Ideas and Pioneers Fund / Paul Hamlyn Foundation / 16 Sept 2024
Ideas and Pioneers Fund
Support for individuals, groups and small organisations who want to explore a new idea for social change.
What is available?
We believe that the best ideas for how society needs to change often come from people who have been let down or harmed by current systems. We want our funding to help realise these ideas, and give you the time, space and financial backing to experiment with new and different ways of creating social change.
We provide grants of up to £20,000, and a programme of support, to help you develop your skills and explore an idea for social change that has the potential to transform the way things are currently done. The fund specifically focuses on early-stage ideas when it’s harder to get funding and support to develop these ideas further.
We want to fund ideas that are:
- Challenging injustice. We want to support ideas that show a clear vision to help build a better society by shifting power and challenging and transforming the root causes of systemic oppression. This includes but is not limited to racism, ableism, classism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, and/or transphobia. We recognise that what happens at the small scale reflects what happens at the large scale, so we are equally interested in ideas working at a local level to those working at a national level.
- Early stage. Our focus is on supporting the earliest stages of exploration and to help you learn from what does and doesn’t work.
- Original. We want to support people imagining new ways to make social change, which could mean trying things that haven’t been done before or experimenting with an approach that is new to the context in which you’re hoping to work.
- Long-term. You can see the long-term potential of your idea and you’re motivated to share your learning with others to make change beyond the lifetime of the funding.
Who can apply?
We want to fund people aged 18–30* to explore their ideas for social change. This fund is for you if you have:
- A connection to the idea you want to explore. We will prioritise funding people with direct lived experience, meaning you have personally experienced the issue you want to explore. We also welcome applicants with indirect experience (you have seen how this issue affects people around you, perhaps in your family or community) and learned experience (you have taken steps to learn more about this issue, whether formally through qualifications or your job, or informally through exploring it yourself).
- The drive and potential to make social change. We’re not looking for a track record of experience or success and will assess your application on the strength of your idea.
- Not received grant funding before. We want our support to reach people who would benefit from it the most, including those who haven’t accessed funding or support to explore your idea.
*We prioritise funding to people aged 18–30, but we do consider applications from those aged 30 and over. We cannot accept applications from those under 18.
How to apply
We want the application process to be as accessible as possible. If this application process is inaccessible to you at any stage, please get in touch with us at accessibility@phf.org.uk. We can provide pre-application access support and a bursary of up to £750 to help you apply.
We use an online application form.
There are three different written application forms — depending on if you’re applying as an individual, small group, or organisation.
A sample application form can be downloaded as a word document for you to review in advance.
To find out more and apply please visit: Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Ideas and Pioneers Fund
