Delivering enterprise support for Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Ideas and Pioneers Grantees | Clients

Do it Now Now has enjoyed a long working partnership with the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, having received our first grant from their Ideas and Pioneers Fund in 2019. As such we are thrilled to now be responsible for the running of the support programme attached to the Ideas and Pioneers Fund.

The Paul Hamlyn Foundation Ideas and Pioneers Fund provides grants of up to £15,000 to support people with a vision of a better society to explore their ideas for change. Paul Hamlyn Foundation believes there is an urgent need to support people who are most affected by systemic oppression and or discrimination. Predominantly, “Black, Asian and other groups who experience racism, deaf, disabled and neurodiverse people who experience the effects of ableism, those who identify as sitting at the intersections of several minoritized identities as well as people experiencing poverty.”

Phase one of this enterprise support delivery contract, that will be responsible for training 40 grantees each year, was a detailed research project. We interviewed current and former grantees of the fund as well as held focus groups with potential grantees and others currently engaged in the grant process with Paul Hamlyn Foundation. Through this process we worked to understand the grantees and their development needs, being mindful of both developing the individual and their ideas. We worked to distill the biggest challenges facing grantees, such as understanding and having confidence to run their organisations from a lived experience background as well as understanding how to access funding or revenue options, so that their journey as pioneers will lead to making the changes they want to see in the world.

Commenting on why we were chosen to develop and deliver this programme of enterprise support, Jake Leeper, Grants Manager at Paul Hamlyn Foundation said: "Do it Now Now was built by an ambitious team that are determined to make change. This is exactly the ethos of the Ideas and Pioneers Fund, and is central to why we wanted to work with them. They don’t just talk the talk but have walked the walk, and we know that these experiences will be invaluable while they support our grantees. We hope our grantees will benefit from the breadth and depth of the sessions, which DINN have tailored to the needs of the Fund. We can’t wait to get started, and I know everyone at DINN feels exactly the same."

Over the next year, we’ll be providing a number of workshops on core skills, delivering specialist one on one advice sessions, training workshops and creating an online community for grantees to access and connect with their peers.

We are excited to be part of Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s ongoing mission to create a society where the disempowered are supported to bring their visions for a better world to life.

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