Directors Report

new initiatives that influence social change

This year we devoted greater energy to our special initiatives, emboldened by the impact of our recent successes, and we unveiled six new initiatives across all three of our UK programmes, with four more in the pipeline for next year.

With our vision firmly focused on whole system social change, our philosophy and approach to funding is to work closely with organisations on the ground that wish to test new practice. Our track record in doing this in recent schemes like Musical Futures and Right to Read has earned us credit from an important study which examined the ways in which grant-making organisations exert leverage on social change.

“‘Experiments’ are one thing. Sustainability is another,” said Diana Leat, author of ‘Just Change: Strategies for increasing philanthropic impact’. “By deliberately focusing on changes in policy and practice using the (time limited)programme to raise awareness and bring agencies and departments together, the Foundation appears to have achieved significant change”, she wrote.

Within the Foundation’s 2006-2012 strategic plan, a key aim is to commit more than half our resources to special initiatives. Accordingly in 2007-08 we have developed and implemented new special initiatives and disseminated information from those already under way or which are closed to new awards.

This year we set up six special initiatives, two for each of our UK programmes:

• Under Arts we created the Awards for Composers which now runs alongside our long-standing Awards for Visual Arts.
• We set up the Breakthrough Fund for creative arts entrepreneurs.
• Under Education and Learning we extended upwards the age range of our involvement in formal education by establishing a joint grant scheme with the Higher Education Funding Council for England. This seeks to evaluate and share knowledge of strategies for retaining students in higher education.
• Our new residential learning initiative is intended to encourage schools to plan residential experience on a longer-term basis, for the benefit equally of students’ learning and the development of the school work force.
• Under the Social Justice programme, which is aimed at the integration of marginalised young people in transition, we have developed Right Here, an initiative focusing on improving the mental wellbeing of 16-25 year olds, in partnership with the Mental Health Foundation.
• We commissioned research into the lives of young undocumented migrants which is expected to reveal useful insights about these individuals and communities, about whom little is known.

The starting point for our special initiatives varies. They may stem from a survey of needs and opportunities, or from dialogue with applicants and other funders, or arise from the experience of our trustees, advisers and staff. Lessons from the results of our grants can also spark new initiatives, in the event of an individual grant having unexpected impacts or even failing.

We do not have a single model of intervention but follow a similar approach to implementation which is based on research and consultation. We give ongoing advice to grant-holders, undertake formative evaluation and disseminate results. We are prepared to change our approaches if circumstances change.

Diana Leat’s study of foundations, which was published by the Association of Charitable Foundations, aimed to encourage discussion of the role of philanthropy in social change that impacts more than just immediate grantees and which inspires new practice.

Our Right to Read special initiative was one of seven featured case studies in the book. Leat attributed the Foundation’s success to factors including investing in getting through to those with the power to affect change – in the case of Right to Read, by working directly with local authorities to build partnerships between their library, education and social/children’s services. She also noted our success in disseminating information that is tailored to audience needs, involving young people as well as key individuals and organizations, and encouraging partnerships.

Alongside special initiatives, we believe in the importance of maintaining open grants schemes. We identify themes or broad outcomes, and emphasise support for approaches which are new or which advance practice. We keep an open mind as to how to achieve this, and allow applicants flexibility.

As we move ahead, we are broadening the open grants scheme under our Education and Learning programme, as planned, to include the development of speaking and listening skills by young people, while retaining our emphasis on innovation and development.

Assisted by the programme committees, and particularly our external advisors, the board reviewed the first year of our new UK programmes and found they are meeting their aims, even in these early days, particularly of using open grants to support innovation and new practice development.

We continued our “grants plus” approach of activity which complements but goes beyond our core work of grant-making, by using our ideas and contacts to develop and share knowledge. One highlight was four lectures in partnership with the Royal Society of Arts, on the theme of bringing outside influences into mainstream education. Unusually we succeeded in attracting a core audience who attended most lectures so that common themes emerged.

Susan Blishen, now manager of our mental health special initiative, co-authored a policy briefing on support for young people’s mental health which was published by the Mental Health Foundation.

During the year, with the support of a consultant, Carol Stone, we introduced a system of evaluation and recording of outcomes into our open grants schemes, to complement evaluation approaches that we already used in our special initiatives. In time we believe the knowledge this generates will help practitioners more widely and inform future developments.

We welcomed to the staff Rob Bell, previously Head of the Carnegie UK Trust’s Young People Initiative, as Social Justice Programme Manager, and Tony Davey, previously at the Department of Trade & Industry, as Information and Resources Officer.

Kate Brindley, Director of Bristol’s Museums, Galleries and Archives, and Dr Paul Woolley, Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Paul Woolley Centre for the Study of Capital Market Dysfunctionality at the London School of Economics, joined us as additional advisers. Their contributions as members of the Arts programme committee and the Finance and Investment committee respectively have added to the high quality advice we receive from existing advisers.

As well as our central strategic aims, a supporting aim is to encourage philanthropy, mainly by investing our time. All staff give ideas and contacts to colleagues in other foundations – and benefit from this in return. The Foundation contributed to the work of the Association of Charitable Foundations, which represents over 300 UK grant-making trusts and foundations, through the service of staff including Jonathan Sheldon, who was ACF Treasurer until March 2008, and me, who sits on the advisory board of the ACF initiative, Philanthropy UK. This year in addition to our annual subscription, we joined a small consortium making a grant towards ACF’s cost of implementing a new strategic plan and business model.

In summary the delivery of the aims and objectives we set in our strategic plan for 2006-2012 remains on track.

In addition to maintaining our current grant programmes, our plans for the year ahead include:

• Launching a further special initiative in each of our programmes.
• Marking 10 years of the Awards for Visual Artists.
• Developing and beginning to implement a research strategy.
• Increasing our communications capacity and outputs.
• Analysing our funding for capacity-building.
• Expanding our operations in India and establishing a local presence.
• Improving the quality of the service we deliver to applicants, grant-holders and other organisations we work with.
• Understanding the results of our increased emphasis on outcomes.
• Reviewing the impact of the changes made in 2006 to our governance.

Robert Dufton Director