S1: #4 — Co-design insights and implications

It’s been another great week as we motor on towards the end of June when we will have the initial drafts of the funding programme prototypes.

What’s been going on?

Recruitment conversations

I’ve been working on timescales and routes for recruitment, with a key focus on diversity. This has included chatting to Ned Younger, Head of Development at Koreo, a partner in 2027, a coalition of some of the UK’s leading organisations and people dedicated to social change. The 2027 Associate Programme is a 12-month placement and leadership programme that exists to help trusts and foundations find amazing individuals with frontline experience who are from diverse, working-class communities. We are hoping to have a 2027 Associate within the grant team at BSA.

More risk planning

With so many project interdependencies being led by different organisations, it is vital that we have a collective live risk plan that is regularly reviewed and updated.

Service design ideation

Now that the co-design workshops, stakeholder interviews and literature review are all complete, TSIP has started to consider the insights and what that means for the design of the funding programme. I joined their first session and I am excited by possibilities of what we might develop.

Reimagining Philanthropy

I tuned in to the #DeptofDreams Festival to hear my previous manager, Derek Bardowell talk about reimagining philanthropy and ‬how this could contribute to addressing systemic racism in Britain. I was taken by his call for funders not to just talk about doing something to tackle systemic and structural failures in funding diverse communities but be brave and bold. I really hope we can do that with this funding programme. The quote of the session was “ Can you imagine turning down Martin Luther King because he didn’t have a Theory of Change?”. Many of our co-design participants have talked about things like this being a barrier to accessing funding and have proposed that this is something they are supported to do after funding has been awarded.

Reflection/ leanings this week

Reflection and learnings this week continue to be focused on the service design work led by TSIP. As I said before, I have been very impressed with the volume of thoughts, ideas and opinions that have come out of the five co-design workshops. There are far too many to go into detail but here are some of the top insights and implications drafted by TSIP, as we move forward prototyping the funding programme .

Insights:

• Research culture can often be a barrier for public engagement in health research because traditional research culture often places emphasis on publications, defined research outputs, and institutional interests.
• Sometimes communities are wary of the interests of institutions and they have other beliefs. An example of this used in the session is diabetes research pushing for prescription drugs when some communities would rather adopt natural remedies like fasting, dietary changes, and breathwork.
• Communities are tired of having researchers collecting data without including them in the later stages of the research process and helping them directly contribute to any outcomes. Transparency and communication will be key to ensuring people don’t lose trust.
• Trust and motivation are essential but require different kinds of approaches that are culturally relevant.
• If you want diversity in public engagement, diversity is needed across all levels of the research project.
• Recognition for the ‘unofficial’ research that occurs without academics or formal researchers is key to help with power dynamics.
• Language and definitions need to be clear — what do we mean by research or public engagement?
• Application forms should be simple, accessible and proportionate to the amount of money. The application process should be more human and application criteria should be more open-minded.
• A programme focused on learning over monitoring and evaluation would be more beneficial to the grant holders.
• The funding programme should enhance networks and peer-to-peer support, self-awareness and reflecting, fostering a community and collective spirit.
• How can we support the right people and good ideas, not just those who are good at writing proposals?

Implications for the grants programme

• Peer research is essential in reaching those individuals that don’t traditionally engage/ underserved. There was support for both an open fund and a targeted one aligned to specific underserved groups. Therefore, could we have two schemes?
• There is a tension between depth and breadth such as (1) opening up the fund to as many people/groups as possible could result in very high levels of applications but there is a desire to see a more connected assessment process (e.g. visiting applicants as part of the assessment process) which requires resource; and (2) providing high levels of support pre-allocation and throughout the lifetime of the grant but also wanting lots of funding rounds, which again are both resource-intensive.
• There was a strong view that applications should be community rather than researcher/academic-led. Instead, is there a way to help communities and researchers come together to develop relationships/ partnerships or a match-making service? These relationships may not need to be in place before applying for funding but instead, support could be given to help with this should the idea be funded. Otherwise, having an existing relationship/partnership in place could act as a barrier.
• Lived experience vs research credibility — who is considered a ‘researcher’ for the purposes of this funding programme?
• Training and support should be provided for both researchers and community orgs/ individuals to enable them to collaborate more effectively and learn from each other through a two-way process. This is essential to break down power imbalance issues. Training for decision-makers (and diversity) is also key to success.
• There needs to be different ways for people to apply e.g. video and written.
• The funding programme needs to be willing to take big risks — traditional notions of monitoring evaluation, and performance should not be used to determine grantee success. A willingness to learn and try something new should be at the core.
• Building support programmes in a way that enhances the capacity of grantees to allow them to continue their work long-term is essential. Feeling like you are in a collective, in a group and supported by one another to learn and improve is highly important.
• If the funding programme is going to support the ‘right people’ and ‘good ideas’, those assessing the applications and the decision-makers need to be able to make a judgement on who the right people are and what a good idea is.

Next week I will highlight the key insights and implications from the stakeholder interviews and the literature review the following week. Together with the co-design workshop content, they will shape the prototypes for the funding programme.