We use a variety of funding approaches, from support for research and development through to endowments, in response to the needs of the organisations we work with and the conditions they face. Our impulse is to be flexible as possible, and we are extending our commitment to long-term funding and to providing core support when it is helpful to do so.
Non-financial support
We believe we can add value to our grant-making and strengthen the organisations that we fund by providing advice and support from within the Foundation and by sourcing external expertise. We commission and invest in research and evaluation to put learning at the heart of everything we do. We underpin advocacy and communications activity to help shift narratives and to add to collective intelligence, and we support skills development and capacity in the sectors we fund. We value networking and relationships, so we support bringing our partners together to work on common agendas.
We own our building in King’s Cross, London, and make it available free of charge to past and present grantees when we can. It provides a safe and independent space where our partners can reflect and share learning openly.
Our people
Feedback has shown us how important it is to have skilled and knowledgeable staff and trustees, and how critical the quality of the relationships with them is to everyone who works with us, so we are committed to investing in the professional development of our people. We also recognise that it is important that our trustees, advisors and staff are well informed and have lived experience of the fields in which we operate. These perspectives help our assessment and decision-making processes to feel even more relevant and informed. Diversity in our organisation is not a ‘nice-to-have’, but a cultural and business imperative.
Partnership and collaboration
To create the change we want to see, it is often effective to work with other groups and organisations besides those we fund. Accordingly, we actively welcome partnerships – with other funders, with central and local government and with business – and build communities of interest in the fields we support. We encourage those we fund to improve their impact and practice by developing their own partnerships locally and nationally.
Effective and efficient operations
We want to achieve the greatest possible impact with our resources and set ourselves high standards for how we operate. We desire simplicity in all our dealings and we are open to new ways of working to help us achieve that. We aim to operate a straightforward, transparent process for those seeking grants from us, and to manage relationships with suppliers and contractors with respect. Our commitment to social justice extends to our practice as an employer and as a Living Wage Funder.
Our investment strategy
Paul Hamlyn Foundation is a registered charity with substantial investment assets that finance our grant-making activities. In managing these assets, the Foundation is a long-term investor, expecting to exist in perpetuity. To achieve this, we need to ensure that environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles inform a responsive investment approach and effective deployment of our endowment.