Learning from our Plus Fund pilot

In 2024, we launched the Plus Fund - a pilot initiative designed not only to support organisations with their development needs, but to help us learn what kind of support is most effective in strengthening capacity and resilience across the third sector.

The fund provided up to £8,000 in financial support to help grant holders create a tailored package of non-delivery support. Crucially, the Plus Fund was designed to inform the future development of our wider Funder Plus offer - our commitment to supporting grant holders beyond financial grants. Insights from the pilot are helping us understand what organisations need most and how we can build on our current offer, which includes consultancy via Community Enterprise, digital training through SCVO and Third Sector Lab, and free meeting space at our Stirling conference centre.

To shape the pilot, we invited over 50 grant holders to apply for support tailored to their unique context. These were selected to reflect a diverse mix of themes, grant types, and geographic locations, ensuring a balance of both urban and rural projects. Of those, 24 applied and 16 were awarded funding. 

Awards Made through the Plus Fund

A range of support and interventions were awarded funding, including activities focused on:

• Training for senior management on effective leadership and decision making.
• Board training to understand how to develop a new social enterprise.
• CRM systems to allow effective client management and data capture for effective resource planning.
• Developing and embedding new business plans and strategies.
• Staff wellbeing initiatives and first aid, and safety training.

You can view the full list of awards made below.

Organisation	Description	Amount
Ayr Housing Aid Centre	Staff wellbeing activities, resillinace and self defence training	£5300
Fife Gingerbread	Additional SMT capacity to implement new strategy and fund creation of Parent Forum	£7900
Funeral Link	CRM System purchase	£4000
Growing Together	Senior management and Board training	£6900
Hope Connection	Governance review and staff away day and training on findings of review	£7900
Into Work	Training on Data handling, GDPR, Safeguarding and Financial Management for staff	£7900
Launch it Paisley	Monthly staff training development sessions	£4000
Parklea Branching Out	Developing business and training plan Board and Staff for new social enterprise model	£7500
Refuweegee	Consultancy support to review and improve their internal operations, policies and develop peer learning and support process	£8000
Scottish Families Affected by Drug and Alcohol	Bespoke training and support around bereavement support to reduce staff trauma	£4000
Shetland Womens Aid	Support to manage organisational growth in the last few years.  Facilitated planning on structure of the organisation and associated cost of planning move to new larger premises	£8000
Street Soccer (Scotland)	Strengthening cyber security, upskilling existing staff and reducing the impact and risk of future cyber-attacks on the organisation	£8000
Strengthening Communities for Race Equality Scotland	Staff training on project and financial management, leadership and EDI	£7992
Avenue	Consultant review of the governance and leadership structures including training for the Board and leadership team	£7500
The School Bank West Lothian	Training on Microsoft as well as First Aid and Child Protection	£1030
Western Isles Assoc Mental Health	Quarterly facilitated meetings to bring committee, staff service users and volunteers together to reflect current practices and future direction.	£4000
Total		£99,922

 

What are we learning from the Plus Fund pilot?

• The pilot was open for only 6 weeks, and we learned that narrow timescales may prohibit organisations from applying. This type of funding requires organisations to be in a position to engage with the planning and implementation of the proposals.  To get well-thought-out proposals and implementation, organisations need time to develop the ideas.
• The most common decline reason was that the work proposed was focused on service delivery. Proposals tended to be focused on increasing engagement with service users, marketing of services, or direct delivery of services.  
• We recognised that we needed to be clearer on why we don’t consider service delivery costs under Plus Fund.  This fund was aimed at complementing and supporting the strategic delivery of the service delivery work we fund under our main grant programmes.  The purpose of The Plus Fund was to recognise and address that there is growing pressure to find funding to sustain service delivery, and that puts pressure on budgets for non-service delivery work and inward investment in an organisation's core functions.
• Staff emotional wellbeing and vicarious trauma were not originally considered when we planned the Plus Fund, as we focused on the core function of organisations. We did, however, receive several applications around this topic, drawing a clear link between the well-being of staff and the ability of the organisation to be resilient, and the potential impact on organisations if they experience high staff turnover due to trauma or burnout.